Chapter 31 imagine the future

A cold day in April; the sun was high and the clock was striking thirteen.Winston Smith lowered his head, pressed his chin to his chest, dodged the whistling wind, and quickly passed through the glass door of Victoria's mansion, but his movements seemed to be a little slow, and a gust of wind and sand followed him. came in. The foyer smelled of boiled cabbage and old carpet.At one end of the hall a colored poster was pinned to the wall.This painting seems a bit too big for indoors.There was nothing but a gigantic face, a full foot across.It was a man's face, about forty-five, with a heavy black beard and a stern look.Winston made his way up the stairs.There is no need to try the elevator.At the best of times, it rarely starts.And now the power is cut off during the day, so don't even think about it.This is part of the "Hate Week" savings drive.There are seven flights of stairs to get to the room.Winston was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer on his right leg, so he walked slowly, with several rests in between.On every landing, right across the elevator shaft, that big pictorial face glares at you from the wall.The graphics are cleverly designed, no matter where you are, it is staring at you.There is a line of words under the painting: Big Brother is watching you.

In the room, a mellow voice was reading a string of numbers related to the production of pig iron.The sound came from a rectangular iron plaque affixed to the right wall like a blurred mirror.Winston flicked a switch, and the voice dropped a little, but it was still intelligible.This thing is called a fluorescent screen, and the sound can be lowered, but it cannot be completely eliminated. · George Orwell (1949) Most novels about the future use the past tense, which seems incongruous on the surface.Michael Fleiss's novel "Private Lives" begins in the future tense (in the future, there is a little girl named Ann Campbell), but soon becomes unwieldy and shifts to the present tense.Entering the fantasy world of novels, we must keep consistent with the characters in time and space, which cannot be done in the future tense.The past tense is very "natural".Even using the present tense is a bit nondescript, because everything happens the moment it is recorded.

Today, of course, 1984 is long gone for us.But when Orwell wrote this novel, he was imagining the future.Therefore, when reading this novel, it is better to read it as a prophetic novel than as a historical novel.He uses the past tense to describe the future.Gives a sense of creative realism.The background of the story is only thirty years later, and its purpose may be to give readers a sense of crisis in what he sees as political dictatorship.The time when the book was completed (-948) and the title of the novel are only reversed in numerical order, and the humor reveals cynicism and irony.Post-war British austerity policies and reports on Eastern Europe provided material for Orwell to create the oppressive atmosphere in London in 1984.London in 1984 was lifeless, supplies were scarce, and everything was in dire straits.Science fiction often tells people how the material conditions of life will be different in the future, and Orwell suggests that these conditions will be the same, maybe worse.

The first sentence of the novel is quite startling. "A cold day in April, the sun was shining high, and the clock was striking thirteen." The "stinging" part is the last number, although to the reader, a number that is not marked by a clock, not marked by two Fourteen hours may be more impressive as a day.Without in-depth research, without savoring carefully, this sentence seems to be commonplace and commonplace.It could have been the start of an ordinary novel about an ordinary day in the contemporary world.It is this expressive and extremely incongruous number "thirteen" that tells us that what will be described later will be an extraordinary experience.Clocks, time, and calculations are just the basis or rationale for people to arrange their lives in this ordinary and familiar world.Therefore, "Thirteen" is like a moment in your nightmare. At this moment, someone tells you that you are dreaming, and at this moment, you wake up from the dream.As far as this book is concerned, though, the nightmare has just begun, and the protagonist at least never wakes up from that world of power, where power makes two plus two equal five.

In the next sentence, only the proper noun stands out in a work of understated realism.Winston Smith is obviously a synonym for Winston Churchill, the British leader in World War II.The mansion he lived in was probably built shortly after the war.The irony of these details only becomes apparent later when the novel tells us that the world has been struggling in a thirty-six-year-long intercontinental war.The wind and sand blowing into the hallway indicate that the road outside the house has not been cleaned. The poor living conditions and the extreme poverty of supplies are often reflected in the later descriptions, such as boiled cabbage, worn-out carpets on the floor, and power outages.In addition, Winston himself suffered from varicose ulcers.

The so-called "Hate Week" in the article, and the large-scale color pictorial with "Big Brother is watching you" are extremely unfamiliar details.Other than that, other descriptions fit perfectly with the dilapidated 1948 municipal apartment complex.And these two strange details are actually consistent with the effect of the clock striking thirteen.Like riddles, they arouse curiosity as well as anxiety, because the social situation they reflect is not pleasant, and we have come to identify ourselves with the victim of society, Winston Smith. together. "Hate Week" and "Big Brother" are closely related to the poor living conditions and dilapidated surrounding environment, and even the "cool breeze" mentioned in the first paragraph. "Big Brother" resembles Stalin, but at the same time it is reminiscent of a World War I poster showing a bearded soldier (Sir Kirchener) pointing up a finger, with the caption "National need you".Only in the two-way transparent TV screen (which can monitor the audience forever) does Orwell use science fiction techniques to imagine a small thing that did not exist in his time.Its cutting-edge technology is even more sinister and terrifying in the dead and dilapidated Victorian mansion.

In short, Orwell conceived of the future by stimulating, modifying, and recombining images the reader already knew, consciously or unconsciously.In a sense, this is the usual way of writing novels.Popular science fiction, for example, is a clever synthesis of devices, including fictional gizmos and typical themes or central ideas.These themes are clearly drawn from folk tales, fairy tales and the Bible.The author depicts a secular but superstitious era by processing and transforming a series of myths about Genesis, the Fall of Man, the Flood and the Holy Savior.Orwell used the story of Adam and Eve when dealing with the love story of Winston and Julia.They were secretly monitored by "Big Brother" and eventually punished.Far from being comforting, the effect is quite the opposite.The ingenuity of its quotations is hard for ordinary readers to understand.From this point, of course, other aspects are no exception. His technique is no different from that of traditional realistic novels, but his purpose is completely different.Its purpose is not to reflect the reality of contemporary society, but to paint a dire picture of the future.