I always preferred the idea that Syme was actually invited into the Inner party and given a new identity rather than vaporized, since from a practical standpoint it makes much more sense to do that with a man who sees through all your bullcrap easily but agrees with what you're doing anyway.
I think Goldstein says the party would recruit inner party members from the outer party membership if it suited the party’s purpose. Or words to that affect lol
Syme is an utter thought criminal. He brags about Newspeak to others and the advances he personally has made (note all books are collective according to O'Brien). He revels in contrasting clunky crime filled Oldspeak, with his lean efficient crimestop Newspeak. He is supposed to doublethink Oldspeak, not use it publicly and brazenly to show how Newspeak is just a creation, his own. As for raising people into the Inner Party, it wouldn't be Syme, because he can see through Winston but never reports him. Maybe Tillotson. What matters most is the willingness to rat out your friends, to see them as a lower order and yourself as loyal to BB. Who are the leading Proles who get raised up? Guys who work all day, put in overtime during emergencies, and encourage others to press on? No, in the labor camps, gangsters form an aristocracy. That's who the Inner Party would like. The only bigger thought criminal than Syme is Parsons. In the holding cell, he says, they can't shoot you just for thoughts which you can't help. That is the only reason to torture (not shoot). They would never shoot a person whose mind wasn't cleaned. Moreover, Parsons talks about "shooting," because he prefers it. My guess the worst thing in the world for him is castration. With his praise of the rise in Choco rations, 25 grams up from 30, his sweaty participation in activities and committees, he reveals he seeks tiny pleasures and is terrified of the party. He finds ways to avoids the gruesome executions (which Syme relishes - the feet kicking at the hanging). The only one O'Brien probably respected was Julia, who understood the motives, the why, of the party, and apparently held out long enough that O'Brien had to get Winston to say - "Rip her face off!" Disfigurement.
For me, O'Brien was always loyal to the winning side of the Party's power struggle. As a young man, most likely, he would have been a dedicated eager member. Just like so many intelligent people who eagerly support oppressive regimes, not because they have to but because they *believe* in it. If you want a bit of light in the darkness (There is no evidence for this and I don't believe it myself.) perhaps O'Brien has become disenchanted and knows that he will be in Room 101 soon as a subject. Perhaps he rebels, not every thought criminal he meets ends up being arrested. The ones who are smarter, less trusting and niave than Winston, who know how to hide and spread, perhaps he ignores them. What would have happened if Winston and Julia had immediately reported O'Brien for thought crime? "We came for the book and were shocked when we realised he is a thought criminal!" Perhaps they failed the first test when they trusted the televisor was off and answered his questions?
I have a different and also non cannon theory about this that i would like to share, i am convinced that they got O'Brien/Richard Burton in the years following WW2, while he was still living under his original surname which was oddly enough Smith. In the years after the events of the WW2 film Where Eagles Dare, during which he and the American officer LT Shaffer/Clint Eastwood. Managed to expose a secret German spy ring inside the British military, and afterwards managed to escape from behind enemy lines. This act would have earned O'Brien the respect of Big Brother, and the future leaders of the revolution before they took power, and led to his eventual recruitment into the party. For his resourcefulness and skills in espionage, would indeed make him the perfect agent to expose rebels and discontent within the party's ranks. This also adds a plot twist explaining in a rather strange and also sadistic way, why he would target Winston as someone who may even be potentially related to him. In order to prove his unquestionable loyalty to BB and the party.
I’m gonna be honest, as a young 2001 Gen Z guy, the dark setting of 1984 in the Michael Radford film is just utterly disturbing and realistic. I couldn’t imagine living in it. It just seems so bleak and miserable and hopeless.
Yeah. You can't believe what we don't want you to believe. You can't think what we don't want you to think. You can't say what we don't want you to say. Thank God we're nowhere near a situation like that, right?
I feel O’Brian was referring to the point in his life when he realised himself he was completely loyal & devoted to BB, the party & Oceania. Possibly as an older child in an early version of the young spies or as a teenager when he successfully passed his entrance exams into the inner party. We know the inner party are the most fanatical in their loyalty to BB & the party etc so it would make sense he gave himself completely in mind & body when he joined the inner party ranks. While we don’t know O’Brian’s exact age, we can sort of assume he was around as an older child, teenager or a young adult during the early days of the party after the Western revolution. Another possibility is he’s referring to this point in his life when he realised he was fully loyal & this was a purely voluntarily act before BB & the party had complete control over Oceania and had implemented all the structures of a totalitarian regime to force the population into loyalty.
O’Brien is a true believer through and through. He has so convinced himself of the enduring truth of Ingsoc (that is, the enduring truth of whatever BB says today has always been the enduring truth) that he cannot understand its flaws, principally the Herculean (at least!) task of constantly rectifying the truth back and forth.
Personally I see a sort of parallel to a character from Brave New World. That character is the World Controller Mustapha Mond. In a conversation with Mond and the "Savage" John he described himself as someone who had once been an intellectual malcontent. He'd been given a choice of exile to an island or of truly embracing the system under which the world was run. He embraced it after having been shown the inherent logic for the sacrifice of intellectualism and creativity to ensure the stability of the world state. Consider that as you pointed out that O'BRIEN was with the party since its earliest days. So it's possible that he might have initially questioned the way things were going but not to the point that extreme measures were taken. Granted it's not exactly likely but I would think that the early party would have preferred to keep him, with his obvious intelligence, intact, if at all possible.
My thoughts always were Obrien was a party member on the way up, and probably saw or heard room 101 and towed the line from that point on so to speak. Like internally making changes before he went down the anti-party road.
Perhaps nearer the start of the Party and Revolution there was a lot more leeway given to unorthodox views, or at least what would later be deemed "unorthodox" so maybe he was a bit more idealistic back in the day and - like you say - heard some bad things or simply saw which way the wind was blowing (like what he saw) and fully committed.
Assuming, of course, that Winston's estimation of his age is correct or at least close, O'Brien would have been an adult when the Party came to power, though a young (and perhaps impressionable) one. Winston hadn't heard of INGSOC before 1960, though from what I can tell it must have arisen some time in the late 1950s as the war and "fighting in the streets" that he remembers occurred when he was a child and he was born in 1945 or 46. If O'Brien is about fifty then that makes him around thirty in 1964 which was just before Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford were purged. So, he would have been about twenty perhaps when it all kicked off and is in fact a founding Party member perhaps or maybe a very early member and likely never had to take an exam. Who knows though?
On the matter of O'brien's character, the hindsight of history actually gives us a possibility Orwell wouldn't be able to benefit from at the time he wrote the book: totalitarian regimes with constant purges like Ignsoc rarely produces people like the image O'Brien presents to Winston: confident, competent, and loyal; for why should anyone feel loyalty to a regime demonstrably unlyoyal to you? No, historically, administrators who survived working in regimes like this came in two varieties: A) those who managed to divert attention away form themselves by successfully putting on the image of a sad incompetent man who only makes rent by taking bribes, or else were charismatic sociopaths who did a good job putting on the image of loyalty but in reality wouldn't doublethink diddly squat if it meant living in fear of other such people. It's quite possible O'Brien is the latter person, Again, this analysis is based on info that Orwell wouldn't have been privy to, so it's probably not canon, but I like to think he'd like the idea if it were presented to him.
I get what you're saying, especially when thinking of Stalin's underlings nearer the end of his rule. I think anybody who was charismatic or competent enough to be noticed would have been purged earlier on given the man's paranoia. They say the death of Kirov (which he used to initiate his purge) was likely actually ordered by him as he was unsettled by his friend’s popularity! I suspect that anybody with even half of O'Brien's intellect, abilities and charisma would have been "disappeared" quite early on. Lol I think there is likely a balance to be struck though. Would the infrastructure of the elite of government still function with low IQ or cowardly senior ministers? I was going to say “No,” but thinking about it - probably! Lol
@@nineteen-eighty-four-lore The Soviet Union got their collective butt handed to them in their war with finland precisely because Stalin had purged all the competent officers. ...so maybe _that's_ the real reason the war with Eastasia and Eurasia is such a stalemate.
There are people who are capable of completely rethink and remold themselves into a new person without ever looking back or remembering their old 'selves'. Add to that the ability to subsume oneself into an idea, conviction or ideology and become a physical manifestation, a mere instrument of that ideology. O'Brien probably ceased to be a person, an individual with an own will and desires a long time ago.
Nothing good I suspect. In the 'Julia' non-cannon novel Julia does briefly reveal the "two princesses" - presumably Elizabeth and Margaret - were murdered. Given the reach of the Party I find it very unlikely any royalty or even members of the nobility survived in keeping with the Party's explanation of the Middle replacing the High. Indeed few (if any) of the previous "High" likely survived the rise of the Party.
I would imagine they would have fled to another part of the commonwealth when the revolution took hold in the UK but you make a good point, it would have been a temporary sanctuary as the revolution spread & Oceania eventually absorbed the Commonwealth, the US & other western countries.
There’s a line in the book mentioning a statue of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell is famous for overthrowing and executing a monarch among other things . I always took this as a VERY subtle hint that the party executed the royal family
While I think O'Brien's claims that he interorgated Rutherford et al and wrote part of 'Goldstein's' book I don't think they should be taken at face value and think there is a possibility that a member of the inner party and indeed thought police can lie Agree that O'Brien's claim 'they got me a long time ago' simply means he has always been an Ingsoc true believer.
I've always found that bit of dialogue in Part Three intriguing when O'Brien says that Winston's mind resembles his own and "appeals" to him which may indicate a sympathy of sorts for his views or at an understanding of them (if not endorsement) of them. Not sure about the Winston becoming O'Brien idea though. Interesting though!
I always preferred the idea that Syme was actually invited into the Inner party and given a new identity rather than vaporized, since from a practical standpoint it makes much more sense to do that with a man who sees through all your bullcrap easily but agrees with what you're doing anyway.
He was
This seems more plausible. Why kill off the in-agreement smart ones if you can just integrate them with the others
I think Goldstein says the party would recruit inner party members from the outer party membership if it suited the party’s purpose. Or words to that affect lol
Syme is an utter thought criminal. He brags about Newspeak to others and the advances he personally has made (note all books are collective according to O'Brien). He revels in contrasting clunky crime filled Oldspeak, with his lean efficient crimestop Newspeak. He is supposed to doublethink Oldspeak, not use it publicly and brazenly to show how Newspeak is just a creation, his own. As for raising people into the Inner Party, it wouldn't be Syme, because he can see through Winston but never reports him. Maybe Tillotson. What matters most is the willingness to rat out your friends, to see them as a lower order and yourself as loyal to BB. Who are the leading Proles who get raised up? Guys who work all day, put in overtime during emergencies, and encourage others to press on? No, in the labor camps, gangsters form an aristocracy. That's who the Inner Party would like. The only bigger thought criminal than Syme is Parsons. In the holding cell, he says, they can't shoot you just for thoughts which you can't help. That is the only reason to torture (not shoot). They would never shoot a person whose mind wasn't cleaned. Moreover, Parsons talks about "shooting," because he prefers it. My guess the worst thing in the world for him is castration. With his praise of the rise in Choco rations, 25 grams up from 30, his sweaty participation in activities and committees, he reveals he seeks tiny pleasures and is terrified of the party. He finds ways to avoids the gruesome executions (which Syme relishes - the feet kicking at the hanging). The only one O'Brien probably respected was Julia, who understood the motives, the why, of the party, and apparently held out long enough that O'Brien had to get Winston to say - "Rip her face off!" Disfigurement.
Making sense is not priority number 1 for political systems like this.
I am convinced that this guy is just George Orwell reincarnated to explain all the lore he forgot to put in the books
I have no memories of such a past life, although I was born in 1984! Dum-dum-duuum! Not April 4th though. Lol
For me, O'Brien was always loyal to the winning side of the Party's power struggle. As a young man, most likely, he would have been a dedicated eager member. Just like so many intelligent people who eagerly support oppressive regimes, not because they have to but because they *believe* in it.
If you want a bit of light in the darkness (There is no evidence for this and I don't believe it myself.) perhaps O'Brien has become disenchanted and knows that he will be in Room 101 soon as a subject. Perhaps he rebels, not every thought criminal he meets ends up being arrested. The ones who are smarter, less trusting and niave than Winston, who know how to hide and spread, perhaps he ignores them.
What would have happened if Winston and Julia had immediately reported O'Brien for thought crime? "We came for the book and were shocked when we realised he is a thought criminal!" Perhaps they failed the first test when they trusted the televisor was off and answered his questions?
I always thought it meant he'd been a loyal Party member for years ... and a willing one.
I have a different and also non cannon theory about this that i would like to share, i am convinced that they got O'Brien/Richard Burton in the years following WW2, while he was still living under his original surname which was oddly enough Smith. In the years after the events of the WW2 film Where Eagles Dare, during which he and the American officer LT Shaffer/Clint Eastwood. Managed to expose a secret German spy ring inside the British military, and afterwards managed to escape from behind enemy lines. This act would have earned O'Brien the respect of Big Brother, and the future leaders of the revolution before they took power, and led to his eventual recruitment into the party. For his resourcefulness and skills in espionage, would indeed make him the perfect agent to expose rebels and discontent within the party's ranks. This also adds a plot twist explaining in a rather strange and also sadistic way, why he would target Winston as someone who may even be potentially related to him. In order to prove his unquestionable loyalty to BB and the party.
I’m gonna be honest, as a young 2001 Gen Z guy, the dark setting of 1984 in the Michael Radford film is just utterly disturbing and realistic. I couldn’t imagine living in it. It just seems so bleak and miserable and hopeless.
Yeah. You can't believe what we don't want you to believe. You can't think what we don't want you to think. You can't say what we don't want you to say. Thank God we're nowhere near a situation like that, right?
1984 should always be considered a preview of attractions potentially coming soon to a society near you.
@@Fauntleroy. EXACTLY!
Yep, totally agree
I think North Korea would be a pretty convincing real word case. Other people on this channel have made a similar observation.
I feel O’Brian was referring to the point in his life when he realised himself he was completely loyal & devoted to BB, the party & Oceania. Possibly as an older child in an early version of the young spies or as a teenager when he successfully passed his entrance exams into the inner party. We know the inner party are the most fanatical in their loyalty to BB & the party etc so it would make sense he gave himself completely in mind & body when he joined the inner party ranks.
While we don’t know O’Brian’s exact age, we can sort of assume he was around as an older child, teenager or a young adult during the early days of the party after the Western revolution.
Another possibility is he’s referring to this point in his life when he realised he was fully loyal & this was a purely voluntarily act before BB & the party had complete control over Oceania and had implemented all the structures of a totalitarian regime to force the population into loyalty.
O’Brien is a true believer through and through. He has so convinced himself of the enduring truth of Ingsoc (that is, the enduring truth of whatever BB says today has always been the enduring truth) that he cannot understand its flaws, principally the Herculean (at least!) task of constantly rectifying the truth back and forth.
Personally I see a sort of parallel to a character from Brave New World. That character is the World Controller Mustapha Mond. In a conversation with Mond and the "Savage" John he described himself as someone who had once been an intellectual malcontent. He'd been given a choice of exile to an island or of truly embracing the system under which the world was run. He embraced it after having been shown the inherent logic for the sacrifice of intellectualism and creativity to ensure the stability of the world state.
Consider that as you pointed out that O'BRIEN was with the party since its earliest days. So it's possible that he might have initially questioned the way things were going but not to the point that extreme measures were taken. Granted it's not exactly likely but I would think that the early party would have preferred to keep him, with his obvious intelligence, intact, if at all possible.
I don't think anyone else could have portrayed O'brien as Richard Burton did.
He set a very high bar indeed.
My thoughts always were Obrien was a party member on the way up, and probably saw or heard room 101 and towed the line from that point on so to speak. Like internally making changes before he went down the anti-party road.
Perhaps nearer the start of the Party and Revolution there was a lot more leeway given to unorthodox views, or at least what would later be deemed "unorthodox" so maybe he was a bit more idealistic back in the day and - like you say - heard some bad things or simply saw which way the wind was blowing (like what he saw) and fully committed.
Thoroughly enjoy your content and pov's. I even suggested your channel to my mother and she doesn't even "get" 1984.
Assuming, of course, that Winston's estimation of his age is correct or at least close, O'Brien would have been an adult when the Party came to power, though a young (and perhaps impressionable) one. Winston hadn't heard of INGSOC before 1960, though from what I can tell it must have arisen some time in the late 1950s as the war and "fighting in the streets" that he remembers occurred when he was a child and he was born in 1945 or 46.
If O'Brien is about fifty then that makes him around thirty in 1964 which was just before Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford were purged. So, he would have been about twenty perhaps when it all kicked off and is in fact a founding Party member perhaps or maybe a very early member and likely never had to take an exam. Who knows though?
On the matter of O'brien's character, the hindsight of history actually gives us a possibility Orwell wouldn't be able to benefit from at the time he wrote the book: totalitarian regimes with constant purges like Ignsoc rarely produces people like the image O'Brien presents to Winston: confident, competent, and loyal; for why should anyone feel loyalty to a regime demonstrably unlyoyal to you? No, historically, administrators who survived working in regimes like this came in two varieties: A) those who managed to divert attention away form themselves by successfully putting on the image of a sad incompetent man who only makes rent by taking bribes, or else were charismatic sociopaths who did a good job putting on the image of loyalty but in reality wouldn't doublethink diddly squat if it meant living in fear of other such people.
It's quite possible O'Brien is the latter person, Again, this analysis is based on info that Orwell wouldn't have been privy to, so it's probably not canon, but I like to think he'd like the idea if it were presented to him.
I get what you're saying, especially when thinking of Stalin's underlings nearer the end of his rule. I think anybody who was charismatic or competent enough to be noticed would have been purged earlier on given the man's paranoia. They say the death of Kirov (which he used to initiate his purge) was likely actually ordered by him as he was unsettled by his friend’s popularity!
I suspect that anybody with even half of O'Brien's intellect, abilities and charisma would have been "disappeared" quite early on. Lol
I think there is likely a balance to be struck though. Would the infrastructure of the elite of government still function with low IQ or cowardly senior ministers? I was going to say “No,” but thinking about it - probably! Lol
@@nineteen-eighty-four-lore The Soviet Union got their collective butt handed to them in their war with finland precisely because Stalin had purged all the competent officers.
...so maybe _that's_ the real reason the war with Eastasia and Eurasia is such a stalemate.
There are people who are capable of completely rethink and remold themselves into a new person without ever looking back or remembering their old 'selves'. Add to that the ability to subsume oneself into an idea, conviction or ideology and become a physical manifestation, a mere instrument of that ideology.
O'Brien probably ceased to be a person, an individual with an own will and desires a long time ago.
I always wonder what happened to the royal family. Did they flee? Perhaps, but where could they go that would remain safe?
Nothing good I suspect. In the 'Julia' non-cannon novel Julia does briefly reveal the "two princesses" - presumably Elizabeth and Margaret - were murdered. Given the reach of the Party I find it very unlikely any royalty or even members of the nobility survived in keeping with the Party's explanation of the Middle replacing the High. Indeed few (if any) of the previous "High" likely survived the rise of the Party.
I would imagine they would have fled to another part of the commonwealth when the revolution took hold in the UK but you make a good point, it would have been a temporary sanctuary as the revolution spread & Oceania eventually absorbed the Commonwealth, the US & other western countries.
@@nineteen-eighty-four-loreHaven’t read Julia yet so thanks for the info 😊
There’s a line in the book mentioning a statue of Oliver Cromwell.
Cromwell is famous for overthrowing and executing a monarch among other things . I always took this as a VERY subtle hint that the party executed the royal family
Am I a nerd for viewing every one of your videos, and occasionally commenting?
Just shows you have taste.
Big Brother is watching.
Have to agree, loving all the lore 😊
I always assumed Smith would become like O'Brian. I never assumed Smith was killed at the end of the book. It is kind of up in the air.
I’m excited for the next video
Sometimes the simplest answers are the correct ones. I agree with your opinion on O Brien.
While I think O'Brien's claims that he interorgated Rutherford et al and wrote part of 'Goldstein's' book I don't think they should be taken at face value and think there is a possibility that a member of the inner party and indeed thought police can lie
Agree that O'Brien's claim 'they got me a long time ago' simply means he has always been an Ingsoc true believer.
Of course a thousand people could have written *part* of the current edition of that book.
The O`Briens were my ancestors enemies in old Ireland
I believe Obrien was exactly like Winston at one point in his youth. To go further Winston will become the next Obrien.
Winston will be vaporized (I don't know if that's the right term in english)
He went on to be O’Brien in vendetta
I've always found that bit of dialogue in Part Three intriguing when O'Brien says that Winston's mind resembles his own and "appeals" to him which may indicate a sympathy of sorts for his views or at an understanding of them (if not endorsement) of them. Not sure about the Winston becoming O'Brien idea though. Interesting though!
Past Landa
What’s a triple agent
Someone who appears to be loyal to side A but works for side B but in fact is still loyal to side A
@ thanks