Foreword "A Slightly Happier Tune"

[Dave Monroe]

"By the time they have left the Ministry of Love,
Winston and Julia have entered permanently the
condition of doublethink, the anterooms of
annihilation, no longer in love but able to hate and
love Big Brother at the same time.  It is as dark an
ending as can be imagined.
   "But strangely, it is not quite the end.  We turn
the page to find appended what seems to be some kind
of critical essay, 'The Principles of Newspeak.'  We
remember that back on page 4 we were given the option,
by way of a footnote, to turn to the back of the book
and read it.  Some readers do this, and some don't--we
might see it nowadays as an early example of
hypertext.[...]  but the question remains, Why end a
novel as passionate, violent and dark as this one with
what appears to be a scholarly appendix?
   "The answer may lie in simple grammar.  From its
first sentence, 'The Principle of Newspeak' is written
consistently in the past tense, as if to suggest some
later piece of history, post-1984, in which Newspeak
has become literally a thing of the past--as if in
some way the anonymous author of this piece is by now
free to discuss, critically and objectively, the
political system of which Newspeak was, in its time,
the essence.  Moreover, it is our own pre-Newspeak
English language that is being used to write the
essay.  Newspeak was supposed to have become general
by 2050, and yet it appaers that it did not last that
long, let alone triumph, that the ancient humanistic
ways of thinking inherent in standard English have
persisted, survived, and ultimately prevailed, and
that perhaps the social and moral order it speaks for
has even, somehow, been restored." 
   "In his 1946 article 'James Burnham and the
Managerial Revolution,' Orwell wrote, 'The huge,
invincible, everlasting slave empire of which Burnham
appears to dream will not be esatblished, or if
established, will not endure, because slavery is no
longer a stable basis for human society.'  In its
hints of restoration and redemption, perhaps 'The
Principles of Newspeak' serves as a way to brighten an
othewise bleakly pessimistic ending--sending us back
out into the streets of our own dystopia whistling a
slightly happier tune than the end of the story by
itself would have warranted." ("Foreword," pp.
xxii-xxiv)

George Orwell, "James Burnham and the Managerial
Revolution" (1946)

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/o/o79e/part40.html


__________, "The Principles of Newspeak" (1949)

http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-prin.html

And see as well ...

http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html


Cf. Jack London, The Iron Heel (1908) ...

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/IronHeel/foreward.html

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/IronHeel/

http://www.literature.org/authors/london-jack/the-iron-heel/foreword.html

http://www.literature.org/authors/london-jack/the-iron-heel/


And Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1986) ...

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/science_fiction/handmaid.html#notes

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/science_fiction/handmaid.html


"anterooms of annihilation"

Cf. "Death's antechamber" (GR, Pt. I, p. 40)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com