Reading Memorial High School - Pioneer Yearbook (Reading, MA)

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program of physical and mental torture. This process is geared towards forcing them into becoming typical, apathetic Oceania citizens. Ultimately, this entails to¬ tal adoration for Big Brother. Both characters are pre¬ vented from this end by their love for one another. Then, this too. is crushed. In room 101, the criminals are plagued by their worst fear Cfor Winston, this is of rats) and, in order to save themselves, betray one another. Julia justifies their betrayals of one another in the following manner: Sometimes, they threaten you with something — something you can’t stand up to. can ' t even think about. And you say, ’Don’t do it to me do it to some¬ body else, do it to so-and-so. And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it hap¬ pens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way of saving yourself and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don ' t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself. And after that, you don’t feel the same toward the other person any more. 1984 has been termed a ’negative utopia. ” This classification is the result of an omnipresent mood of powerlessness and hopelessness in Orwell’s modern man. Utopian novels, on the other hand, expressed the mood of self-confidence and hope which typified post-medieval man. In his afterword, Erich Fromm states, There could be nothing more paradoxical in historical terms than this change: man, at the begin¬ ning of the industrial age, when in reality he did not possess the means for a world in which the table was set for all who wanted to eat, when he lived in a world in which there were economic reasons for slavery, war, and exploitation, in which man only sensed the possibili¬ ties of his new science and of its application to tech¬ nique and to production — never-the-less man at the beginning of modern development was full of hope. Four hundred years later, when all those hopes are realizable, and when man can produce enough for ev¬ erybody, when war has become uneccessary because technical progress can give any country more wealth then can territorial conquest, when their globe is in the process of becoming as unified as a continent was four hundred years ago, at the very moment when man is on the verge of realizing his hope, he begins to lose it. ” It is imperative that one recognize this historical para¬ dox when one reads 1984. The book must not be misconstrued as merely a pessimistic or fatalistic perspective, or as merely another description of Rus¬ sian communism. Orwell ' s 1984 is foremost a warn¬ ing for modern man; it pertains to the emerging pro¬ cess of production and consumption which threatens to transform men into machines, and machines into men. This state of managerial industrialism has over¬ whelmed modern man, regardless of his myriad and differing ideologies. It is, however, the hope that Orwell communicates, which has struck the editors of Pioneer ' 84 as relevant to Reading Memorial High School. Orwell implies that to render man the pathetic being which his book de¬ scribes, to take from him his need for freedom, dignity, integrity, and love, would require an extreme and ruth¬ less means. In 1984, that means is the unrestricted use of fear, as objectified in room 1 01. Because he percieves human nature and human needs as integral parts of our existence. Orwell implies a certain amount of hope — of potential to avoid such disaster by the inevitable assertion of our needs. As your editors, we sought to illustrate the many ways in which our community has opposed the warning of Orwell. The various divider titles serve this purpose. In designating the senior class as the Party mem¬ bers , the underclassmen as Proles , and the faculty as the Thought Police , for example, we aspired to contrast Orwell’s ficticious world of 1 0B4, with our own world of 1 984. TABLE OF CONTENTS The Thought Police. p. S The Party Members.p. 26 The Proles ..p. 80 Doing the Physical Jerks.p. 96 The Ministries. p. 1 28

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In George Orwell’s book, crime is kept under con¬ trol by special investiga¬ tors called the Thought Police. Aided by tele¬ screens placed in every room and on every street, the Thought Police are able to keep tabs on every per¬ son living in Oceania. Not only do the Thought Police know what every one is doing at a specific mo¬ ment, but they also know what each person is think¬ ing. One small thought against Big Brother and poof” you are vaporized, never to be seen again. Fortunately in today’s society there are no Thought Police around to limit people’s ideas and thoughts. Instead we have teachers who, instead of discouraging individual thinking, actually encour¬ age it. Teachers enable students to become indi¬ viduals instead of mechan¬ ical robots programmed to think and act alike. THOUGHT