When I tried and failed to read 1984 I was shocked at how little it was interested in the politics of the setting, and instead really really wanted to tell you about this dudes torrid fling with his manic pixie dream girl. Given how much people reference it about fascism I was expecting something much different.
The sad thing is that the sex stuff could maybe have been written in a far better way, but its not and its just weird/creepy. Like I genuinely assume Orwell was trying to do something more interesting there but it fails to land on anything other than a naive reader. Even the teenager me who was willing to accept quite a bit of slop had a hard time with it. I assume people just reference it because, like Harry Potter, its one of the few books they ever engaged with.
When I tried and failed to read 1984 I was shocked at how little it was interested in the politics of the setting, and instead really really wanted to tell you about this dudes torrid fling with his manic pixie dream girl. Given how much people reference it about fascism I was expecting something much different.
The sad thing is that the sex stuff could maybe have been written in a far better way, but its not and its just weird/creepy. Like I genuinely assume Orwell was trying to do something more interesting there but it fails to land on anything other than a naive reader. Even the teenager me who was willing to accept quite a bit of slop had a hard time with it. I assume people just reference it because, like Harry Potter, its one of the few books they ever engaged with.
Considering he was a removed, he probably wasn’t trying to do anything more interesting than jerk himself off and hate women with that stuff.
I may be giving him some sort of creative benefit of the doubt that he doesn’t deserve lol