One of the first books Libby recommended to me was 1984. It's not my normal genre but it seemed applicable to the current political climate and I would like to expand my repertoire of classics. So I downloaded it. What I didn't expect until I was crossing the state of Georgia was how much I could relate to it on a personal level.
The basic plot is that the world has been divided into three roughly equal superpowers, each with authoritarian governments. The book takes place in London which is part of the superpower, Oceania (that includes some or all of the Americas).
Big Brother, the head of Oceania, has implemented two-way technology in every home and public space to heavily surveil its population, including analyzing people to figure out what they are thinking and to punish people for "thought crimes."
Winston and Julia, two of the main characters are part of the outer party and work at the Ministry of Truth which is the agency responsible for propaganda and re-writing history. Winston's job specifically is to re-write articles, speeches, and other media from the past to fit the current narrative of the regime. Previous versions are then destroyed as if that version of events never happened. There is also a concerted effort to significantly pair down the vocabulary of "old speak" into "new speak" so as to eliminate ideas and concepts. If the language doesn't exist, then the people can't think those thoughts, right?
Winston and Julia become romantic which is against Big Brothers rules - they are trying to eliminate sex for pleasure and actually only approved marriages between people who are not attracted to each other. Winston was already married in such a way although his wife left him years prior. The couple are each portrayed as individuals against the regime each looking for different ways to resist. They meet O'Brien, a member of the inner party who in their earlier interactions indicates he is a member of the Brotherhood, a resistance movement.
Ultimately, both Winston and Julia are arrested for thought crimes. They were likely set up by O'Brien who sent them a book supposedly written by the Brotherhood that they were caught reading and by a shop keeper who rented Winston his hideaway who turns out to be a member of the Thought Police. O'Brien is the one who tortures and brainwashes him.
At first, as I was driving down the road listening to this book, I was fascinated by the way the mind and memory can be controlled with gaslighting. The regime's moto that whoever controls the present controls the past and whoever controls the past controls the future hit a nerve about how much control really is about influencing and the manipulating the mind. Ultimately, Winston is convinced that 2+2=5 and that certain recollections he has from the past are "false memories."
So thinking about my own marriage, imagine that my ex-husband is Winston. Big Brother is the internal battle within him which creates the various versions of Winston (fantasy and real). O'Brien is his mother whose toxic relationship with him has created this internal battle. Julia is me, the one who fell for the initial version of him that she felt aligned with her, suffered because of decisions he made, and ultimately was disgusted with the version he displayed in the end. At the end, Winston also feels disgust towards Julia which ironically is how the story starts.
What hits the hardest about this story is how easily reality can be distorted. I spend so much of my life in my head. I value the ways I think, analyze, and reflect. It’s very core to who I am. To experience how easily that core piece of who I am can be tampered with is deeply wounding and probably hurts me at a deeper level than other types of betrayals. My ex-husband distorted reality so much, I started doubting myself and my abilities to think, analyze, and reflect.
And maybe that is why I turned to dissociation so much. If I didn’t let my mind register what was happening, I wouldn’t have to try and make sense of incongruities that would never make sense.
This story also tugs at my empathy. Winston, like my ex-husband, was a deeply tortured and miserable person who was also a victim to influences of Big Brother and O’Brien (in the case of my ex-husband, his internal conflict and his current toxic relationship with his mother). That doesn’t excuse my ex-husband’s behaviors. He is absolutely responsible for his own growth and healing. But I feel a lot of empathy for the internal battle I suspect he constantly faces (and tries to avoid) and the pressure he still feels from his mother.
It’s so easy to get caught in a cycle of toxicity (hurt people keep hurting people who then hurt other people) and much harder to step out of it to end the cycle by doing the work to heal from the hurt.
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