Foreword: Ozeania

[Terrance]

Otto wrote:
> 
> "The grouping of Britain and the United States into a single bloc,
> as prophecy, has turned out to be dead-on, foreseeing Britain's
> resistance to integration with the Eurasian landmass as well as
> her continuing subservience to Yank interests ...."
> ("Foreword," p. xv)
> 
> learned a new word: dead-on: den Nagel auf den Kopf treffen
> 
> Otto

Oceania is a theocracy, Big Brother a god, Ingsoc a religion. The power
of this new religion is exhibited in the ritual of the Hate, hellfire
sermon and auto-da-fé, the woman responding to her telescreen savior,
like Saint Teresa to Christ, while Winston hides from the other face of
God--Jehova, ineluctable anger. His evasion is as futile as the sinner
of any of the grand religions; the thought police, like heavenly angels
will get him, Big Brother knows all, God is not mocked. As we read in
the novel V. and in GR, what the old religions only aspired to, the new
ones have achieved. Big Brother is infallible to a degree undreamed of
by the the most fervid fundamentalists. He can create and he can
annihilate, as Comrad Oglivy demonstrates when called into existence as
miraculously as Adam, hagiographic equivalent of the legendary saints,
an example of total dedication, a eunuch for Oceania's sake. Julia, by
contrast, wants to fuck, a rebel from the waist down she is my kinda
bitch and I love her cause she wants sex for its own sake. Winston too
is a sinner. His sin, ownlife, is a sex crime and a heresy. Together,
they are like the traditional sinners of traditional religions,
feverishly digging their own lust graves. Confession, O'Brian (a
Catholic) is good for the soul. The God of this new religion spurns
loveless obedience as inefficacious unto salvation. In Room 101, thou
shalt love only god with thy whole heart and thy whole mind, no corner,
no matter how minute can be reserved for lesser than Him. But how can a
man be redeemed unless he sins? How can one be punished if one never
disobeys? Pynchon missed this all together. While I agree with David and
Paul M. that P's reading of Doublethink is so bad he trivializes the
horror of Orwell's vision, his reading of the fundamentalism of 1984 is
a shock. Ociana is puritanical gnostic. One must Love Big Brother
because he chastises. Winston must be shown that he is no Prometheus (a
big figure in P's novels) but only another Job (anothe big figure in P's
novels, in fact in the novel V. P crosses Prometheus and Job). The new
God is Origen's greedy Deity, hungry for every last soul. No Last
Judgment here. Hell has no place in the New Religion, for Hell is God's
shame, his admission that there are those so rebellious, so strong in
the Will, so obdurate and full of ownself Pride that they will never
bend. Every soul bound for hell is a victory for Satan. But the devils
of the New Religion are no Satans  they exist only to demonstrate the
futile folly and impotence of rebellion. Everyone will be washed clean,
no one and Nothing is Lost.