June 8, 1949: Nineteen Eighty-Four is published by Secker & Warburg in London. It is the last novel written by Eric Arthur Blair to be published in his lifetime. It has become synonymous with his pen name: George Orwell.
The year was not chosen at random: It was simply the year in which the book was written, 1948, with the last 2 digits reversed, suggesting a "near future" to which the reader might be able to relate, even if Orwell himself might not live to see it.
He was born on June 25, 1903, in Motihari in British-occupied India, where his father was a civil servant for the British government. The following year, the family moved back to the home island, and Eric Blair grew up in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, outside Reading, about 40 miles west of London. But by the time his earlier well-remembered novel, Animal Farm, was published in 1945, his death was a foregone conclusion: He had been suffering from tuberculosis as early as 1938, when he was a journalist covering the Spanish Civil War. He died on January 21, 1950.
Within the world of the novel -- which begins with the words, "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen," and the date turns out to be April 4, 1984 -- Britain, now known as Airstrip One, as well as America and the entire Western Hemisphere, and also the original Oceania, meaning Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, are part of a totalitarian superstate, named Oceania.
This superstate is apparently led by Big Brother, who is pushed by the Party, the political organization that actually runs Oceania. Orwell leaves it vague as to whether Big Brother is a man who actually exists, or ever did, or is merely a convenient symbol for the Party to use.
The government tells the people, "Big Brother is watching you." As a result, they don't want to disappoint him by doing anything against the Party, and therefore against the nation. "Who controls the present controls the past" is a Party plank, and so there is a Ministry of Truth, which rewrites history to suit the Party's needs.
The reader learns that "Oceania had always been at war with with Eastasia," which includes Japan, China, and the Himalayas. The reader also learns that "Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia," which includes what had been the Soviet Union and the rest of continental Europe. Both statements of perpetual war had been true, and neither had been true, and could flip, depending on what the Party thought it needed at the time: "Even the names of countries, and their shapes on the map, had been different. Airstrip One, for instance, had not been so called in those days: it had been called England, or Britain, though London, he felt fairly certain, had always been called London."
"He" is the novel's protagonist, a Ministry of Truth worker named Winston Smith. Through his work of changing the truth, he has seen the truth, and begins to rebel. One thing leads to another, and his contact in a resistance group turns out to be a mole placed by the Party, and Winston is captured and tortured, and his loyalty is restored. The last line of the novel is, "He loved Big Brother."
In real life, the year 1984 turned out to be very little like the world of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, although a movie based on the book, starring William Hurt as Winston, was released that year. And yet, in the years to come, Britain, and, to a lesser extent, America, would become loaded with closed-circuit TV cameras used by law-enforcement agencies. This growth of government watching led to a British TV "reality show," exported to America, titled Big Brother.
In short, just as "Machiavellian" has come to represent the kind of tactics that Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was mocking in his book The Prince, "Orwellian" has come to mean the kind of governmental approach -- in total, or even in part, as with CCTV cameras -- that Orwell himself, a democratic socialist -- opposed.
In 1982, Alan Moore's graphic novel V for Vendetta premiered, showing a fascist, surveillance-obsessed Britain of 1997, led by a Big Brother-type figure, who was basically insecure and needed the love of the people. A film version was released in 2006, set in 2038, and it took a lot of liberties with the original story, including making the Chancellor a much meaner figure, valuing fear more than love. He was played by William Hurt, who had come full circle from playing Winston Smith 22 years earlier.
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June 8, 1949 was a Wednesday. These baseball games were played that day:
* The New York Yankees lost to the Detroit Tigers, 3-2 at Briggs Stadium (now Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. Virgil Trucks and Tommy Byrne both went the distance, before Vic Wertz singled home the winning run off Byrne in the bottom of the 11th inning. Joe DiMaggio did not play, as he was recovering from a heel injury.
* The New York Giants lost the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-0 at the Polo Grounds. Stan Musial went 1-for-4, and Gerry Staley pitched a 3-hit shutout.
* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-1 at Ebbets Field. It was said of Rex Barney that he would be the greatest pitcher in the world if home plate were high and outside. In this game, he went the distance, allowing just 1 run on 2 hits, but also walked 4 batters. Jackie Robinson went 2-for-3 with 2 RBIs.
* The Boston Braves beat the Cincinnati Reds, 8-7 at Braves Field in Boston. Jim Russell won the game with an RBI single in the bottom of the 15th inning.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2-0 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Robin Roberts pitched a 6-hit shutout.
* The Cleveland Indians beat the Washington Senators, 8-3 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Bob Lemon not only went the distance for the win, but hit a home run.
* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-2 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.
* And the St. Louis Browns beat the Boston Red Sox, 5-2 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Ted Williams went 2-for-3 with a walk.
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