Book 3 of 100: 1984
Surprisingly I never actually read this one before, though, again like Hamlet, a lot of the plot or overarching themes and ideas I've seen parodied in countless different works. (Futurama being one of the ones that comes to mind most readily).
1984 is considered to be an Anti-Utopian book, which goes out of its way near the end to point out that it is in every way the opposite of a Utopia. Even the people who benefit the most and uphold the idea of Big Brother and the Party are under no illusion that people will be happy under the system. The fatal flaw, though, I see in the ideals of the Party is the fact that there is no reason to keep people alive under such a rule. They want power, absolute power, but power over a people who aren't, in any shape or form, people anymore, isn't much. At that point they might as well just create robots and replace the population with a race that won't ever need the large amounts of resources to police and monitor them. No more doublethink and no more thoughtcrime. With a robot, you can literally delete the 'erroneous' information and replace it with the 'correct' version. Once deleted, the robot will no longer remember it ever being any other way. No twinges of irrationality, no fruitless passions or hopes, and no free thought.
While it is definitely a fairly scary version of a society run amok, it makes absolutely no sense why anyone should want to continue it. The people below who fight and rebel are systematically brainwashed and broken to live for a couple more years until their eventual annihilation, the people above don't actually benefit that much from the work of the people below, since they have very little actual freedom even up above.
And, in the end, that's essentially the point of the book. Futility is futile. Everything is nothing, and nothing is everything. Once you step back from the setting of the book, you realize that a lot of what it talks about in the book is actually true. I've mentioned before that when you die, you essentially become a shadow of who you used to be. People will always color your memories from their perspective, so what you actually said or did (and why) will all be misconstrued. Empirical evidence is the only concrete statement of your life, and that can be faked or destroyed. I mean, as it is, large portions of history are already whitewashed for the modern audience. It's telling that we focus on dates and numbers and physical actions within history classes, but the stories, how they effected actual people, and what in turn caused other people to act are all glossed over in favor of making sure that students understand that the Phoenicians had the first written language and that the Mesopotamians wrote the epic of Gilgamesh. That's what makes history class so boring and hard to follow all throughout school.
And this all ties into another game that is remarkably similar to 1984: Metal Gear Solid 2.
I always liked this game. I loved Raiden, which was a nice change of pace from the classic Solid Snake. He was a real person who tried to understand what was going on around him in a world of Virtual Realities and subtle societal control.
While the plot was really hacked up and complex, (made worse by large parts of the script being hastily rewritten after 9/11 right before it shipped) the few elements that are easy to catch is the Patriots (The La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo) and the persistence of memory and reality. Raiden is told to go into a facility to rescue the President and a bunch of hostages while simultaneously taking down the terrorists who have held the entire place for ransom.
Soon after arriving Raiden starts seeing things that don't add up. And eventually, it comes down to a conspiracy involving a mysterious group of men who might actually control all of the world's information, the Patriots, and the idea of the meme. Not funny cat pictures with the Impact font saying something in broken English, but the idea of a cultural knowledge. The game awkwardly tries to get you to think about this by saying that there are 26 letters of the alphabet, but what if there were 28 and someone deleted the extra two. How would you know there was ever anything different? I grant that Hideo Kojima likely couldn't do the exact 2+2=5 parallel from 1984, but this is never really well explained later.
The idea is that the Patriots have been in charge of things for so long that they exist in the internet and all information exchanges. Clarifying the example from the game, what if, in 1800, there were two extra letters in the alphabet. The Patriots wanted it gone, so they started to systematically destroy all evidence that it ever existed and eventually, 200 years later, no one was alive who remembered that there ever was a letter for the 'CH' sound and a gutteral 'F' sound. That's the idea of what the Patriots are. They are Big Brother. Only they work in secret.
Big Brother keeps people ignorant by controlling their thoughts and monitoring them. The Patriots aren't that much different, only they control the information that reaches the public, thereby controlling their thoughts by the flow of the information they receive.
The game comes down to the same argument of what is real. Raiden was trained to be a super-solider a la the "Legendary Solid Snake" through a series of Virtual Reality training segments. In fact, the events in MGS 2 are the first time he's ever actually been deployed into the field. Once they try to destroy the master program the Patriots are using to control information, Raiden's support team (only ever contacted through the CODEC) start behaving erratically. The people who he was supposed to have the most faith in on the field turn out to be nothing more than computer programs, created by the Patriots. Even his girlfriend, Rose, who was helping him through the mission, turns out to be a program (or is she?) Raiden has to cast doubt on if he had ever even met Rose in real life, since so much of his life was lived inside a computer program. The entire events of MGS2 are supposed to be, for Raiden, a recreation of the events from MGS1, imitating the key plot points and characters that turned Solid Snake into such a legend. All this so the Patriots could create another Solid Snake that they could control.
It's actually a recurring theme after the events of Metal Gear Solid 3, that the US Government wants to make a super-soldier that could be like Big Boss. To accomplish this, they do everything they can from cloning Big Boss (the Les Enfant Terrible project) to trying to brainwash and mind control an ex-child soldier into becoming just like Snake. Snake, who is the only person to ever defeat Big Boss.
In the end of MGS 2, Raiden makes a statement that his reality will be his own choosing and he throws away the dog tags that you printed your name on. In essence, he is throwing YOU the player away. He doesn't want you to control him anymore. And the concept of the meme is brought back in MGS 4, by the way that all soldiers invariably take nanobot injections because that's what you do as a soldier. The nanobots have become a meme at this point. Everyone has them and even if you don't you're aware of what they are without ever being told.
In 1984 Big Brother controls the memes. A majority of the first part of the book talks about things that aren't ever directly stated. Things like what will get you caught by the Thought Police, what is a crime despite there being no laws, what you're expected to do when, all of the sudden, the government changes who they're at war with. The societal knowledge, the memes, found in 1984 is how the Party controls the populous. If they were to be explicit about it, people would rebel. Just like if the President announced tomorrow that the new official language of the US was French. But, if the President, bit by bit, has spies and people working under him, slowly start working more French into normal discourse, in the course of 100 years, we could all be speaking French without ever realizing what happened.
It's a terrifying system, but there is no fear of it coming to pass in America. The best example, for the people who are claiming government conspiracies left and right, is the fact that you can openly tell this conspiracies from any venue, and yet you aren't "vaporized". People are left who knew who you were and who know what you said. Empirical evidence continues to exist that you, at one point, existed. These are things that aren't present in 1984 and due to the internet can never be completely erradicated. I mean, look at what happens the moment someone wants a picture of their house taken down from a website. It's duplicated and mirrored so many times that it becomes impossible to destroy it completely any more than it would be possible to gather every grain of sand off a beach.
MGS 2 continues to be one of my favorite games as far as a complex plot goes, and 1984 was a great book that teaches us the consequences of letting a society stagnate.
October 27, 2014
October 20, 2014
Wherefore Art Thou Hamlet?
Continuing with our list of 100 books to read, we read Shakespeare's Hamlet.
DID YOU KNOW?
Back in the time of traveling acting troupes, often times they would put on Hamlet as a last minute addition, since it's the Bard's shortest work. Cramming it into an already packed rehearsal schedule, mixed with the rather morose and poetic prose found in the play, caused many actors to overact many of the parts, especially Hamlet, who goes on and on about death and revenge and the like. From this situation do we get the term "Ham" for an actor who overacts or is otherwise cheesy.
But, I found that I really enjoyed this play. This is the first Shakespeare play that I've read outside of a classroom setting. I had previously read Romeo & Juliette in my high school English class and I thoroughly enjoyed it when I had a definitions guide readily at hand. The version of Hamlet I read had tons of footnotes to help me with understanding.
The bulk of the story, you already know if you've seen the Lion King. Uncle kills King, Prince seeks to kill Uncle for killing King. Everyone dies at the end.
This play, however, brought up some fun existential crises that a lot of people have to face at some point or another. The first, of course, is if there really is an afterlife. Hamlet's famous speech, "To be, or not to be" basically covers all the possible outcomes of suicide and rules it as a Catch 22. Is it better to endure the tortures and torments of mortality and inherit an afterlife or to kill oneself and thereby ending the pain and torment. But, he goes on, that only works if there is no afterlife. What's the point of enduring this all if this is it? And what if there is an afterlife and I'm punished for taking my own life?
The story constantly plays between the fear of the afterlife and the inevitability that comes with death. His own mother reminds Hamlet to not be so sad about his father's death, since everyone dies eventually. (Try telling your children that at the next funeral they have to attend. Don't worry Sally, everyone dies, so there's no point in being sad!) What's more is the delightful, even comical, insanity that Hamlet puts on. It makes you wonder how great it would be if you could pretend to be crazy, and thereby getting a free pass on anything you say to people?
Hamlet is approached by his dead father who tells him that his uncle killed him, so Hamlet, wanting to make sure that he wasn't hallucinating anything, sets up a situation to unnerve the usurper king if he was really guilty. In here we find a bit of scathing denouncement of other forms of entertainment that were stealing patrons from Shakespeare's plays, as Hamlet bemoans the plight of the actors who are top-notch having to resume traveling to make any money. It's one of those moments, where you really start to see these actors as people and not just words on a page.
Finally, I think it's interesting how everyone ends up dead. Poison. Poison everywhere. Hamlet accidentally kills a man whose son teams up with the usurper king to kill Hamlet. They'll duel with rapiers, one of which is tipped with poison. As a backup, the usurper king also poisons the wine Hamlet will drink. The queen toasts to Hamlet after the first round and drops dead. Hamlet gets poked by the poison-rapier and, in the scuffle, also pokes the would-be assassin with the same weapon. Then everything stops and he's all, "Bro, I'm sorry it ended this way. Please forgive me, if I forgive you for killing my father. The King put me up to this." And Hamlet is all, "Yo dawg, we cool. But this rapier is poisoned? Shiggidy SHANK." And then he stabs the usurper king. So everyone dies and the person who was framed for killing Hamlet's father ends up inheriting the kingdom in a brilliant turn of irony.
Also, it's hard to write Hamlet a bunch of times without writing once, Ham Melt, and now I'm all hungry.
DID YOU KNOW?
Back in the time of traveling acting troupes, often times they would put on Hamlet as a last minute addition, since it's the Bard's shortest work. Cramming it into an already packed rehearsal schedule, mixed with the rather morose and poetic prose found in the play, caused many actors to overact many of the parts, especially Hamlet, who goes on and on about death and revenge and the like. From this situation do we get the term "Ham" for an actor who overacts or is otherwise cheesy.
But, I found that I really enjoyed this play. This is the first Shakespeare play that I've read outside of a classroom setting. I had previously read Romeo & Juliette in my high school English class and I thoroughly enjoyed it when I had a definitions guide readily at hand. The version of Hamlet I read had tons of footnotes to help me with understanding.
The bulk of the story, you already know if you've seen the Lion King. Uncle kills King, Prince seeks to kill Uncle for killing King. Everyone dies at the end.
This play, however, brought up some fun existential crises that a lot of people have to face at some point or another. The first, of course, is if there really is an afterlife. Hamlet's famous speech, "To be, or not to be" basically covers all the possible outcomes of suicide and rules it as a Catch 22. Is it better to endure the tortures and torments of mortality and inherit an afterlife or to kill oneself and thereby ending the pain and torment. But, he goes on, that only works if there is no afterlife. What's the point of enduring this all if this is it? And what if there is an afterlife and I'm punished for taking my own life?
The story constantly plays between the fear of the afterlife and the inevitability that comes with death. His own mother reminds Hamlet to not be so sad about his father's death, since everyone dies eventually. (Try telling your children that at the next funeral they have to attend. Don't worry Sally, everyone dies, so there's no point in being sad!) What's more is the delightful, even comical, insanity that Hamlet puts on. It makes you wonder how great it would be if you could pretend to be crazy, and thereby getting a free pass on anything you say to people?
Hamlet is approached by his dead father who tells him that his uncle killed him, so Hamlet, wanting to make sure that he wasn't hallucinating anything, sets up a situation to unnerve the usurper king if he was really guilty. In here we find a bit of scathing denouncement of other forms of entertainment that were stealing patrons from Shakespeare's plays, as Hamlet bemoans the plight of the actors who are top-notch having to resume traveling to make any money. It's one of those moments, where you really start to see these actors as people and not just words on a page.
Finally, I think it's interesting how everyone ends up dead. Poison. Poison everywhere. Hamlet accidentally kills a man whose son teams up with the usurper king to kill Hamlet. They'll duel with rapiers, one of which is tipped with poison. As a backup, the usurper king also poisons the wine Hamlet will drink. The queen toasts to Hamlet after the first round and drops dead. Hamlet gets poked by the poison-rapier and, in the scuffle, also pokes the would-be assassin with the same weapon. Then everything stops and he's all, "Bro, I'm sorry it ended this way. Please forgive me, if I forgive you for killing my father. The King put me up to this." And Hamlet is all, "Yo dawg, we cool. But this rapier is poisoned? Shiggidy SHANK." And then he stabs the usurper king. So everyone dies and the person who was framed for killing Hamlet's father ends up inheriting the kingdom in a brilliant turn of irony.
Also, it's hard to write Hamlet a bunch of times without writing once, Ham Melt, and now I'm all hungry.
October 8, 2014
The Huckleberries Taste Like Huckleberries!
So, me and my wife saw the Equalizer this past month, and it got us reading a list of 100 classic books to read. Among the books in the list (with works like Don Quixote, Hamlet, The Old Man and the Sea) was Huckleberry Finn, which I had read half of in high school but never finished. So we both started with that.
I loved the book, since it was hilarious, beautifully critiquing the adult-run world from a kids' point of view. Everything from religion to slavery was covered in an interesting, all-innocent child's point of view, as Huck tries to understand the point of so much hoopla, and is also forced to deal with the (at the time) moral dilemma of helping a slave run away from slavery.
It's important to remember that this would be tantamount to grand theft auto now, considering the usefulness of slaves and the exorbitant prices a good one would fetch. Huck knew the owner and felt bad that he was essentially robbing an old widow of one of her slaves. On the other hand, he knew Jim (the runaway) and liked him and felt partially responsible for his well-being as a friend.
But that's not what I'm writing about today. Apparently, there is some sort of controversy or discussion going on since the 60's about the books ending, and whether or not it was a fair ending.
In the end (spoilers?) Jim turns out to have been freed in the will of the widow, Tom and Huck turn out okay, and Huck's pap was killed by some ruffians early in the book, so Huck is still a rich little brat without his abusive, alcoholic father a constant background threat in his life. It's a slightly unexpected happy ending all around, but I do say, slightly. The overall feeling of the book, as it seemed to me, was intended for children. Granted, children who were either living in that time who understood more than Huck, or young adults living today. And in my opinion, I don't think Mark Twain had it in him to put poor Jim or Huck into a bad spot in the end.
But, that is completely ignoring the last ten chapters of the book. The book seems to cover about three separate arcs: The first third of the book describes Huck and Jim escaping "sivilizayshun" and the misadventures they have together. It's Huck learning more about the world around him and coming to love Jim as a friend.
The second third introduces the King and the Duke, two con-men who Huck takes to traveling with. In some aspects, these represent the lowest possible moral aspect that Huck could achieve. No matter what his moral dilemma is with helping free Jim, he's never so low-down as to completely agree with what these two blackguards are up to. They are so terrible to their fellow man that Huck wants to just be done with them.
This leads into the last third of the book, wherein Tom Sawyer is reintroduced and starts really shining. Here is where the book seems to slow down to an almost irritating level.
Despite what's gone before, it was easy to read the book, as the stories flowed well from one to another. But here is where the story seems to stagnate. Jim is recaptured and is awaiting resale or claim in a very minimum security hold while Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are both going about planning his escape. Huck starts off by pointing out that the key isn't guarded, there are no guards posted at any time, and the dogs know Jim, Tom, and Huck well enough not to make any noise to arouse suspicion. Considering that the ploys in the book up to this point were both clever and simply executed, it is a very strange change of pace for Tom to come blustering in here on a steamboat and complicating a fairly simple obstacle.
Filled with harrowing stories (mostly fictional) of prisoners escaping, he turns what should be a simple opening of a door and a leisurely amble to the river into the Shawshank Redemption on steroids. Instead of what the previous two sections gave us; Huck running into obstacle after obstacle, overcome by his cleverness or some extremely good luck (or both), the book now gives us nothing but obstacles for literally obstacle's sake. Tom vehemently insists that they dig a tunnel to get Jim out, and that Jim has to befriend animals in his "jail cell", while leaving woeful and cryptic messages hewed on stone and plates.
While we eventually find out that Tom was going through so much hoopla because he already knew that Jim was freed, and therefore there was nothing at stake, it was frustrating to me, as a reader, to watch Tom complicate a mostly simple book. At times I felt so frustrated I wanted to beat the crap out of Tom Sawyer and tell him that I could toss him into a basement, then he could have all the fun he would ever want spending years building up a good escape plan and story. What few chuckles you get from Huck and Jim both shrugging, saying "Well, if that's what all the authorities on jailbreaks say..." and going along with Tom, are easily overshadowed by the suffering of Tom's poor aunt and the anxiety that Jim must be feeling as his freedom is available at every opportunity, and Tom's insistence on complications are closing that window fast. In fact, because of Tom's Tomfoolery (yeah, that just happened), Jim gets caught during the jailbreak and is sentenced to wear heavier chains and is put on bread and water rations and is more closely guarded, essentially losing his chance at freedom.
The grand deus ex machina at the end does leave something of a sour taste in your mouth where in the space of a few paragraphs we find out that both Jim AND Huck are free from their respective slaveries (Jim from actual slavery, and Huck from his proverbial slavery to his father) and then nothing more. I mean, you find out that the body Jim and Huck found early on in the book was Pap Finn's, in the penultimate paragraph in the book. Literally no description is given of how Huck felt about finding out his father had died in a gruesome way. It just ends.
That said, do I think that the book has a good ending? Well, it was the ending that Mark Twain wanted to write, so I think that yes, yes it does. While improbable as it is that Jim would be freed in a will of all things, stranger things have happened. And the abrupt end goes along with the idea that Huck, a child, is narrating the story to us, and therefore would have no sense of decor to give us a proper denouement. He told us what he thought was best to tell and left it at that. It's funny to think that the book sets itself up for a sequel, with Tom and Huck going to the frontier to have crazy adventures with the "injuns". (Apparently Mark Twain did start writing the sequel, but someone else finished it with mixed success)
The ending is as strange and non-consequential as so many other stories in the book, that it seems strangely in place to end like this. No further explanation is given, just this is how things ended up, and now you'd be ready to hear about how Huck and Tom and Jim all got on with their next adventure.
In the end, I think that it's best to look at this book in an academic light first, then pull back and honor the preface that Mark Twain wrote:
"PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
I loved the book, since it was hilarious, beautifully critiquing the adult-run world from a kids' point of view. Everything from religion to slavery was covered in an interesting, all-innocent child's point of view, as Huck tries to understand the point of so much hoopla, and is also forced to deal with the (at the time) moral dilemma of helping a slave run away from slavery.
It's important to remember that this would be tantamount to grand theft auto now, considering the usefulness of slaves and the exorbitant prices a good one would fetch. Huck knew the owner and felt bad that he was essentially robbing an old widow of one of her slaves. On the other hand, he knew Jim (the runaway) and liked him and felt partially responsible for his well-being as a friend.
But that's not what I'm writing about today. Apparently, there is some sort of controversy or discussion going on since the 60's about the books ending, and whether or not it was a fair ending.
In the end (spoilers?) Jim turns out to have been freed in the will of the widow, Tom and Huck turn out okay, and Huck's pap was killed by some ruffians early in the book, so Huck is still a rich little brat without his abusive, alcoholic father a constant background threat in his life. It's a slightly unexpected happy ending all around, but I do say, slightly. The overall feeling of the book, as it seemed to me, was intended for children. Granted, children who were either living in that time who understood more than Huck, or young adults living today. And in my opinion, I don't think Mark Twain had it in him to put poor Jim or Huck into a bad spot in the end.
But, that is completely ignoring the last ten chapters of the book. The book seems to cover about three separate arcs: The first third of the book describes Huck and Jim escaping "sivilizayshun" and the misadventures they have together. It's Huck learning more about the world around him and coming to love Jim as a friend.
The second third introduces the King and the Duke, two con-men who Huck takes to traveling with. In some aspects, these represent the lowest possible moral aspect that Huck could achieve. No matter what his moral dilemma is with helping free Jim, he's never so low-down as to completely agree with what these two blackguards are up to. They are so terrible to their fellow man that Huck wants to just be done with them.
This leads into the last third of the book, wherein Tom Sawyer is reintroduced and starts really shining. Here is where the book seems to slow down to an almost irritating level.
Despite what's gone before, it was easy to read the book, as the stories flowed well from one to another. But here is where the story seems to stagnate. Jim is recaptured and is awaiting resale or claim in a very minimum security hold while Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are both going about planning his escape. Huck starts off by pointing out that the key isn't guarded, there are no guards posted at any time, and the dogs know Jim, Tom, and Huck well enough not to make any noise to arouse suspicion. Considering that the ploys in the book up to this point were both clever and simply executed, it is a very strange change of pace for Tom to come blustering in here on a steamboat and complicating a fairly simple obstacle.
Filled with harrowing stories (mostly fictional) of prisoners escaping, he turns what should be a simple opening of a door and a leisurely amble to the river into the Shawshank Redemption on steroids. Instead of what the previous two sections gave us; Huck running into obstacle after obstacle, overcome by his cleverness or some extremely good luck (or both), the book now gives us nothing but obstacles for literally obstacle's sake. Tom vehemently insists that they dig a tunnel to get Jim out, and that Jim has to befriend animals in his "jail cell", while leaving woeful and cryptic messages hewed on stone and plates.
While we eventually find out that Tom was going through so much hoopla because he already knew that Jim was freed, and therefore there was nothing at stake, it was frustrating to me, as a reader, to watch Tom complicate a mostly simple book. At times I felt so frustrated I wanted to beat the crap out of Tom Sawyer and tell him that I could toss him into a basement, then he could have all the fun he would ever want spending years building up a good escape plan and story. What few chuckles you get from Huck and Jim both shrugging, saying "Well, if that's what all the authorities on jailbreaks say..." and going along with Tom, are easily overshadowed by the suffering of Tom's poor aunt and the anxiety that Jim must be feeling as his freedom is available at every opportunity, and Tom's insistence on complications are closing that window fast. In fact, because of Tom's Tomfoolery (yeah, that just happened), Jim gets caught during the jailbreak and is sentenced to wear heavier chains and is put on bread and water rations and is more closely guarded, essentially losing his chance at freedom.
The grand deus ex machina at the end does leave something of a sour taste in your mouth where in the space of a few paragraphs we find out that both Jim AND Huck are free from their respective slaveries (Jim from actual slavery, and Huck from his proverbial slavery to his father) and then nothing more. I mean, you find out that the body Jim and Huck found early on in the book was Pap Finn's, in the penultimate paragraph in the book. Literally no description is given of how Huck felt about finding out his father had died in a gruesome way. It just ends.
That said, do I think that the book has a good ending? Well, it was the ending that Mark Twain wanted to write, so I think that yes, yes it does. While improbable as it is that Jim would be freed in a will of all things, stranger things have happened. And the abrupt end goes along with the idea that Huck, a child, is narrating the story to us, and therefore would have no sense of decor to give us a proper denouement. He told us what he thought was best to tell and left it at that. It's funny to think that the book sets itself up for a sequel, with Tom and Huck going to the frontier to have crazy adventures with the "injuns". (Apparently Mark Twain did start writing the sequel, but someone else finished it with mixed success)
The ending is as strange and non-consequential as so many other stories in the book, that it seems strangely in place to end like this. No further explanation is given, just this is how things ended up, and now you'd be ready to hear about how Huck and Tom and Jim all got on with their next adventure.
In the end, I think that it's best to look at this book in an academic light first, then pull back and honor the preface that Mark Twain wrote:
"PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)