I am curious about which members may have read 1984, both in school like I did, and afterwards, like my best friend Kimberly just did.
She and Noel referred me to a similar book called Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. Kimberly bought it for me at Christmas and I am reading it now.
I guess the genre is completed with Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, neither of which I have read. They would be called dystopian literature today, but at the time they were written, it was feared they could actually come to pass in the U.S. They were mostly modeled on the Cold War /Soviet system of totalitarianism.
Maybe in some ways they have come to pass here, in the intervening years.
As with all books, my interest in others who read them is having new people with whom to converse about them. :-)
This quote, from Darkness at Noon, shows why we have always called Communism a godless system:
““There are only two concepts of human ethics and they are polar opposites. One is Christian-humanitarian and declares that the individual is sacred and maintains that no calculations may be done with blood. The other is based on the principle that the collective goal justifies the means, and this not only allows but requires that the individual be subordinated to the collective in every way, including as a guinea pig or sacrificial lamb.”
One thing I love about the classics, even 20th century classics before about 1960, is you usually don’t have to worry about profanity or graphic descriptions of violence and sex.
I am almost halfway through Darkness at Noon and I can recommend it to fellow believers. As I recall, 1984 did not have unacceptable parts either.
I have not read 1984 nor Darkness at noon but my interest is peaked.