Finished 2017 with 1984. I have few questions.
I read the trifecta of "mirror to society" books this year - Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451 and finally 1984. 1984 might be the best book I've read ever. The way it exposes the classism and war mongering is truly something. I do have a few questions though -
SPOILERS Ahead -
1) The last chapter ends like this -
Sounds like he imagined the confession and execution. Did this happen or Winston is dreaming?
2) Brotherhood was a honey-trap setup by The Party, right?
3) Is Winston taken to room 101 twice? In chapter 3.2, we have -
But later Winston asks O'Brien "What's in Room 101?" and chapter 3.5 is written as if he's taken to room 101 for the first time!!
4) Bombs dropping in Oceania - that's not inside job as Julia had suspected since Oceania is really at war with Eurasia / Eastasia?
5) I'm confused about the surveillance. The book says only party members are under surveillance 24x7 and proles are left to do whatever they want, only being fed propaganda from time to time. That sounded dumb to me, since a regime can't honestly think 85% of its population is too dumb to understand what's happening and the regime won't keep everyone under surveillance if they can. Anyway, later in the book we hear about microphones everywhere. Isn't that contradictory? And "thoughtcrime" applies only to party members or proles too?
6) In the first chapter, Winston is thinking he wants to pretty much rape the girl from fiction dept...!!! Or did I read that wrong?
7) The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. I didn't find it in google but was this book within 1984 ever published separately as a spin-off / supplement? That book was the heart of 1984.
8) Does no one see the parallels between Oceania's wars and USA's constant state of war and "war on terror" and "war on drugs"? Or do people just go "1984 is fiction" "It Can't Happen Here"? Just because there isn't scarcity of goods doesn't mean the govt isn't actually doing the same thing as The Party. Do people not see that? Do we realize that we are fulfilling what O'Brien said proles will continue to do?
EDIT - 9) In chapter 2.9, it says "A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war". I didn't quite understand that part. Anyone understood it?
