Policies and Strategies

Abstract

Is there any need to add to all that has already been written about Orwell and 1984? In France particularly, where the scale of totalitarianism has been hidden from view for a long time now, people are making up for lost time by stating the obvious. In any case, much of the force of Orwell’s great book derives from the fact that it is crystal clear: the author’s message, as we used to say when I was young, is unambiguous, his warning to those whose minds are still untrammelled is about as subtle as setting off a fire-alarm in a church. Nothing could be more different from the shadowy mysteries of Kafka, which shows that nightmares do not all take the same form, nor is it the obscurest nightmares which are always the most terrifying.