Comment by rottc0dd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rottc0dd | Hacker News Reader

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It's not necessary for a work of fiction to focus on diverse and realistic characters, particularly when its primary aim is to critique a specific aspect of technology. In such cases, characters often function as just means to highlight and amplify that central theme.

Take 1984. It reads like a thought experiment reflecting the author's deepest fears about the dangers of unchecked power structures. Allegedly, Orwell’s own son would have been around 40 years old in the year 1984 (I read so in Pynchon's introduction to this book in Penguin's edition. It was a great essay.)

But, 1984 also features a great protagonist and an absolutely haunting language. While many of the other characters mainly serve to convey the broader ideas, it’s him who grounds the story emotionally. His suffering, his moral collapse, and the eventual loss of his ability was so tough to read and will forever haunt me. When he breaks, it feels like a loss for all of humanity. But, what I mean is characters are not essential to make a great work. When Orwell wants to convey his ideas, the characters are sidelined and ideas take the front wheel.

I understand your perspective. I'm not a fan of many of the episodes either. I really liked the first season, but the ones that followed just didn’t live up to it. And it does not rise above a horror centered around some particular technology. But, it's them give it cultural relevance.

> But, 1984 also features a great protagonist and an absolutely haunting language. While many of the other characters mainly serve to convey the broader ideas, it’s him who grounds the story emotionally. His suffering, his moral collapse, and the eventual loss of his ability was so tough to read and will forever haunt me. When he breaks, it feels like a loss for all of humanity. But, what I mean is characters are not essential to make a great work. When Orwell wants to convey his ideas, the characters are sidelined and ideas take the front wheel.

This paragraph goes one way and then suddenly pivots to the opposite conclusion without any justification. Orwell's character is why the story is wrenching. Without that emotional weight it has no staying power.

I kind of think both are true. I will remember Winston as great thinker who is extremely aware his world. And the tragedy or death of him is death of his awareness. His ability to think. In all the protagonist I have seen in tragedies, he is peculiar. While reviewing one another writer's work, Orwell said

> ‘... was a bad writer, and some inner trouble, sharpening his sensitiveness, nearly made him into a good one; his discontent healed itself, and he reverted to type. It is worth pausing to wonder in just what form the thing is happening to oneself.’

In the first act, the writing was so cold and I could not feel any connection to Winston. Even, when getting intimate with Julia, he is thinking,

> In the old days, he thought, a man looked at a girl’s body and saw that it was desirable, and that was the end of the story. But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.

I don't know when I started to feel things and empathize with him so much. When you think about circumstances and how he feels, he is cold as it gets, always scheming.

And in the most hopeful time of his life, he say these

> ‘We are the dead,’ he said.

> ‘We’re not dead yet,’ said Julia prosaically.

> ‘Not physically. Six months, a year – five years, conceivably. I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably you’re more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put it off as long as we can. But it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.’

But, when you think of an inner life, he has one of the richest and rare ones. We empathize with that, and when crystal ball falls, it was the most tragic thing I have experienced. I think, genius of Orwell is that he made the character and the idea indistinguishable.

I meant to type, it was one of the tragic things I have read, but too late to edit.

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