Alt text: An excerpt from George Orwell’s “1984”
'Do you remember,' he said, 'the thrush that sang to us, that first day, at the edge of the wood?'
'He wasn't singing to us,' said Julia. 'He was singing to please himself. Not even that. He was just singing.'
The birds sang, the proles sang. the Party did not sing. All round the world, in London and New York, in Africa and Brazil, and in the mysterious, forbidden lands beyond the frontiers, in the streets of Paris and Berlin, in the villages of the endless Russian plain, in the bazaars of China and Japan -- everywhere stood the same solid unconquerable figure, made monstrous by work and childbearing, toiling from birth to death and still singing. Out of those mighty loins a race of conscious beings must one day come. You were the dead, theirs was the future. But you could share in that future if you kept alive the mind as they kept alive the body, and passed on the secret doctrine that two plus two make four.
'We are the dead,' he said.
'We are the dead,' echoed Julia dutifully.
'You are the dead,' said an iron voice behind them.
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I read this a few years ago because I felt like I had to. Expected to be bored as hell, but it stayed pretty engaging throughout.
Bummer ending though, obviously.
Funny, I just posted the best quote I’d read this week too -
Female villain - “I’d ask you to join our operation, Mr Hoon, but I know exactly what you’d say”
Hoon - “I’d tell you to shove it up your fish-hole, you badly-aimed batch of ejaculate”
Female villain - “Well ok, I admit I didn’t know exactly what you’d say…”
