Welcome Comrades! Just an acknowledgement of a typo with the written quote (onscreen) at around 5:20. It's not "soft" but "sort". Oh well, my bad, at least it's read OK. 😆👍
Syme just had that "he's too clever for his own good" quality about him. His intellect and candour made him remarkable. And remarkable people get noticed, which is a bad thing when living under a brutal totalitarian regime
@@nineteen-eighty-four-lore Winston knew the party wasn't really looking for brainy people. The party wants competent workers who can serve the party without thinking deeply about what they are doing. Symes was a thinker which also made him a potential thought criminal
All true intellectuals are a threat to a totalitarian state. Therefore Symes was vaporized. Winston's brainless neighbour Parsons on the other hand would never have been touched by the party, if his daughter hadn't snitched on him (or just lied that she heard him say "Down with Big brother" in his sleep).
@@davidthomas3826Syme is a thought criminal through and through. He created Newspeak, knew its purposes and techniques, and felt pride in having made this progress on behalf of Big Brother. But Syme also knew Oldspeak intimately enough to detect that Winston was translating from one to the other. Syme, if he had been as disciplined as O'Brien, would have forgotten Oldspeak entirely, but kept it in doublethink for any needed occasion. Syme did not have the discipline to forget Oldpspeak and engaged in "own life" by lecturing Winston, didactlicly, showing that his own knowledge of both Oldspeak and Newspeak was greater than anyone else's. He should have forgotten Oldspeak and believed (doublethinkwise) that Newspeak had always existed just as it was. The only greater thought criminal in the book is Parsons. In Room 101 he reveals to Winston his belief that they don't shoot you just for thoughts which you can't help. He's right they won't shoot him, but he will need to undergo Room 101 and the worst thing in the world to understand that thoughts are all that matter to the Party. My guess is, due to his fetish for detail and recognition, Syme will face burial alive in Room 101. Parsons, because he keeps quiet tiny pleasures like eating extra when he can, will face castration, because his private sexual thoughts bring him secret "own life joy," instead of having a clean mind thinking only of duty, Big Brother, and self abasement.
I agree. Syme was too careless in his discussions with Winston about NewSpeak. Since the purpose of language is to reveal and convey meaning and thought, Syme needed to be smarter than the average Party Member to understand the process of destroying and re-defining language. This sound like an impossible job to me. You have to be "in on it" and understand the hypocrisy of what you're doing in order to do your job properly, but that means having critical thinking skills and those are exactly the sort of people the Party is hunting down and killing.
I figured Syme was a true believer and would never turn on the Party but the Party itself is a prisoner of its own beliefs as much as anyone else, hence why they presumably liquidated him. Syme's a believer but he was also too smart, like you said and the Party would consider there'd always be the possibility he'd turn just because of that combined with their own paranoia and need for control. Then there's also the fact that the Party would ultimately want to not just erase Oldspeak but also that there ever was an Oldspeak and part of that would involve erasing the people who made Newspeak and hence once knew there even was an Oldspeak.
Syme had the intellect of an inner party member, but his sheer enthusiasm for the destruction of ‘oldspeak’ piece-by piece marked him out. The fact that he found the destruction of words “beautiful” suggests unorthodoxy. He liked the sound of his own voice too much. He liked his own opinions being enthusiastically agreed upon by others even more.
@@nineteen-eighty-four-lore Yeah, the entire point is that you CAN'T find Newspeak "Beautiful". Newspeak is supposed to be what it is, a utilitarian language meant to squash dissent, creating a monopoly on political discourse since you basically invented the language. The fact that Syme's basically equated Newspeak to poetry made it clear that he's unorthodox with a streak of sadistic nature for destruction. He wasn't supposed to enjoy the executions because "Their legs dangled, their tongues turned blue" but because "The enemy of the state is dying". That's it. As the comment above me notes - he was a Newspeak poet. Subversing the entire idea of Newspeak. Enjoying the process of destruction, not the result. The most dangerous form of criminal from the party's perspective.
Syme was conscious, while apparently also loyal and a true believer. Since he was conscious, he had to be vaporized. Consciousness itself was the great enemy of the Party.
He said the quiet part out loud. It was useful for Orwell to have someone willing to spout exposition. It was clever of him to turn Syme's tendency to play Captain Exposition into an object lesson in party psychology. Orwell used Syme to show and tell simultaneously. It's missing the point to speculate whether Syme ever saw room 101. The past doesn't exist. Syme never existed.
Syme’s work was the deliberate destruction of words, and he was very conscious of this fact. This went against Party orthodoxy because, due to the ingrained practise of doublethink, Party members are required to revise history, then forget the original events, then forget that they had ever forgotten anything. Their continual revision of reality is required to be unconscious. Syme’s crime is that he knows what he is doing, and loves his work. What happens when his work ceases to be challenging and interesting to him? What other thoughts will his formidable mind entertain if allowed a moment of idleness? The Party will never allow these questions to be answered.
Syme may have also received a promotion. Smith says the Party does not like such people, but that could well be doublethink. An unperson becoming another person within the Inner Party is quite Oceanian in nature
O'Brien remarked that the capability existed to alter a person's face and features through plastic surgery. Syme could have easily been surgically altered, given a new identity, and become an Inner Party member elsewhere in Oceania. 1984 meets John Frankenheimer's film "Seconds."
@@prof.badfellow9868that and the fact that most if not all of his predictions on what would happen to ppl were always wrong (parsons getting arrested instead of his wife for example). We can infer based off of Winston being wrong about what would happen to the people he was closest with thruout the novel that he was also wrong about sums and that he actually got a promotion. It would be such a waste of talent and potential for syme to have gotten killed by the party. The inner party members are very intelligent and would be able to see that syme is genuinely one of them and would be able to be very effective at a bigger role. Until there's evidence that actually supports him being executed, I will refuse to believe it. All the evidence points to him getting promoted the way I see it
Loving the channel btw. Its nice to hear somone discuss 1984 from a lore perspective. Most content ive found seem to always try to relate everything to modern politics.
I don't think so(arrest me). That's never the plan. It's an unreachable goal on purpose. Something for the people to aspire too and to inform others on when they break it. A permanent entrapment.
@@cleanerben9636 ofc it is, as a crime with selective enforcement. good party members won't be guilty of it, only bad party members. therein lies the essence of doublespeak
Slavoj Zizec (whatever the spelling) mentioned how in Yugoslavia in the 70s and 80s, those who were hardcore Marxist-Leninist youth activists were often viewed by the State with suspicion because the State was no longer a strict adherent to this ideology and it feared that such activists could overthrow the state. I know Yugoslavia wasn't exactly this Stalinist nightmare, but the point still remains.
I think this is an important point. The party never truly has any beliefs or principles. It values only power and the means to gain and keep it. As such, strong orthodoxy always has the possibility of standing in the way of a convenient change in direction. Orthodoxy is something you're supposed to switch on or off, as required by the party. You're supposed to believe it with fanatical fervor, then forget all about it, never realizing that any change occurred. This is the essence of double-think.
I've always thought there's a chance that Syme was a plant of the inner party, like the shop keeper. His whole demeanor always struck me as strange for a common party member. It's not a point I'd agree is true by any means but always seemed like a possibility to me, could explain why we never get a definitive answer as to what happened to him.
We really don't get a definitive answer what happens to anyone in the story now that I think about it. We don't even know how Winston meets his end, we just end knowing it's coming.
I am ambivalent about this style of writing: on the one hand I enjoy it as it leaves open the possibility for different scenarios like this, but it would also be cool to know what could have actually happened, even if it's just hinted a bit more. In the novel Julia (not cannon) it's hinted that he escaped, though in either case, whether he escaped or was arrested, he would still have been removed from Party records, leaving people like Winston to assume he was simply vaporised.
@@nineteen-eighty-four-lorethe bit in Julia where Syme escaped really made me see him in a new light. Almost as if he were employing the same over-zealous front that Julia does, just in a different way. Just a really fun little idea, similar to what the book did to characters like Ampleforth, who only got a couple lines in the original book.
@@nineteen-eighty-four-lore i need to read Julia cannon or not it sounds interesting. I would rather have a definitive answer for the characters but at the same time pondering over what happened to them and whether or not you can believe anything told about the world (considering everything were told comes from the party and/or someone who entire outlook has been shaped by the party) is what has kept me thinking about and rereading for all these years.
I don't think Syme himself would have ever become a thought-criminal himself, but that he was a threat in the way that he would have led others to commiting thoughtcrime by so openly and understandable revealing the Party's method of control by the way of newspeak, causing them to reflect more about other ways they may be controlled and wanting to rid themselves of that control eventually.
What if thoughts are literally contagius, like what if Winston rebellius mind afected the other characters like parsons and Syme. I have no proof to that but for some reason it resoneded with me.
It wouldnt make sense for the party to see him that way, the party created Goldstein and the book, Syme is essentially helping the party weed out the undesirables if what you say is true.
What doomed Syme was that he honestly believed in the ideals of the party instead of wanting to use the ideals of the party to get something. He wasn't cynical enough to be bought off or threatened so he had to go.
I recently finished 1984 a couple months back, it’s a very dense and flowery read but I recall Syme’s liquidation being an assumption on Winston’s part. Not a fact. It’s never explicitly confirmed or denied. So for all we as readers (and Winston) know, Syme could have very well been reprogrammed into a different sector. Winston was very naive and quick to judge. Syme’s dogmatic adherence to the party may have been a ploy. Maybe Syme was a more cautious version of Winston. That’s the genius of 1984, that every interpretation no matter how farcical or terrifying may be valid.
Very good catch, we definitely get the details through the lens of Winston's perception. Nice observation. It's totally possible that perhaps he was promoted to Inner Party, or maybe he was a more cautious rogue akin to Winston, just more focused on survival, and he escaped, forcing the Party's hand to unperson Syme in records. Or maybe other possibilities. Perhaps there's going to be Syme fanfics in the near future?
I once had an educational tour in a German concentration camp. There they told us how the prisoners (victims?) valued not drawing attention. Drawing attention to oneself made one more likely to die. I think the same applies here. Syme draw attention to himself, which marked him as a potential threat.
When Stalin started rapidly industrializing Russia quicker than the people were ready, the former farmers turned-factory workers had to maintain a delicate balance of being average; if you failed to meet your quotas, the guards would discipline you, if you met your quota too quickly too many times, your fellow workers would kill you because you could convince the overseers to increase the daily production quotas.
In a way, I think Syme was actually a good friend to Winston. He clearly knew he was an oldthinker (borderline thought criminal) but as far as we know never ratted Winston out for it. It might even be one of the things that got him in trouble besides having no filter.
In the '84 movie they kind of make it look like the "glasses guy" (who appears in the book too but is less of an actual character) rats Syme out in order to get his job. Although not a bad touch to the story, it's not in the book, which is why it's important to take in the book and not just the films.
It can happen in any organization. It doesn't even have to be true. The only difference is how much it is encouraged by the Boss. Symes might have been disappeared for no reason at all except ambition.
Syme's intellect and deep understanding of how Oceanic society worked was, to me, his ultimate downfall. As you said, I don't think he was killed because of a capacity for thoughtcrime. In every way, shape, and form, Syme was ideologically committed to Ingsoc, the Party, and the society they were building. He never would have rebelled. He never would have attempted to overturn the system. What he could have done though, was use his understanding of how it all worked to possibly take power for himself. That is something the party could never tolerate.
O'Brien aside, I suspect that the Inner Party aren't really the true believers they present themselves to be. It certainly doesn't stop them from being corrupt and self-serving. Syme probably would have become an even bigger inconvenience on the inside.
Other than that he was too generally smart for his own good I think one important reason they killed him was his knowledge specifically about the future of language, INGSOC needs to have total control of all ideas about time past, present, and future so Winston openly making people conscious of both independent ideas about the future actions of the party and ways they’re changing the world, as well as ways the system operates to change things in ways that are less than obvious to the masses and middle class of 1984. If I remember correctly his opinions he casually shares with his friends are so dangerous and anti-establishment they weren’t even explored as concepts in the false dissident book Winston reads later on, which was itself created by the party to obliterate wrongthinkers’ smallest hopes that ideas and philosophies not originating from the party are real.the world of 1984 is completely hopeless and possible
@nineteen-eighty-four-lore One of my favourite books and films, I don't see much good extrapolation from 1984 because I don't trust it not to be woefully unworthy, but you smash it. It would be nice to see more about the 1984 universe, yet the reading knowing so little for sure is a huge part of what made the novel a masterpiece. It helped Orwell to assault my brain with this brutal concepy of a post-reality reality when no faculty can or should ever be trusted. You might have only 500 subs, but it's more real to have 500 people, the growth of whose minds you help foster, as opposed to 500,000 to consume your content one day and forget it the next.
People like Syme are broken in a way that requires continuous upkeep. Whether through validation or admiration, they must be continuously reminded that they are doing and have done right by whoever is minding them. the rate of this only ever moves towards increasing intervals. Eventually, even the mere silence where the subject expects validation is seen as a betrayal, and for a mind like Syme's, that betrayal is the planting of the seed that leads to a full undoing of the self and a rejection of all previously held understanding of the proper operation of the world. and then you have a very dangerous traitor who fully understands the scaffolding you've built your power upon, and is willing to tell whoever will point him in a new direction towards what is "correct" with the right amount of praise, everything he knows. Indeed, the torture he would endure would be unending. his stubbornness in the face of 'betrayal', his capacity to hate those he perceives as his enemy, would only be reinforced by those kinds of methods, and as someone already broken, he would be incapable of being broken further, or broken in a way that would 'fix' him, set him on the correct path that the party desires for its citizens. In the real world we have things like therapy and medication to break people like this out of their self-destructive cycles, but in the world of 1984, life is cheap and a bullet saves far more time.
New to your channel. While I do agree that 1984 is very pertinent to the modern age, I really like that your analysis stays within the confines of the book. It seems that (correct me if I’m wrong) your take is that the book in and of itself is a hugely rich, deep, multifaceted, nuanced vein to be mined without comparing it to other things. I think that when people make comparisons to the present, legitimate though that entirely is, it often (not always) amounts to a reflection of their own political standpoint. This reflection is also often knee-jerk and superficial, and distracts or detracts from the depth and perceptiveness of the book. I totally get why people do it, and it’s entirely natural and valid - I guess I’m saying it’s often not done as well as the richness of the book deserves. I guess I’m saying thank you for not falling into that trap and for sticking with the source material. And I think you really do it justice. Great work!
Thank you for your kind words. I decided when I thought about starting this channel that I'm not that interested in applying it to any contemporary political situation or context. Viewers and fans of the book will always do that, so they need no help from me. Lol You're right that this channel is strictly devoted to exploring the lore, characters, theories and anything else associated with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I think that's more than enough by itself to get on with and I enjoy doing it. :D
Syme articulated the Party position more brazenly and clearly than does Party propaganda, thus making it too vulnerable to critical thought, its contradictions too stark. There has to be a form of frankness reserved only for the Inner Party right? During his secret meeting with Winson, O'Brien turns off the telescreen for a reason (that meeting itself was a charade but one nonetheless imagines that such a modicum of privacy would be an actual privilege of the inner party). O'Brien can get away with that, being Inner Party, but Syme needs to be a little less cognoscenti, especially when among colleagues. You only get to talk shop like Syme if your loyalty is also unshakable, whereupon you become inner party material like O'Brien.
Two interactions between Smith and O'Brien has me wonder about whether there is an extreme initiation to promote people to the Inner Party. When Winston answers questions on the lengths he was prepared to go to undermine the Party and when he see's O Brian in the Ministry for the first time and exclaims 'They got you too'. O Brian almost ruefully adds they got him sometime before. So its possible that perhaps Syme has a promotion as such and for this to happen all traces of his former life or vapourised and he becomes something new. Winston is broken but reconciled at the end, loving big brother.
Because the party rules by terror. No-one is safe. Everyone's turn comes sooner or later. At best, you can postpone your inevitable fate by conforming totally - until the party decides that total conformity is itself a sign of subversive thought. It's not about individual guilt, actions, character, etc. It's about total power. The party alone decides what it is criminal at any time. Hannah Arendt understood this very clearly.
Newspeak was created solely to limit the lexicon to the specifics needed to serve the party loyally - and for the specific elimination of any language that could even create the potential framework for disloyalty. Syme understood the difference between Newspeak and Oldspeak, which means he could understood the Party's motive - which must only come from a desire to preserve their current power. To the Party Syme is the ultimate threat: A committed party member that understands the lopsided power dynamic of the Party and society, the inescapable reality that all that loyalty is - by design - a one-way street. Big Brother will never reciprocate your love and loyalty, no matter how sincere. The Party could never tolerate such a thought to be uttered - even internally. Simpler to disappear the possibility altogether.
Here's a thought, perhaps Syme was in fact a secret Inner Party member and his observations and reports were directly responsible for Winston's eventual downfall.
Given that we don't know if syme was executed or not, I believe that he more likely got a promotion and was accepted into the inner party. Maybe he had to be educated or "cured" of the inability of performing the second part of double think (forgetting that you forgot and being discreet). For the party to kill someone of his intelligence and someone whose fanaticism is on par with those in the inner party would be a serious waste of potential. If you really think about it, it would make way more sense for him to have been accepted into the ranks of the inner party than it would to be killed. The book gives us the opinion Winston has that he would be executed but not what objectively happened to him. Winston was already proven wrong when he predicted parsons wife would be arrested instead of parsons himself, it's not out of this world to think that Orwell made Winston's predictions wrong with the assumption that we can infer that syme wasn't vapor but rather promoted and possibly given a new identity
Winstons summary made perfect sense to me. Symes was able to work out and understand the parties reasons for creating Newspeak and having the articulation to be able to explain this in simple terms could be dangerous if he did ever turn against BB. Better to be an unseen wolf among sheep in 1984
Syme was too clever and therefore a threat. Also, he was careless. "Do you realise", he asked Winston in Chapter 5, "that by the year 2050 not a single person will understand such a conversation as we are having now?" "Except the proles", Winston began. Syme answered "The proles are not human beings". That was too outspoken and unwise to say out loud.
Syme belonged to a stratum in which rebelliousness was overrepresented. The government wished to eliminate it and the killing of loyal party members along with rebels was nothing to regret.
I always thought it was odd that they didn't initiate him into the higher cadres of the party. Surely the folks there must be of similar quality while also being fanatically loyal. Maybe they did and they erased his old identity.
Synmes can happen in any organization. His "crimes" don't even have to be true. The only difference in organizations is how much betrayal is encouraged by the Boss. Symes might have been disappeared for no reason at all except someone's ambition.
: What I figured is that he was simply nabbed, told he already knew what was going to happen, had a little time to dread and then probably to accept, and then got a .45 to the brain stem or a .22 just below and behind one ear. I am of the notion that he was such a True Believer that while he did not want to die and dreaded it... he understood why he had to go. Once he was nabbed and contained for whatever brief time it likely was, I think he sussed it out, probably intuitively and then rationally. Right before he was decommissioned, he probably had the same look on his face as Smitty (Sean Pertwee) did right before he went out with a bang in "Event Horizon".
There is logic in what youre saying but I dont think the eliminated him. I dont think they eliminate anyone that gets caught. Altough I do believe they dealt with him differently. I could actually imagine him "getting a promotion" like O'brien. Since he already had a fanatic mindset and was also smart he couldve been a valuable asset.
Syme may have been promoted and reassigned. Inner party members probably scheme against each other all the time and fresh blood is needed occasionally to fill in a new opening.
Some things that have come to mind about Syme over my readings… 1. The main reason he was vaporized was because he was thinking about INGSOC and the whole point of INGSOC was to end thought. 2. The secondary but still very important factor is that, for the Party, the arbitrariness and thoughtlessness of vaporizing people was the point. 3. A necessary feature of NEWSPEAK would be eliminating entirely all people who ever knew or even heard OLDSPEAK, starting with the people who created NEWSPEAK. Note how *nobody* in the Outer Party seemed to have any idea of how the Party came to power. They didn’t even think about it. It just appeared. Once it was in power, it was *always* in power. Did they already do a Stalinesque purge of anyone who could remember what happened or even that anything happened at all? 4. Finally, Syme talked a lot about NEWSPEAK but he didn’t speak in NEWSPEAK. That’s a fatal flaw. He was focused on the external words and not on controlling his own thoughts. And while I’m on a roll… I’ve long thought that the very first person disappeared was Big Brother, whoever he was before the Revolution. He’d have been the most dangerous person of all. He knew how it was done and he was capable of getting it done. That made him capable of getting it un-done. This may have even been part of his plan. The whole INGSOC system was set up to overcome the problem of every revolution containing the seeds of its own destruction.
Syme reminds me of a "friend" of mine. He's smart in certain areas but he lacks discretion. He also treats ideas like toys, including dangerous ideas. He wouldn't last a day in 1984 - not that I would either or want to.
I looked at Syme in a different way. We know that Winston thinks Syme will be vaporized and we know that later he disappears but we don't actually know what happens to him. The party is sophisticated enough that it doesn't throw away someone like Syme on the off chance that his intelligence will lead to thought crime. If he does commit thought crime the party will eliminate him. The party has confidence that thought crime will be found. I think he got promoted or a transfer, he's not dangerous. Winston was wrong.
The inner party is probably deeply cynical. It’s the ability to be both a true believer and a thorough cynic at the same time that is necessary under this system.
Im wondering if the party would go so far as to say that syme even having the knowledge of what came befoe was enough, almost as if the newspeak should of completely erased what came before, with this being impossible, his death was always a certainty, being a thought criminal was as easy as remembering a different answer, even if you were the one to come up with the new, acceptable answer.
'Happiness must be earned' - The thief of Bagdad, Hollywood, USA (1924) 'Work sets you free' - Concentration camps, Nazi Germany (1933) 'Only fools and horses work'- BBC, England (1981)
G. K. Chesterton has character named Gabriel Syme in The Man Who Was Thursday (1908). This man is possibly our Syme’s grandfather. He is a poet, so this checks off the wordsmith legacy. As an secret policeman infiltrating anarchist groups, he is also a member of the forerunner of the Thought Police
It's like understanding the word "bias", it implies understanding of when someone is trying to present information in a way that makes you think a certain way that they want you to or that there is alternative information that might be free of influence and thus the truth.
There is no such thing as unbiased information. Intentionally or not, even the decision to share certain information is influenced by a person's beliefs. Nobody shares information just for the sake of sharing it. They believe the information is worth knowing. Bias shouldn't be a dirty word, it's an inherent part of consciousness.
@@greyfells2829 Either way, my intention was to point out how such a word would probably be excluded from Newspeak as it shows a particular level of understanding of information that Big Brother wouldn't want its adherents to know, it allows for autonomy (self-awareness) to think and process information in ways that could be detrimental to Big brother.
I'm actually a fan of the theory that he was actually invited into the inner party and given a new identity, as that just makes much more sense from a purely pragmatic standpoint.
Syme was a thought criminal all along. His job was to destroy words and create Newspeak, but he spoke analytically about old speak and how he made Newspeak different and why - to reduce the scope of thought to make thought crime impossible. He was supposed to admire Duckspeak in that context and not say it would be a criticism in another context. He was supposed to slowly forget old speak and only say that Newspeak clarified, purified thought to cement love for Big Brother.. I think he did go to room 101 because he saw through the mechanisms of control and so could not really emotionally love Big Brother. He thought BB did not exist, but was another effective mode of control. His torture was burial alive to shut hm up forever, to fill his mouth with suffocating dirt as he tried to explain himself.
Being an adherent to ingsoc doesn't excuse you from the crime of eloquent and direct explanation of complex ideas. The inner party wants the outer party to be repressed, paranoid, and insecure: not joyfully yapping about their (unspokenly confidential) work. Oceania will be a society completely stripped of thinking out of line besides, what do you need this man who provides intellectual input for?
@@nineteen-eighty-four-lore I got the impression from the book that he will eventually be killed but that could be years into the future at the Party's pleasure. They weren't in any kind of rush.
He is very smart, however, I think it also requires certain other traits too. Syme does seem to show a ruthlessness when he gloats over how he enjoys the hangings, which would seem to fit with the Inner Party's requirement for a certain cold-blooded attitude. In Goldstein's Book, it does say a certain amount of transfer is allowed between the branches to let the ambitious rise and exclude the weaklings. Perhaps, though Syme is not a "weakling" he simply lacks the requisite ambition, though he is ruthless and intelligent.
Syme "had to be" eliminated. If "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." is a given ... [SIDEBAR: did George spend as much time deciding which of these two sentences should precede the other, as I've spent trying to analyse why(?) he chose to put them this way?😂🎉] ... then Syme could not remain alive. Oceania needed to eliminate Syme's connection to Oldspeak.
if syme turned, i think it would depend on the circumstances. Does he see something that pierces his intellectualizing? Does he realize he is in danger? Does BB start to weaken?
Syme was much like Russian ultra-nationalists challenging Putin from the right. “This war is just and our cause is righteous, but you aren’t running it correctly, you aren’t going far enough”
How odd. Wasn't it the Ukrainian ultra nationalists who started the killings back in 2014 following the coup? Burning people alive in the Odessa trade Union building, all documented but now memory holed by the media. The Orwellian rewriting of history which pretends the war was unprovoked.
INGSOC killing Syma would have been a waste of human resources from INGSOC pov. Maybe they promoted him to inner party under different name and erased his former outer party self instead?
I think Syme was recruited into the Inner Party. O Brien too expresses a similar clarity of thought as Syme does. Every Party member is going to be vaporised whether or not they are ever put through the Ministry of Love but I think except for whoever the originals were the way you become an Inner Party member is by demonstrating a sophisticated intellect. The reason we never see Syme again is because he is reassigned. We never see Outer Party members getting promoted. The Inner Party and how you join it is never discussed. No process is mentioned. Inner Party members just 'are' and not even Winston meditates on how they come to be. The Party probably wants it that way as the idea that there could be turn over from the bottom could lead to competition, to questioning, to rebellion so if you are promoted to the Inner Party you are transferred elsewhere in Oceania so you cannot run into your former colleagues.
It's possible some rare few adult Outer Party members (who are viewed as particularly good assets) are allowed to rise in this way, however, Goldstein's Book (which O'Brien describes as true as description) does state that movement between the Party is far less common than movement between the 'classes' in previous times. It also does give us some information (though not a lot): entrance into either branch of the Party is by examination at age 16. I'm sure a lot of subtle nepotism is likely involved, however, at least in principle membership is not guaranteed, that is, a child of Inner Party parents will not automatically become an Inner Party member. I suspect that the 'examination' is not exclusively intellectual. The Book also states that a tiny bit of movement is permitted in order to exclude 'weaklings' from the Inner Party, which makes sense given the kind of things they're involved in (e.g. torture, running wars, creating poverty etc). I speculate that part of the test involves hurting someone to demonstrate they have the stomach for that kind of thing. This is essential to avoit the Inner Party slowly 'softening' and thus relaxing its control.
In the novel "Julia", it was assumed that Syme had gone into hiding and run away. Presumably to Eurasia. That's why I can't take this book "Julia" seriously.
Great channel. Have you done any video podcast interviews? Our audience are mostly entrepreneurs but thinking of a separate channel for subjects like this.
working on the newspeak dictionary - which means he had to understand Oldspeak and all the cultural context, so he could deconstruct it to create Newspeak. He remembers what was which is something the party can not allow, he's a living link to a past the party will not allow to exist.
personally i always thought syme and similar people who are smart but also indoctrinated were taken into the inner party. he was smart, knowledgable, and clearly knew well the inner workings of the party. thats someone that is a hell of a waste to just kill off. i imagined he was scrubbed from the records, yes, but was given a new alias and set to work in the inner party where his bluntness could cause less harm.
There's a lot to be said for this theory. Winston only assumes he has been vaporised. A lot of disappearances are also suicides, but that doesn't strike me as compatible with the Syme character. I would say it's more than an intellect thing alone - that you have to be completely ruthless, as Goldstein's Book puts it exclude weaklings from the Inner Party, but Syme seems to fit this quite well too, as he seems perfectly OK with hangins and such. 🤔
Instead of vaporization, Syme should perhaps have been promoted to the Inner Party where he could have continued his good work for the Party at a higher more productive level
@@karlscher5170 Stalinists, not commies... I know this is the usual talking point that's repeated ad nauseam, but it'll get repeated until it get into everyone's little mind; remember that Orwell was socialist - and his works were against totalitarianism in general, with a particular aversion to Stalinism.
It's probably not all that exciting. Most of the Party members will be in the major urban areas, especially London, I'm guessing. Proles are generally not seen as a threat. There will probably be a lot of civilian, perhaps even military presence in rural areas, given they'll need to produce and seize some food (Britain is a net importer of food, so not all of it). Food will be scarce, life hard, but generally proles are left alone. I can't see their lives being radically different from urban proles in terms of their personal freedoms. Unlike Party members they're free to have relationships with who they like, marry and divorce. They have their sports and lottery and would even be allowed religious worship if they desired it. Materially-speaking, it's probably a bit worse for rural proles. I think these places probably do exist, yes.
This video brings to mind another potential reason as to how possibly The party would be defeated in the future in 2 meaningful ways. 1. is winston failed to see that people like him and syme's outer party members had the potential to directly or indirectly stir rebellion and the more intellectuals that appear, the more likely it is one slips through the cracks and over time could amass to some sort of leadership to an actual organised response to the party 2. is even more interesting and speaks to fascisms weakness. killing symes is dangerous as he is a loyal party member, the more people that are truly loyal to the party that gets snuffed out the more loyal members shall subconsciously realise that the party doesn't care for being loyal but obedient and cookie cutter - which again in tern stirs rebellion and as the thought police has sometimes shown clear belief in its power to the point where they will lie about people still alive the more party members will realise the true nature of the party One of my new favourite quotes from modern fiction comes from Andor an it goes along the lines of "Fascism requires constant oppression as it is not normal and can't be normal" I think from Symes death we can see that possibly the power lies in the proles but maybe the power lies in the outer party as well - the more the lie of loyalty is destroyed the more bitterness will form that's my reading of the meaning behind syme's as a character at least.
1984 is about stalinism not fascism, ingsoc had certain...tendencies that can only be found among certain leftisms, the whole "rewiring" of thought and all
@@nunodiogo5745 ok fair but is Stalinism not fascism with red paint since Stalin himself betrayed communism in order to become leader since having an all powerful leader or figure head(wink wink big brother) flies in the face of communism and the idea of 1 singular party creating an equal utopian nation of pure people
Whether he could have become a thought criminal depends entirely on whether he could make the jump from "This is what they do" to "what they do is wrong". I don't know whether he could, but hell, Winston did, and Syme was smarter than him, so maybe. Mind you, O'Brien proves that you don't have to be good to be smart. Mind you, O'Brien's also REALLY far up his own ass. Make a video on him if you want my opinions on that clown.
I don't think he was. I think he was promoted. He was reading Winston's mind at lunch; O'Brien did the same while torturing him. "The Book" says that sometimes Outer Party members get promoted if they have some special skill.
Welcome Comrades! Just an acknowledgement of a typo with the written quote (onscreen) at around 5:20. It's not "soft" but "sort". Oh well, my bad, at least it's read OK. 😆👍
ingsoc is the real THOUGHT CRIMINAL of itself.
No brother it was "sort" all along. "Soft" never existed.
Syme just had that "he's too clever for his own good" quality about him. His intellect and candour made him remarkable. And remarkable people get noticed, which is a bad thing when living under a brutal totalitarian regime
Winston certainly seemed to think he was 'too smart for his own good,' (in so many words).
@@nineteen-eighty-four-lore
Winston knew the party wasn't really looking for brainy people. The party wants competent workers who can serve the party without thinking deeply about what they are doing. Symes was a thinker which also made him a potential thought criminal
All true intellectuals are a threat to a totalitarian state. Therefore Symes was vaporized. Winston's brainless neighbour Parsons on the other hand would never have been touched by the party, if his daughter hadn't snitched on him (or just lied that she heard him say "Down with Big brother" in his sleep).
@@davidthomas3826Syme is a thought criminal through and through. He created Newspeak, knew its purposes and techniques, and felt pride in having made this progress on behalf of Big Brother. But Syme also knew Oldspeak intimately enough to detect that Winston was translating from one to the other. Syme, if he had been as disciplined as O'Brien, would have forgotten Oldspeak entirely, but kept it in doublethink for any needed occasion. Syme did not have the discipline to forget Oldpspeak and engaged in "own life" by lecturing Winston, didactlicly, showing that his own knowledge of both Oldspeak and Newspeak was greater than anyone else's. He should have forgotten Oldspeak and believed (doublethinkwise) that Newspeak had always existed just as it was. The only greater thought criminal in the book is Parsons. In Room 101 he reveals to Winston his belief that they don't shoot you just for thoughts which you can't help. He's right they won't shoot him, but he will need to undergo Room 101 and the worst thing in the world to understand that thoughts are all that matter to the Party. My guess is, due to his fetish for detail and recognition, Syme will face burial alive in Room 101. Parsons, because he keeps quiet tiny pleasures like eating extra when he can, will face castration, because his private sexual thoughts bring him secret "own life joy," instead of having a clean mind thinking only of duty, Big Brother, and self abasement.
I agree. Syme was too careless in his discussions with Winston about NewSpeak. Since the purpose of language is to reveal and convey meaning and thought, Syme needed to be smarter than the average Party Member to understand the process of destroying and re-defining language. This sound like an impossible job to me. You have to be "in on it" and understand the hypocrisy of what you're doing in order to do your job properly, but that means having critical thinking skills and those are exactly the sort of people the Party is hunting down and killing.
I figured Syme was a true believer and would never turn on the Party but the Party itself is a prisoner of its own beliefs as much as anyone else, hence why they presumably liquidated him. Syme's a believer but he was also too smart, like you said and the Party would consider there'd always be the possibility he'd turn just because of that combined with their own paranoia and need for control.
Then there's also the fact that the Party would ultimately want to not just erase Oldspeak but also that there ever was an Oldspeak and part of that would involve erasing the people who made Newspeak and hence once knew there even was an Oldspeak.
The intellectuals who are always the most loyal and fervent believers always get eliminated - same in Eastern Europe and Cambodia.
Syme had the intellect of an inner party member, but his sheer enthusiasm for the destruction of ‘oldspeak’ piece-by piece marked him out.
The fact that he found the destruction of words “beautiful” suggests unorthodoxy. He liked the sound of his own voice too much. He liked his own opinions being enthusiastically agreed upon by others even more.
Yes, I think he stuck out and liked to a little too much for the comfort of some.
He's literally a newspeek poet, the worst possible subversion of the whole endeavour.
@@nineteen-eighty-four-lore Yeah, the entire point is that you CAN'T find Newspeak "Beautiful". Newspeak is supposed to be what it is, a utilitarian language meant to squash dissent, creating a monopoly on political discourse since you basically invented the language.
The fact that Syme's basically equated Newspeak to poetry made it clear that he's unorthodox with a streak of sadistic nature for destruction. He wasn't supposed to enjoy the executions because "Their legs dangled, their tongues turned blue" but because "The enemy of the state is dying". That's it.
As the comment above me notes - he was a Newspeak poet. Subversing the entire idea of Newspeak. Enjoying the process of destruction, not the result. The most dangerous form of criminal from the party's perspective.
Syme was conscious, while apparently also loyal and a true believer.
Since he was conscious, he had to be vaporized.
Consciousness itself was the great enemy of the Party.
Syme is the kind of person who, while being utterly loyal, had the potential to be a danger just by existing.
He said the quiet part out loud. It was useful for Orwell to have someone willing to spout exposition. It was clever of him to turn Syme's tendency to play Captain Exposition into an object lesson in party psychology. Orwell used Syme to show and tell simultaneously.
It's missing the point to speculate whether Syme ever saw room 101. The past doesn't exist. Syme never existed.
He was exposition dump. Not the most imaginative move in writing.
@@karlscher5170 Nominally yes, but with Syme, Orwell pulled double duty in his use of an exposition dump, which imo fairly justifies it.
what are you taling about,comrade? Who never existed? Should I tell this to thought police?
@@karlscher5170Syme was an enthusiastic pickme
@@karlscher5170 Goldstein's Book was exposition dump, but that's because Orwell is an essayist bent into the shape of a novelist.
Syme’s work was the deliberate destruction of words, and he was very conscious of this fact. This went against Party orthodoxy because, due to the ingrained practise of doublethink, Party members are required to revise history, then forget the original events, then forget that they had ever forgotten anything. Their continual revision of reality is required to be unconscious. Syme’s crime is that he knows what he is doing, and loves his work. What happens when his work ceases to be challenging and interesting to him? What other thoughts will his formidable mind entertain if allowed a moment of idleness? The Party will never allow these questions to be answered.
Syme may have also received a promotion. Smith says the Party does not like such people, but that could well be doublethink. An unperson becoming another person within the Inner Party is quite Oceanian in nature
I always thought this
O'Brien remarked that the capability existed to alter a person's face and features through plastic surgery. Syme could have easily been surgically altered, given a new identity, and become an Inner Party member elsewhere in Oceania. 1984 meets John Frankenheimer's film "Seconds."
Good point. O'Brien seems to drop a number of hints to this effect during Smith's interrogation and reprogramming. After all, he would know
@@prof.badfellow9868that and the fact that most if not all of his predictions on what would happen to ppl were always wrong (parsons getting arrested instead of his wife for example). We can infer based off of Winston being wrong about what would happen to the people he was closest with thruout the novel that he was also wrong about sums and that he actually got a promotion. It would be such a waste of talent and potential for syme to have gotten killed by the party. The inner party members are very intelligent and would be able to see that syme is genuinely one of them and would be able to be very effective at a bigger role.
Until there's evidence that actually supports him being executed, I will refuse to believe it. All the evidence points to him getting promoted the way I see it
Loving the channel btw. Its nice to hear somone discuss 1984 from a lore perspective. Most content ive found seem to always try to relate everything to modern politics.
Syme was too smart for his own good
Too smart yet was too dumb in not keeping his mouth shut
Too proud to keep his mouth shut
Eventually anyone capable of thinking in oldspeak would become a thoughtcriminal.
I don't think so(arrest me). That's never the plan. It's an unreachable goal on purpose. Something for the people to aspire too and to inform others on when they break it. A permanent entrapment.
Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Newspeak. Unbellyfeel Ingsoc. Unbellyfeel goodthink, unbellyfeel Ingsoc. Doubleplusunduckspeakful. Solution pluseasy. Unperson Syme.
@@cleanerben9636 ofc it is, as a crime with selective enforcement. good party members won't be guilty of it, only bad party members. therein lies the essence of doublespeak
Slavoj Zizec (whatever the spelling) mentioned how in Yugoslavia in the 70s and 80s, those who were hardcore Marxist-Leninist youth activists were often viewed by the State with suspicion because the State was no longer a strict adherent to this ideology and it feared that such activists could overthrow the state.
I know Yugoslavia wasn't exactly this Stalinist nightmare, but the point still remains.
It essentially tells you how dumb and limited marxist theory really is.
I think this is an important point. The party never truly has any beliefs or principles. It values only power and the means to gain and keep it. As such, strong orthodoxy always has the possibility of standing in the way of a convenient change in direction.
Orthodoxy is something you're supposed to switch on or off, as required by the party. You're supposed to believe it with fanatical fervor, then forget all about it, never realizing that any change occurred. This is the essence of double-think.
@@Banana_Split_Cream_Buns my favorite zizec quote is when he describes the difference between women from western Europe and eastern Europe
That’s what’s happening in the US right now.
@@ToolinAround2025 in the US, we just force women to give birth while SCOTUS anoints our God king as eternal emperor
I've always thought there's a chance that Syme was a plant of the inner party, like the shop keeper. His whole demeanor always struck me as strange for a common party member. It's not a point I'd agree is true by any means but always seemed like a possibility to me, could explain why we never get a definitive answer as to what happened to him.
We really don't get a definitive answer what happens to anyone in the story now that I think about it. We don't even know how Winston meets his end, we just end knowing it's coming.
I am ambivalent about this style of writing: on the one hand I enjoy it as it leaves open the possibility for different scenarios like this, but it would also be cool to know what could have actually happened, even if it's just hinted a bit more.
In the novel Julia (not cannon) it's hinted that he escaped, though in either case, whether he escaped or was arrested, he would still have been removed from Party records, leaving people like Winston to assume he was simply vaporised.
@@nineteen-eighty-four-lorethe bit in Julia where Syme escaped really made me see him in a new light. Almost as if he were employing the same over-zealous front that Julia does, just in a different way. Just a really fun little idea, similar to what the book did to characters like Ampleforth, who only got a couple lines in the original book.
@@nineteen-eighty-four-lore i need to read Julia cannon or not it sounds interesting.
I would rather have a definitive answer for the characters but at the same time pondering over what happened to them and whether or not you can believe anything told about the world (considering everything were told comes from the party and/or someone who entire outlook has been shaped by the party) is what has kept me thinking about and rereading for all these years.
I don't think Syme himself would have ever become a thought-criminal himself, but that he was a threat in the way that he would have led others to commiting thoughtcrime by so openly and understandable revealing the Party's method of control by the way of newspeak, causing them to reflect more about other ways they may be controlled and wanting to rid themselves of that control eventually.
What if thoughts are literally contagius, like what if Winston rebellius mind afected the other characters like parsons and Syme.
I have no proof to that but for some reason it resoneded with me.
It wouldnt make sense for the party to see him that way, the party created Goldstein and the book, Syme is essentially helping the party weed out the undesirables if what you say is true.
What doomed Syme was that he honestly believed in the ideals of the party instead of wanting to use the ideals of the party to get something. He wasn't cynical enough to be bought off or threatened so he had to go.
“He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people.”
I recently finished 1984 a couple months back, it’s a very dense and flowery read but I recall Syme’s liquidation being an assumption on Winston’s part. Not a fact. It’s never explicitly confirmed or denied. So for all we as readers (and Winston) know, Syme could have very well been reprogrammed into a different sector. Winston was very naive and quick to judge. Syme’s dogmatic adherence to the party may have been a ploy. Maybe Syme was a more cautious version of Winston. That’s the genius of 1984, that every interpretation no matter how farcical or terrifying may be valid.
Very good catch, we definitely get the details through the lens of Winston's perception. Nice observation. It's totally possible that perhaps he was promoted to Inner Party, or maybe he was a more cautious rogue akin to Winston, just more focused on survival, and he escaped, forcing the Party's hand to unperson Syme in records. Or maybe other possibilities. Perhaps there's going to be Syme fanfics in the near future?
As always, another great analysis.❤
Thank you. There will be more character-oriented videos coming soon. :D
I once had an educational tour in a German concentration camp. There they told us how the prisoners (victims?) valued not drawing attention. Drawing attention to oneself made one more likely to die.
I think the same applies here. Syme draw attention to himself, which marked him as a potential threat.
When Stalin started rapidly industrializing Russia quicker than the people were ready, the former farmers turned-factory workers had to maintain a delicate balance of being average; if you failed to meet your quotas, the guards would discipline you, if you met your quota too quickly too many times, your fellow workers would kill you because you could convince the overseers to increase the daily production quotas.
The same applies to YT. If you get their attention, they will cancel you.
In a way, I think Syme was actually a good friend to Winston. He clearly knew he was an oldthinker (borderline thought criminal) but as far as we know never ratted Winston out for it. It might even be one of the things that got him in trouble besides having no filter.
In reality, perhaps Syme was promoted to the Inner Party and shipped off to one of the other colonies of Oceania.
I can believe that. Winston fucked up by arguing but eventually was just transferred
That is a very specific subject to make lore videos for, gotta admire the dedication
I recently finished reading the novel and these videos have been a really nice to watch lol
In the '84 movie they kind of make it look like the "glasses guy" (who appears in the book too but is less of an actual character) rats Syme out in order to get his job. Although not a bad touch to the story, it's not in the book, which is why it's important to take in the book and not just the films.
It can happen in any organization. It doesn't even have to be true. The only difference is how much it is encouraged by the Boss. Symes might have been disappeared for no reason at all except ambition.
Syme's intellect and deep understanding of how Oceanic society worked was, to me, his ultimate downfall. As you said, I don't think he was killed because of a capacity for thoughtcrime. In every way, shape, and form, Syme was ideologically committed to Ingsoc, the Party, and the society they were building. He never would have rebelled. He never would have attempted to overturn the system. What he could have done though, was use his understanding of how it all worked to possibly take power for himself. That is something the party could never tolerate.
IIRC Syme doesn’t even get to make a confession that is subsequently telescreened. He’s just “unpersoned” and poof 💨
It's perhaps indicative of the inevitable demise of the Party that they wouldn't simply have allows Sim to become an Inner Party Member.
O'Brien aside, I suspect that the Inner Party aren't really the true believers they present themselves to be. It certainly doesn't stop them from being corrupt and self-serving. Syme probably would have become an even bigger inconvenience on the inside.
i always wondered if the inner party consists only form elite people who born in to it or if members of the outer party who get promoted?
@@Linchpin_TFaccording to the book Winston reads, they are selected at the same time the outer Party members are. Then again, that could be a lie.
Other than that he was too generally smart for his own good I think one important reason they killed him was his knowledge specifically about the future of language, INGSOC needs to have total control of all ideas about time past, present, and future so Winston openly making people conscious of both independent ideas about the future actions of the party and ways they’re changing the world, as well as ways the system operates to change things in ways that are less than obvious to the masses and middle class of 1984. If I remember correctly his opinions he casually shares with his friends are so dangerous and anti-establishment they weren’t even explored as concepts in the false dissident book Winston reads later on, which was itself created by the party to obliterate wrongthinkers’ smallest hopes that ideas and philosophies not originating from the party are real.the world of 1984 is completely hopeless and possible
Great channel and video(s), thank you.
Thanks. Glad you liked them. :D
@nineteen-eighty-four-lore One of my favourite books and films, I don't see much good extrapolation from 1984 because I don't trust it not to be woefully unworthy, but you smash it.
It would be nice to see more about the 1984 universe, yet the reading knowing so little for sure is a huge part of what made the novel a masterpiece. It helped Orwell to assault my brain with this brutal concepy of a post-reality reality when no faculty can or should ever be trusted.
You might have only 500 subs, but it's more real to have 500 people, the growth of whose minds you help foster, as opposed to 500,000 to consume your content one day and forget it the next.
People like Syme are broken in a way that requires continuous upkeep. Whether through validation or admiration, they must be continuously reminded that they are doing and have done right by whoever is minding them. the rate of this only ever moves towards increasing intervals. Eventually, even the mere silence where the subject expects validation is seen as a betrayal, and for a mind like Syme's, that betrayal is the planting of the seed that leads to a full undoing of the self and a rejection of all previously held understanding of the proper operation of the world. and then you have a very dangerous traitor who fully understands the scaffolding you've built your power upon, and is willing to tell whoever will point him in a new direction towards what is "correct" with the right amount of praise, everything he knows.
Indeed, the torture he would endure would be unending. his stubbornness in the face of 'betrayal', his capacity to hate those he perceives as his enemy, would only be reinforced by those kinds of methods, and as someone already broken, he would be incapable of being broken further, or broken in a way that would 'fix' him, set him on the correct path that the party desires for its citizens.
In the real world we have things like therapy and medication to break people like this out of their self-destructive cycles, but in the world of 1984, life is cheap and a bullet saves far more time.
New to your channel. While I do agree that 1984 is very pertinent to the modern age, I really like that your analysis stays within the confines of the book. It seems that (correct me if I’m wrong) your take is that the book in and of itself is a hugely rich, deep, multifaceted, nuanced vein to be mined without comparing it to other things. I think that when people make comparisons to the present, legitimate though that entirely is, it often (not always) amounts to a reflection of their own political standpoint. This reflection is also often knee-jerk and superficial, and distracts or detracts from the depth and perceptiveness of the book. I totally get why people do it, and it’s entirely natural and valid - I guess I’m saying it’s often not done as well as the richness of the book deserves. I guess I’m saying thank you for not falling into that trap and for sticking with the source material. And I think you really do it justice. Great work!
Thank you for your kind words.
I decided when I thought about starting this channel that I'm not that interested in applying it to any contemporary political situation or context. Viewers and fans of the book will always do that, so they need no help from me. Lol
You're right that this channel is strictly devoted to exploring the lore, characters, theories and anything else associated with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I think that's more than enough by itself to get on with and I enjoy doing it. :D
Syme articulated the Party position more brazenly and clearly than does Party propaganda, thus making it too vulnerable to critical thought, its contradictions too stark. There has to be a form of frankness reserved only for the Inner Party right? During his secret meeting with Winson, O'Brien turns off the telescreen for a reason (that meeting itself was a charade but one nonetheless imagines that such a modicum of privacy would be an actual privilege of the inner party). O'Brien can get away with that, being Inner Party, but Syme needs to be a little less cognoscenti, especially when among colleagues. You only get to talk shop like Syme if your loyalty is also unshakable, whereupon you become inner party material like O'Brien.
Two interactions between Smith and O'Brien has me wonder about whether there is an extreme initiation to promote people to the Inner Party.
When Winston answers questions on the lengths he was prepared to go to undermine the Party and when he see's O Brian in the Ministry for the first time and exclaims 'They got you too'. O Brian almost ruefully adds they got him sometime before.
So its possible that perhaps Syme has a promotion as such and for this to happen all traces of his former life or vapourised and he becomes something new. Winston is broken but reconciled at the end, loving big brother.
Because the party rules by terror. No-one is safe. Everyone's turn comes sooner or later. At best, you can postpone your inevitable fate by conforming totally - until the party decides that total conformity is itself a sign of subversive thought. It's not about individual guilt, actions, character, etc. It's about total power. The party alone decides what it is criminal at any time. Hannah Arendt understood this very clearly.
This is really good, thank you, and you have reminded how brilliant the actors who played Syme have been.
Newspeak was created solely to limit the lexicon to the specifics needed to serve the party loyally - and for the specific elimination of any language that could even create the potential framework for disloyalty. Syme understood the difference between Newspeak and Oldspeak, which means he could understood the Party's motive - which must only come from a desire to preserve their current power. To the Party Syme is the ultimate threat: A committed party member that understands the lopsided power dynamic of the Party and society, the inescapable reality that all that loyalty is - by design - a one-way street. Big Brother will never reciprocate your love and loyalty, no matter how sincere.
The Party could never tolerate such a thought to be uttered - even internally. Simpler to disappear the possibility altogether.
Here's a thought, perhaps Syme was in fact a secret Inner Party member and his observations and reports were directly responsible for Winston's eventual downfall.
Given that we don't know if syme was executed or not, I believe that he more likely got a promotion and was accepted into the inner party. Maybe he had to be educated or "cured" of the inability of performing the second part of double think (forgetting that you forgot and being discreet). For the party to kill someone of his intelligence and someone whose fanaticism is on par with those in the inner party would be a serious waste of potential. If you really think about it, it would make way more sense for him to have been accepted into the ranks of the inner party than it would to be killed. The book gives us the opinion Winston has that he would be executed but not what objectively happened to him. Winston was already proven wrong when he predicted parsons wife would be arrested instead of parsons himself, it's not out of this world to think that Orwell made Winston's predictions wrong with the assumption that we can infer that syme wasn't vapor but rather promoted and possibly given a new identity
Winstons summary made perfect sense to me.
Symes was able to work out and understand the parties reasons for creating Newspeak and having the articulation to be able to explain this in simple terms could be dangerous if he did ever turn against BB.
Better to be an unseen wolf among sheep in 1984
Syme was too clever and therefore a threat. Also, he was careless. "Do you realise", he asked Winston in Chapter 5, "that by the year 2050 not a single person will understand such a conversation as we are having now?" "Except the proles", Winston began. Syme answered "The proles are not human beings". That was too outspoken and unwise to say out loud.
Syme belonged to a stratum in which rebelliousness was overrepresented. The government wished to eliminate it and the killing of loyal party members along with rebels was nothing to regret.
Syme said the quiet parts out loud, and that the Party could not allow.
I always thought it was odd that they didn't initiate him into the higher cadres of the party. Surely the folks there must be of similar quality while also being fanatically loyal. Maybe they did and they erased his old identity.
That's the thing, we don't know what happened to him. It's just as possible he got promoted as opposed to "de" motef
Synmes can happen in any organization. His "crimes" don't even have to be true. The only difference in organizations is how much betrayal is encouraged by the Boss. Symes might have been disappeared for no reason at all except someone's ambition.
: What I figured is that he was simply nabbed, told he already knew what was going to happen, had a little time to dread and then probably to accept, and then got a .45 to the brain stem or a .22 just below and behind one ear. I am of the notion that he was such a True Believer that while he did not want to die and dreaded it... he understood why he had to go. Once he was nabbed and contained for whatever brief time it likely was, I think he sussed it out, probably intuitively and then rationally. Right before he was decommissioned, he probably had the same look on his face as Smitty (Sean Pertwee) did right before he went out with a bang in "Event Horizon".
There is logic in what youre saying but I dont think the eliminated him. I dont think they eliminate anyone that gets caught. Altough I do believe they dealt with him differently. I could actually imagine him "getting a promotion" like O'brien. Since he already had a fanatic mindset and was also smart he couldve been a valuable asset.
syme was too intelligent, he knew too much and that scares the party. They live in fear and paranoia just like everyone else.Cowards.
Donald Pleasance was perfect as Syme in the 1954 version’s cafeteria scene.
Syme may have been promoted and reassigned. Inner party members probably scheme against each other all the time and fresh blood is needed occasionally to fill in a new opening.
Some things that have come to mind about Syme over my readings…
1. The main reason he was vaporized was because he was thinking about INGSOC and the whole point of INGSOC was to end thought.
2. The secondary but still very important factor is that, for the Party, the arbitrariness and thoughtlessness of vaporizing people was the point.
3. A necessary feature of NEWSPEAK would be eliminating entirely all people who ever knew or even heard OLDSPEAK, starting with the people who created NEWSPEAK. Note how *nobody* in the Outer Party seemed to have any idea of how the Party came to power. They didn’t even think about it. It just appeared. Once it was in power, it was *always* in power. Did they already do a Stalinesque purge of anyone who could remember what happened or even that anything happened at all?
4. Finally, Syme talked a lot about NEWSPEAK but he didn’t speak in NEWSPEAK. That’s a fatal flaw. He was focused on the external words and not on controlling his own thoughts.
And while I’m on a roll…
I’ve long thought that the very first person disappeared was Big Brother, whoever he was before the Revolution. He’d have been the most dangerous person of all. He knew how it was done and he was capable of getting it done. That made him capable of getting it un-done. This may have even been part of his plan. The whole INGSOC system was set up to overcome the problem of every revolution containing the seeds of its own destruction.
Syme reminds me of a "friend" of mine. He's smart in certain areas but he lacks discretion. He also treats ideas like toys, including dangerous ideas. He wouldn't last a day in 1984 - not that I would either or want to.
I looked at Syme in a different way. We know that Winston thinks Syme will be vaporized and we know that later he disappears but we don't actually know what happens to him. The party is sophisticated enough that it doesn't throw away someone like Syme on the off chance that his intelligence will lead to thought crime. If he does commit thought crime the party will eliminate him. The party has confidence that thought crime will be found. I think he got promoted or a transfer, he's not dangerous. Winston was wrong.
The inner party is probably deeply cynical. It’s the ability to be both a true believer and a thorough cynic at the same time that is necessary under this system.
Im wondering if the party would go so far as to say that syme even having the knowledge of what came befoe was enough, almost as if the newspeak should of completely erased what came before, with this being impossible, his death was always a certainty, being a thought criminal was as easy as remembering a different answer, even if you were the one to come up with the new, acceptable answer.
'Happiness must be earned' - The thief of Bagdad, Hollywood, USA (1924)
'Work sets you free' - Concentration camps, Nazi Germany (1933)
'Only fools and horses work'- BBC, England (1981)
reminds me of the TV series of La Femme Nikita - the organisation just kept killing off its own agents
G. K. Chesterton has character named Gabriel Syme in The Man Who Was Thursday (1908). This man is possibly our Syme’s grandfather. He is a poet, so this checks off the wordsmith legacy. As an secret policeman infiltrating anarchist groups, he is also a member of the forerunner of the Thought Police
Like a drunk, he didn't know when to shut up.
It's like understanding the word "bias", it implies understanding of when someone is trying to present information in a way that makes you think a certain way that they want you to or that there is alternative information that might be free of influence and thus the truth.
There is no such thing as unbiased information. Intentionally or not, even the decision to share certain information is influenced by a person's beliefs. Nobody shares information just for the sake of sharing it. They believe the information is worth knowing.
Bias shouldn't be a dirty word, it's an inherent part of consciousness.
@@greyfells2829 Either way, my intention was to point out how such a word would probably be excluded from Newspeak as it shows a particular level of understanding of information that Big Brother wouldn't want its adherents to know, it allows for autonomy (self-awareness) to think and process information in ways that could be detrimental to Big brother.
I'm actually a fan of the theory that he was actually invited into the inner party and given a new identity, as that just makes much more sense from a purely pragmatic standpoint.
Syme was a thought criminal all along. His job was to destroy words and create Newspeak, but he spoke analytically about old speak and how he made Newspeak different and why - to reduce the scope of thought to make thought crime impossible. He was supposed to admire Duckspeak in that context and not say it would be a criticism in another context. He was supposed to slowly forget old speak and only say that Newspeak clarified, purified thought to cement love for Big Brother.. I think he did go to room 101 because he saw through the mechanisms of control and so could not really emotionally love Big Brother. He thought BB did not exist, but was another effective mode of control. His torture was burial alive to shut hm up forever, to fill his mouth with suffocating dirt as he tried to explain himself.
Being an adherent to ingsoc doesn't excuse you from the crime of eloquent and direct explanation of complex ideas. The inner party wants the outer party to be repressed, paranoid, and insecure: not joyfully yapping about their (unspokenly confidential) work.
Oceania will be a society completely stripped of thinking out of line besides, what do you need this man who provides intellectual input for?
I don't recall any place in the book where it is clearly stated that Syme HAS been vaporised. It's purely speculation on Winston's part.
Was Winston then killed at the end, since he was now cured?
This is unknown. Winston certainly hoped to be executed, but the Party may have kept him alive (at least for a time) just as they're cruel.
@@nineteen-eighty-four-lore I got the impression from the book that he will eventually be killed but that could be years into the future at the Party's pleasure. They weren't in any kind of rush.
@@shan4680 it's stated that they generally can live for up to 2 years before probably being tortured and then killed
Maybe ( Unknown to most ) Syme was Promoted ? maybe the Oceanian government relocated him onto more proper facilities on someplace else
I always wondered why they didn’t induct him into the inner party. His intellect would be an incredible asset to the party.
He is very smart, however, I think it also requires certain other traits too. Syme does seem to show a ruthlessness when he gloats over how he enjoys the hangings, which would seem to fit with the Inner Party's requirement for a certain cold-blooded attitude. In Goldstein's Book, it does say a certain amount of transfer is allowed between the branches to let the ambitious rise and exclude the weaklings. Perhaps, though Syme is not a "weakling" he simply lacks the requisite ambition, though he is ruthless and intelligent.
2:57 what adaptation is the old footage from?
It's the 1954 BBC adaptation of the book, starring Peter Cushing.
First Law from Robert Greene's 48 Laws was "Never Outshine the Master". Could be Syme's managers were threatened by him.
Syme was all intellect and no instinct.
Syme "had to be" eliminated.
If "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." is a given ...
[SIDEBAR: did George spend as much time deciding which of these two sentences should precede the other, as I've spent trying to analyse why(?) he chose to put them this way?😂🎉]
... then Syme could not remain alive. Oceania needed to eliminate Syme's connection to Oldspeak.
if syme turned, i think it would depend on the circumstances. Does he see something that pierces his intellectualizing? Does he realize he is in danger? Does BB start to weaken?
Intellect leads to the ability for scrutiny to exist. It will never secure conformity.
Syme was much like Russian ultra-nationalists challenging Putin from the right. “This war is just and our cause is righteous, but you aren’t running it correctly, you aren’t going far enough”
Yes, I think I know what you mean.
How odd.
Wasn't it the Ukrainian ultra nationalists who started the killings back in 2014 following the coup?
Burning people alive in the Odessa trade Union building, all documented but now memory holed by the media.
The Orwellian rewriting of history which pretends the war was unprovoked.
SYME was not the threat potential, Syme was a VECTOR of honesty that could have TRIGGERED THOUGHTS IN OTHERS from statements about process & purpose
5:32 Syme had a habit of saying things that were better left unsaid, so when they vaporised him they unsaid everything he had said in life.
Syme was vaporized because the party understood, "A stitch in time saves nine." Although I would think it was erased from all books.
INGSOC killing Syma would have been a waste of human resources from INGSOC pov. Maybe they promoted him to inner party under different name and erased his former outer party self instead?
I think Syme was recruited into the Inner Party. O Brien too expresses a similar clarity of thought as Syme does. Every Party member is going to be vaporised whether or not they are ever put through the Ministry of Love but I think except for whoever the originals were the way you become an Inner Party member is by demonstrating a sophisticated intellect. The reason we never see Syme again is because he is reassigned. We never see Outer Party members getting promoted. The Inner Party and how you join it is never discussed. No process is mentioned. Inner Party members just 'are' and not even Winston meditates on how they come to be. The Party probably wants it that way as the idea that there could be turn over from the bottom could lead to competition, to questioning, to rebellion so if you are promoted to the Inner Party you are transferred elsewhere in Oceania so you cannot run into your former colleagues.
It's possible some rare few adult Outer Party members (who are viewed as particularly good assets) are allowed to rise in this way, however, Goldstein's Book (which O'Brien describes as true as description) does state that movement between the Party is far less common than movement between the 'classes' in previous times.
It also does give us some information (though not a lot): entrance into either branch of the Party is by examination at age 16. I'm sure a lot of subtle nepotism is likely involved, however, at least in principle membership is not guaranteed, that is, a child of Inner Party parents will not automatically become an Inner Party member.
I suspect that the 'examination' is not exclusively intellectual. The Book also states that a tiny bit of movement is permitted in order to exclude 'weaklings' from the Inner Party, which makes sense given the kind of things they're involved in (e.g. torture, running wars, creating poverty etc). I speculate that part of the test involves hurting someone to demonstrate they have the stomach for that kind of thing. This is essential to avoit the Inner Party slowly 'softening' and thus relaxing its control.
Even when i was reading the novel for the first time, i noticed. Yeah, this guy is gonna go. He knows too much.
In the novel "Julia", it was assumed that Syme had gone into hiding and run away. Presumably to Eurasia. That's why I can't take this book "Julia" seriously.
Useful until he’s not. That’s sort of the point. I’m a world where you are nothing more than an economic unit, guess what happens to you.
Great channel. Have you done any video podcast interviews? Our audience are mostly entrepreneurs but thinking of a separate channel for subjects like this.
working on the newspeak dictionary - which means he had to understand Oldspeak and all the cultural context, so he could deconstruct it to create Newspeak. He remembers what was which is something the party can not allow, he's a living link to a past the party will not allow to exist.
personally i always thought syme and similar people who are smart but also indoctrinated were taken into the inner party. he was smart, knowledgable, and clearly knew well the inner workings of the party. thats someone that is a hell of a waste to just kill off. i imagined he was scrubbed from the records, yes, but was given a new alias and set to work in the inner party where his bluntness could cause less harm.
There's a lot to be said for this theory. Winston only assumes he has been vaporised. A lot of disappearances are also suicides, but that doesn't strike me as compatible with the Syme character.
I would say it's more than an intellect thing alone - that you have to be completely ruthless, as Goldstein's Book puts it exclude weaklings from the Inner Party, but Syme seems to fit this quite well too, as he seems perfectly OK with hangins and such. 🤔
I was not expecting young Donald Pleasence.
Nobody expects young Donald Pleasence!
He was liquidated to maintain the blessed purity of oblivion.
song?
Instead of vaporization, Syme should perhaps have been promoted to the Inner Party where he could have continued his good work for the Party at a higher more productive level
So basically Syme will be vaporized because he is annoying.
Syme is such a great tragedy of a character.
Syme was vaporized because the party still remembers the saying: A stitch in time saves nine.
Either disappeared or promoted to Inner Party, and sent to some distant province with new name etc
I love that you have the peter cushing version. John hurt was ok, but cushing was better
Syme committed the classic mistake of entry-level commies: he read theory and ended up understanding it, instead of memorizing lines mechanically.
He was a bit too frank and open about his enthusiam for his own good by the looks of it.
Marxists not commies
@karlscher5170 there is no difference. Both evil vermin.
@@neurocidesakiwi Do you not see the irony of uncritically labeling an entire ideology as "evil vermin" under a video about 1984?
@@karlscher5170 Stalinists, not commies... I know this is the usual talking point that's repeated ad nauseam, but it'll get repeated until it get into everyone's little mind; remember that Orwell was socialist - and his works were against totalitarianism in general, with a particular aversion to Stalinism.
Being a true believer isn't always enough.
My curiosity is how the country people lives, the people that work in the fields in the unnamed villages far from everything. This places still exist?
It's probably not all that exciting. Most of the Party members will be in the major urban areas, especially London, I'm guessing. Proles are generally not seen as a threat. There will probably be a lot of civilian, perhaps even military presence in rural areas, given they'll need to produce and seize some food (Britain is a net importer of food, so not all of it). Food will be scarce, life hard, but generally proles are left alone.
I can't see their lives being radically different from urban proles in terms of their personal freedoms. Unlike Party members they're free to have relationships with who they like, marry and divorce. They have their sports and lottery and would even be allowed religious worship if they desired it. Materially-speaking, it's probably a bit worse for rural proles. I think these places probably do exist, yes.
This video brings to mind another potential reason as to how possibly The party would be defeated in the future in 2 meaningful ways.
1. is winston failed to see that people like him and syme's outer party members had the potential to directly or indirectly stir rebellion and the more intellectuals that appear, the more likely it is one slips through the cracks and over time could amass to some sort of leadership to an actual organised response to the party
2. is even more interesting and speaks to fascisms weakness. killing symes is dangerous as he is a loyal party member, the more people that are truly loyal to the party that gets snuffed out the more loyal members shall subconsciously realise that the party doesn't care for being loyal but obedient and cookie cutter - which again in tern stirs rebellion and as the thought police has sometimes shown clear belief in its power to the point where they will lie about people still alive the more party members will realise the true nature of the party
One of my new favourite quotes from modern fiction comes from Andor an it goes along the lines of "Fascism requires constant oppression as it is not normal and can't be normal" I think from Symes death we can see that possibly the power lies in the proles but maybe the power lies in the outer party as well - the more the lie of loyalty is destroyed the more bitterness will form
that's my reading of the meaning behind syme's as a character at least.
1984 is about stalinism not fascism, ingsoc had certain...tendencies that can only be found among certain leftisms, the whole "rewiring" of thought and all
@@nunodiogo5745 ok fair but is Stalinism not fascism with red paint since Stalin himself betrayed communism in order to become leader since having an all powerful leader or figure head(wink wink big brother) flies in the face of communism and the idea of 1 singular party creating an equal utopian nation of pure people
Whether he could have become a thought criminal depends entirely on whether he could make the jump from "This is what they do" to "what they do is wrong". I don't know whether he could, but hell, Winston did, and Syme was smarter than him, so maybe. Mind you, O'Brien proves that you don't have to be good to be smart. Mind you, O'Brien's also REALLY far up his own ass. Make a video on him if you want my opinions on that clown.
I don't think he was. I think he was promoted. He was reading Winston's mind at lunch; O'Brien did the same while torturing him. "The Book" says that sometimes Outer Party members get promoted if they have some special skill.