Revisiting Orwell. Picked up his collected works from amazon, at a princely sum of Rs.49.

In fact, just last week i discovered his collection of essays, that I had got before (for the kindle) and forgotten about. Unlike a traditional book shelf, the kindle bookshelf does not make you feel guilty about unread books. And, sometimes, you (I) forget that you had got them. So, on a over delayed flight, as i was browsing my bookshelf for something easy to read, in non-fiction, i stumbled upon the unopened collection of essays and dived in. It is quite fabulous. The bit i highlighted, about his early days in boarding school in England, was told with such lack of self pity (he had a monster of a school master), and so much wry humour, that i didn’t really miss the plane being late. Here he talks about the exam system

“This business of making a gifted boy’s career depend on a competitive examination, taken when he is only twelve or thirteen, is an evil thing at best, but there do appear to be preparatory schools which send scholars to Eton, Winchester, etc., without teaching them to see everything in terms of marks.”

Obviously, once i polished off the essays, i moved to the rest of his works. And,  1984 is right there at the top of the list. The dystopian world that he creates is quite fascinating. I wonder if that was the inspiration for Watchmen. I found the worlds quite similar.

So here is something from the book – not part of the storyline but the appendix. the principles of newspeak

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought— that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc— should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give a single example. The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as “This dog is free from lice” or “This field is free from weeds.” It could not be used in its old sense of “politically free” or “intellectually free,” since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless.

ORWELL, GEORGE (2014-06-25). GEORGE ORWELL PREMIUM COLLECTION: 48 works including all his novels (1984, Animal Farm, etc.); non fiction and dozens of essays (Timeless Wisdom Collection Book 1027) (Kindle Locations 4835-4840). Business and Leadership Publishing. Kindle Edition.

coming up next : Animal Farm.