1984 as An Example of Effective Storytelling

Of the various books I read over the summer, George Orwell's 1984, in my estimation, was the most interesting and thought-provoking. Its success as a work of literature is due to Orwell's ability to create an intricate and fantastic, yet highly believable setting, and to construct and place a meaningful narrative and set of characters within.
One of the most personally significant parts of the story, and an example of effective storytelling, occurs when the main character, Winston Smith, is attending a ultra-nationalistic rally during Oceania's Hate Week. An excerpt follows:

"On the sixth day of Hate Week, after the processions, the speeches, the shouting, the singing, the banners, the posters, the films, the waxworks, the rolling of drums and squealing of trumpets, the tramp of marching feet, the grinding of the caterpillars of tanks, the roar of massed planes, the booming of guns -- after six days of this, when the great orgasm was quivering to its climax and the general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up into such delirium that if the crowd could have got their hands on the 2,000 Eurasian war-criminals who were to be publicly hanged on the last day of the proceedings, they would unquestionably have torn them to pieces -- at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally.

There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy. Winston was taking part in a demonstration in one of the central London squares at the moment when it happened. It was night, and the white faces and the scarlet banners were luridly floodlit. The square was packed with several thousand people, including a block of about a thousand schoolchildren in the uniform of the Spies. On a scarlet-draped platform an orator of the Inner Party, a small lean man with disproportionately long arms and a large bald skull over which a few lank locks straggled, was haranguing the crowd. A little Rumpelstiltskin figure, contorted with hatred, he gripped the neck of the microphone with one hand while the other, enormous at the end of a bony arm, clawed the air menacingly above his head. His voice, made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed forth an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations, lootings, rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying propaganda, unjust aggressions, broken treaties. It was almost impossible to listen to him without being first convinced and then maddened. ...The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker's hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! ... The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed. "


Orwell's vivid description of the rally, drawing from the imagery of historical European fascism, paints the scene of a vast population of automatons, rendered mindless by constant indoctrination, cheering on a regime that they do not fully understand. Throughout 1984, Orwell describes a similar picture, through a variety of settings and methods. His greatest skill is weaving these threads of detail into a coherent, pointed storyline, with so many varying interpretations and symbols that I'm still mentally sifting through it.


Interestingly, 1984 didn't disturb me in the same way that it seems to disturb others. Many readers take away a message about the invasion of privacy by institutes of authority, as evidenced by the use of "Big Brother" to refer to any governmental surveillance policy. This doesn't really faze me; perhaps as a member of a younger generation, I am already used to the widespread distribution of my personal information. Rather, I am disturbed by 1984's systematic corruption of information, history, and free will, likely a symptom of my experience with the free information of the internet. I find government manipulation of history and science for political purposes terrifying, far more so than constant government supervision.


What are your thoughts on this matter?