1984 Foreword "redefining a world in which the Holocaust did not happen"

[jbor]

on 28/4/03 12:29 AM, Mutualcode at aol.com at Mutualcode at aol.com wrote:

> Pynchon's suggesting that the absence of The Holocaust in"1984"
> might be either due to "numbness," or, to "a failure at some level to
> appreciate its full significance,"

No, in that sentence Pynchon is talking about the absence of references to
the Holocaust from Orwell's "writing of the time", i.e. his essays and such.
The final sentence in the excerpt below switches back to the novel, and
Pynchon's suggestion that Orwell might have been attempting to "redefin[e] a
world in which the Holocaust did not happen" in _1984_.

best

> Much has been made recently of Orwell's own
> attitude toward Jews, some commentators going so far
> as to call it anti-Semitic. If one looks in his
> writing of the time for overt references to the topic,
> one finds relatively little - Jewish matters did not
> seem to command much of his attention - what published
> evidence there is indicates either a sort of numbness
> before the enormity of what had ahppened in the camps
> or a failure at some level to appreciate its full
> significance. There is some felt reticence, as if,
> with so many other deep issues to worry about, Orwell
> would have preferred that the world not be presented
> the added inconvenience of having to think much about
> the Holocaust. The novel may even have been his way
> of redefining a world in which the Holocaust did not
> happen. (xvi-xvii)


> indicates to me that he prefers to
> leave the question of absence open. I think any "felt reticience"
> would have easily been cast aside by Orwell if he believed, at the
> time, that such large scale state sponsored anti-semitism was more
> than a horrible aberration, rather than a danger equivalent to that
> of nationalism, for causing problems in the future. In that sense I
> think Pynchon is suggesting Orwell's naivety.
> 
> Either way, I see a big difference between the absence of The
> Holocaust in "1984" and in GR, in terms of authorial intention.
> Whether, as you initially suggested, Orwell- the man- is similar
> to certain characters in the novel GR, is an interesting speculation
> I'll have to think about.