How George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four Changed the World

On March 30, I had the opportunity to speak at a local history event. The Third Annual History Soapbox is a venue where ten people have 6 minutes each to persuade the audience that a book has changed the world. This was my humorous attempt to make a case for George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Then the face of Big Brother faded away again, and instead the three slogans of

the Party stood out in bold capitals:

War is peace

Freedom is slavery

Ignorance is strength.

This language of opposites, you will recognize, is the Newspeak doubletalk of George Orwell's Oceania. In the novel 1984, it is the signature means by which the governance reinforces its agenda and policy to keep down the masses. Originally published in 1949, there is no dystopian classic more canonical, and no author who wished so ardently NOT to predict the future, but prevent it. Orwell spins the cautionary tale of Winston Smith's developing consciousness to the tyranny of Big Brother, the omnipresent totalitarian government, who is always watching, always manipulating. In Orwell's 1984, the Ministry of Truth erases history and the Thought Police can "disappear" you without so much as evidence or a trial. They use data mining and surveillance, which kinda explains why Republicans would want to revoke internet privacy rules. But, how can one man fight the oppressive regime? In the end of the book, epically, all are reduced to loving Big Brother.

When I first set out to craft my case that 1984 has changed the world for this Soapbox, I considered becoming goodthinkfullly fluent in Newspeak and then writing an argument completely in Newspeakese. But as I thought through this diabolically clever plan, I made an important realization: a satirical use of doubletalk does not convey humor or purpose when we are in fact living in a time of political doublespeak and alternative facts. So, instead of wit and wordplay, I shall rely on facts----of the non-alternative variety.

Fact: On this very day, Mar 30, in 1984, the US ended its participation in a multinational peacekeeping force in Lebanon

Fact: In 1984, Prince's "When the Doves Cry" was Billboard's #1 song of the year

Fact: The film Amadeus won the Oscar for the best picture of 1984

Fact: These are not the first things we think of when we hear (hand motion) 1984.

What we think of is, oh, wait, was that the name of that super popular Taylor Swift album, you know the one, oh that was 1989? Okay. THEN, we think of George Orwell's book. And, this is because the most notable thing about 1984 is a book about that year, yet predates it. A book that anticipates and predicts, in an astonishingly accurate manner, the rise of a neoliberal agenda, the smoke and mirrors elements of government, and a society complicit in its own ignorance.

Unfortunately for the world, but serendipitous for my purposes here, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, is more prescient than ever after the 2016 presidential election in the US and the developments that have transpired under a Trump administration. To measure the book’s current influence, look no further than a spike in book sales that put it on bestsellers lists everywhere after Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s political advisor, absurdly rationalized misinformation the current president of the United States was dispensing by describing it as “alternative facts” a la George Orwell’s “newspeak” and “doublethink."

But Orwell’s masterpiece changed the world long before the current political climate, and that 1984 had changed the word is indisputable.

Exhibit A:  CBS's long-running hit show Big Brother, hosted by the one and only Julie Chen. Now, what other book do you know of that has inspired a prime time reality television show while simultaneously fulfilling the idea that a bunch of the populous would willingly (and enthusiastically I might add) succumb to having their free will curtailed.

Exhibit B: Twitter says so, so it must be true.

@EKKAH writes: George Orwell 1984 is one of the best books ever written. Book emoji. Heart emoji. #readabookday

@reesnathan on June 25, 2013: Happy birthday George Orwell! 1984 is still hands down the best book I ever read and it comes at a time where it's

significance is huge.

And, now I bring you to Exhibit C: This canonical book is on high school reading lists everywhere. It is often the first book to open up a young reader’s eyes to the possibilities of political dystopia and to encourage critical thinking and skepticism about the social structures around us. Due to the broad readership and accessibility of this book, it has been changing the world of its readers since its publication nearly 70 years ago.

Until now in this county, perhaps we have hoped doublespeak and Big Brother could only be a figment of Orwell’s imagination. Given current circumstances, though, this book is especially changing the world by helping inspire daily resistance against a governmental regime that has jumped out of the pages of fiction into reality.

So, esteemed judges, people's choice, when you make your decision tonight about the book that has changed the world, I invite to you consider these questions to guide you:

One: Which of these books have you actually read?

Two: What other presenter here is sporting an appropriately bookish t-shirt (which by the way, was purchased years ago)?

And lastly, what other book has ever made you so acutely aware of getting your face gnawed off by rats?

There is only one answer, and it is Nineteen Eighty-Four. And remember: Big Brother is watching.

Wendy Gamber's The Notorious Mrs. Clem

Hollywood: make this book into a movie right now! Wendy Gamber's The Notorious Mrs. Clem: Murder and Money in the Gilded Age has all the trappings of an Oscar-worthy period piece: murder, intrigue, fashion, epic court battles, a cameo from future U.S. President Benjamin Harrison, and at the heart of it all is sex (okay, maybe more like questions of gender) and money. 

In September 1868, a grisly murder took place in Indianapolis. A young couple was found mercilessly shot on the banks of White River at a point known as Cold Spring. As investigations of the deaths progressed, an unlikely suspect came under scrutiny: Nancy Clem, who was regarded by many as a respectable middle class wife of an upstanding local grocer. Upon closer inspection, Clem emerged as much more than a traditional nineteenth century housewife. She, in fact, was exposed as a talented and convincing con women who had widespread lending and borrowing scams throughout the city that involved an array of men and women in Indianapolis society, including the murdered couple found at Cold Spring. Her under-the-table financial connections to the couple is what lead to her arrest, as well as the arrest of one her business partners.

The Notorious Mrs. Clem is a fascinating true crime set on the stage of the Gilded Age (post-Civil War). Historian Wendy Gamber has left no archival stone unturned--newspapers, court records, city plans. You name it, and Gamber has utilized it to paint the fullest picture possible of the social, industrial, and urban landscape of Indianapolis in the 1860s and leading up to the turn of the century. The real thread of the story is the saga of court cases as Mrs. Clem is tried and retried due to mistrials and appeals. But what seems to be on trial is not Mrs. Clem's guilt for murder, it is whether or not she is a good woman and wife. The prosecution and defense developed opposing arguments, but they both equally centered on how wifeliness and womanly virtue is connected to money and business dealings. Gamber puts it best:

          Competing interpretations of the political economy of marriage were central to the   

          narratives constructed by her prosecution and defense. They echoed a cultural 

          conversation that took place in many arenas--in feminist demands; in statehouses, 

          as legislators contemplated revised married women's property acts and earning    

          laws; in courts, as judges considered women's claims; and in myriad negotiations 

          between husbands and wives. (p. 244)    

Facts of the murder were at play in the trial; however, opening statements, witnesses, and closing statements had a running theme of whether Mrs. Clem's financial acumen (she was financially self-sufficient as a widow prior to marrying the upstanding grocer) was brazen or praiseworthy.

It is not every day that a book steeped in such careful research and archival work can also achieve the level of page-turner, but this is one of those marvelous cases. Nancy Clem, of course, if not the only women whose trial was sensationalized and called into question factors outside of mere guilt or innocence. From Lizzy Borden to Jodi Arias, the media continues to create a spectacle of women murderers, calling on trite tropes of femininity, purity, and sanity that are often present in the very trial records themselves. A book like The Notorious Mrs. Clem contributes to a genealogy of society's unfortunate preoccupations with gender stereotypes and how they are reliably institutionalized through the legal system. It is also a compelling story that will leave you wondering about Mrs. Clem and her mysterious business dealings. 

Gamber, Wendy. The Notorious Mrs. Clem: Murder and Money in the Gilded Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2016.