Freedom and the World Wide Web [Archive] - Literature Network Forums

eclectic em

05-24-2005, 06:07 PM

A comment above stated "He warned, yet his books were 'banned' for decades. Now, too late, the books are school reading material." When I attended high school in the early 1970s, Orwell's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave New World" were required reading in Literature. Entire generations have been acquainted with Orwell's "warnings" but that doesn't mean they took his words entirely to heart. Therein lies the rub. It is interesting to see the parallels between the novel "1984" and events leading from when Orwell first wrote the book up to now - regarding telescreens, just think "world wide web". And isn't a web an ensnaring creation... One thing is certain: Freedom is lost a little at a time and it happens so subtlely that hardly anyone ever notices the pivotal events until after the fact. It's true that those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. In closing, I'd like to turn readers' attentions to the W. B. Yeats poem, "Second Coming" written in 1921. If any of you are big Stephen King readers, you'll recognize that he has quoted from it in many of his works: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all convictions, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~