If you've ever read the book you know about those who rebelled and became "a book".

I have always thought that to be one of the most interesting features of '1984' that outcast part of society, living in the wilderness, speaking thier books and discussing them, the authors, the histories equated with each book, with each other.

However, just recently it occured to me - how many would choose the Bible and in so doing which version? And for those, not really interested, just how often could you stand to hear the same verses repeated by so many, over and over.

And what about those with differing versions and opinions? I think perhaps there may have to be a separation of camps.

What do you think?

i think ya should make yer point

and leave it at that if you have no new info

but hey what do i know

that was to answer the post

not to the poster

Oh my goodness, posting too late at night. My EXTREME apologies. It was more or less an attempt at ironic humur, perhaps it was at the expense of too many feelings.

Perhaps it was the book "Brave New World" that I was thinking of, it's been so long since I read them.

I was thinking more along the lines that there are literally millions upon millions of books, and literary works that one chould choose to keep alive for history sake. Not only the book but the author and the way life was at the time the book was written, miscellaneous facts, etc.

My thought was that MANY would choose the Bible because it holds such deep meaning for them. But because there is so much adversity regarding the authors, the history and even the interpretations, that perhaps it would end up causing too much animosity. That those who wanted to stay OUT of the such conflict would grow tired of hearing the same verses over and over, with so many differing views and thus create even greater animosity.

Because each would likly choose among so many different works of literature, including math, poetry and biographies and become a scholor about the work they choose to devote to their memory, and the authors and the times, etc. It would be interesting to think that we would all have something to learn from each.

But if there were too many using the same book, most likely it would be the Bible, with differing interpretations, and conjecture, it would defeat the purpose of the intended environment. And I fear it would not be harmonious.

Maybe it wasn't right, but I just saw such irony in the idea , that I wondered if anyone else would see it that way.

My apologies for my inability to get the point accross, it was not intended to be malicious.

I liked the movie 1984 and some of the movies and songs with some of the same ideas of the book. I think the song sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford, "Sixteen Tons" that was originally wrote and sung in 1955 by Merle Travis brings out the corruption of greed and how one can be bought out by the store. In the movie when the person was taught that five was six and agreed then later punished for it brings out many of the problems associated with today's society especially when the tormenter tormented him anyways and then said, "No, five is five." The book can help one to see the futility of siding with others and in the end one needs to make up one's own mind whether it agrees or disagrees with others is beside the point. I think the song, "Garden Party" by Ricky Nelson in its chorus brings about this point as well. But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well. "You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself."

Either a separation of camps of definitely make sure no weapons of any potential or variety are available and even then do be prepared for fistfights.

Me personally, I get as far from any bible camp as possible.

http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/introduction.html#intro

George Orwell's life

George Orwell was born Eric Blair in 1903 into an upper middle-class English family which had a tradition of government administration in the British Empire. He was in fact born in India, where his father was then working. He was sent to Eton, one of the most expensive boys' schools in Britain and one of those with most prestige, but instead of going on to university he followed the family tradition by joining the Indian Police Service and was sent to Burma. His five years there led him to reject every aspect of imperialism and the brutality it could create in those in authority, and to feel closer to those who were oppressed than to those who oppressed them.

A similar sympathy and identification with those at the bottom of a social system led him, on his return to Europe, to travel around Britain and France, living on the road among the poorest groups of society and entering as completely as he could into their way of life. It is true, of course, that he knew that because of his family background he, unlike them, could return to a different way of life when he wanted. He wrote about these experiences under the name of George Orwell, partly to protect his family from embarrassment and partly because he had never liked his own name very much.

In the next few years he worked briefly as a teacher in private schools and in a bookshop, but his most important activity at this time was his writing: novels, descriptions of his time in Burma and among the poor of London and Paris, and book reviews. In 1937 he went to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republic, with the force from the United Marxist Workers' Party (POUM), until he was badly wounded in the neck and returned to England. By this time his writing had made him well-known in left-wing circles; he wrote as a socialist who was aware of some of the shortcomings of socialism and of the way that ordinary people, who should have been drawn towards socialism, were being turned away from it by the arguments and actions of some of the intellectual socialists.

During World War II Orwell worked for the BBC producing programmes for India and South East Asia, and as manager of a bookshop, as well as producing a lot of journalism. This was mainly on political subjects, but he also wrote articles about everyday wartime life in London and a considerable amount of literary criticism. During this time he began to plan Nineteen Eighty-Four, before he started to work on Animal Farm, which was published in 1945.

Orwell's wife died while in hospital for a relatively minor operation before Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, so that she never saw the success and scandal it created. There is a strong suggestion that earlier medical attention could have given her a chance of a longer life, but that concern over money meant that she did not consult a doctor in good time. Orwell equally neglected his own health, working on articles and reviews through attacks of illness and refusing to see a doctor. He had written an outline of the plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1943. By the time he came to write the first version of the novel, in 1947, neither world history nor the events of his personal life had made him any more hopeful about the future. He collapsed into bed for a month after writing this first version until, after finally consulting a doctor, he was sent to a sanatorium where his tuberculosis could be treated. As soon as he started to feel well, he began to write again, with a pen because the doctors had taken away his typewriter.

He worked on alterations to Nineteen Eighty-Four in the sanatorium, and as soon as he was able to leave, he got to work on the second version of the novel, although he was still so weak that he had to spend half the day in bed. This final version was produced in 1948, and the year in which he set the novel was obtained by reversing the last two digits. The effort of typing the final version brought him near to physical collapse, and he had to enter a sanatorium again.

Orwell hoped that if he was willing to lead the life of an invalid there was some hope for him, and he planned to marry again and to go to Switzerland for his health. He did get married (in a hospital bed, too ill to go to a registry office), but Switzerland remained a dream ; on 21st January 1949 his lung collapsed and he died, at once and alone.



The background to Nineteen Eighty-Four

To describe writing as " Orwellian " means that it expresses a pessimistic view of a dull, uniform world where every aspect of life is controlled and organized by the State. As Nineteen Eighty-Four was written when Orwell was already suffering from tuberculosis, the disease that killed him, it has often been regarded as the work of a dying man, written in disillusion with the present and despair for the future. This is misleading : the outline of Nineteen Eighty-Four (which was originally to be called The Last Man in Europe) had been planned five years earlier in 1943, before he wrote Animal Farm, the book for which he is probably best known.

Orwell had been reading Zamyatin's novel We, whose vision of an anti-Utopia was of special interest when he was planning his own, but many of the themes of Nineteen Eighty-Four were drawn from his own concerns and experiences. During the Spanish Civil War he had seen for himself evidence of the falsification of news and the invention of false news, and he later described in an essay how " I saw history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened, according to the party ; this kind of thing is frightening to me. If a leader says of such-and-such an event that it never happened - well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five -well, two and two are five. "

Correction- 2 and 2 are five. Fascinating person. Sorry got off on a tangent.

You see, I totally blew this thread. It was late and I was thinking about some old sci-fi stuff. I TOTALLY GOT THE TILE WRONG


F A H R E N H E I T 4 5 1 by Ray Bradbury

That's the story I was referring to,where they burned all the books and in order to keep the great liturature of the world alive, a rebel group started. Each one would pick a book and memorize it WORD FOR WORD, including punctuation and page numbers. History of the aurthor and anything related to the book. In the hope that one day when freedoms were restored and literature was in need, the best of the worlds literary efforts could be written down again.

That the view I meant when I began this thread.

Hill - give me a run down on Ray - I used to know, he was and remains one of my favorite authors. But remind me. THANKS!

He wrote some good books and I enjoyed watching the Ray Bradbury theater when it used to show on tv. I his, "The Tatooed Man" was extraordinary.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's dystopian soft science fiction novel, was published in 1953. It first appeared as the novella, The Fireman, in the February 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. It is a critique of what Bradbury saw as an increasingly dysfunctional American society, written in the early years of the Cold War.

The novel presents a future in which all books are restricted, individual people are anti-social and hedonistic, and critical thought is suppressed. The central character, Guy Montag, is employed as a "fireman" (which, in this future, means "book burner"). The number "451" refers to the temperature (in Fahrenheit) at which a book or paper burns. A movie version of the novel was released in 1966, and it is anticipated that a second version will begin filming in 2008. At least two BBC Radio 4 dramatizations have also been aired, both of which follow the book very closely.

Over the years, the novel has been subject to various interpretations, primarily focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas. Bradbury has stated that the novel is not about censorship; he states that Fahrenheit 451 is a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which ultimately leads to ignorance of total facts.

I think that last line really says it all.

Fabulous, thanks Hill. I didn't like the movie, of course I had already read the book, I think was 12 at the time. Sci-fi books were the language of my peers at the time. Those kids that got made fun of, because we enjoyed school and learning and discussing ideas and theories of our latest reading endeavors. It was sort of a challenge to be the the first one to read a great work and introduce it.

Somewhere between the ages of 14 and 21 some of our best discussin were in someone's basement - under the influence of "the smokable". Wish I could remember them all -- LOL!