Foreword: Ozeania

[Otto]

Hell has no place in the Stalinist religion because it's hell on earth
already . . .

You know that I don't see a big difference between religions and ideologies.
When they're new they are heretic, then they become the law of the land and
they start to murder & oppress dissidents, then they decline because of
their inner contradictions.

Otto

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: "Otto" <ottosell at yahoo.de>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2003 4:02 PM
Subject: Re: Foreword: Ozeania


>
>
> 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.