[disown]

What's with the ridiculous amount of "Smith is an unreliable narrator" narrative all of a sudden? Seems like every time 1984 is mentioned, you get a comment about "Smith and unreliable narrator"?

> Real regimes don't mildly torture problematic people and then keep them around at length

"Mildly torture"? Did we read the same book? The torture in 1984 was as systematic and torturous as possible. Of course it's fiction, but nothing mild about it. Also, death squads are used by regimes that are unstable or fighting for power. Like in afghanistan. The totalitarian state described in 1984 was the opposite of afghanistan - completely secure.

Also, Smith wasn't in the "real world" with a "real regime", it's fiction. I hope you realize that. He is narrating a fictional world. So it's rather absurd to claim that he is an unreliable narrator because he isn't narrating the real world. By that logic, every narration in fiction is unreliable and as a consequence makes the claim about unreliable narration absurd.

[dugditches]

Because it's the same poster. Least I recall recently reading the concept here a few days ago and found it odd too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25405731

[082349872349872]

Yes, mostly me, best summarised for the moment at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737728 (tl;dr: of the two fictions, Smith et.al. require far more suspension of disbelief than Goldstein)

As for Smith's torture, I see:

Part 3, Chapter 1: hit on the elbow

Part 3, Chapter 2: beaten, but apparently not enough to break bones. Screamed at, but mostly questioned (not giving leave to urinate is another detail that makes me think Orwell was writing cathartically about his public school days. See "Such, Such Were The Joys".)

Part 3, Chapter 3: restrained. a "dial" of unclear action. scars of unknown origin (and we know that Smith already suffered from varicose lesions well before)

Part 3, Chapter 4: mention of dentures (but had he lost teeth from torture, or from his poor living conditions beforehand?)

Part 3, Chapter 5: failure to be tortured by rats

That's a lot of alleged hours of O'Brien's time, which presumably would be spent (as O'Brien, unlike Smith, got excellent marks on his A levels, thereby getting into the Inner Party) doing something of value for Oceania, rather than enabling Smith's narcissism. It's obvious Smith doesn't have any useful information to give up. How much of an example "pour encourager les autres" could Smith possibly be, considering the oh-so wide, expansive, nature of his circle of friends and acquaintances? The O'Brien of Part 3 is also cardboard, and reminds me of nothing so much as Johnny Hale from "Such, Such Were The Joys".

Consider also:

No sensory deprivation, no waterboarding. Nothing that approaches even Korean-War-era physiological-limit techniques.

[enriquto]

Unreliable narrator [0] is literary device that any writer can chose to use, it has nothing to do whether the described events are facts or fiction: it can be used for both. I don't think at all that 1984 uses this technique, but if it did it could be interpreted that Smith was receiving mild torture but describing it as brutal.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator

[disown]

I know what an unreliable narrator is. There are hints/clues within the story to show why the narrator may be unreliable. You can't say a narrator is unreliable because the fictional world does not align with the real world. That's my point.

It would be like saying bilbo baggins is an unreliable narrator in lord of the rings because magical rings don't exist in the real world. Absurd. But you could say the narrator in fight club may be unreliable since its revealed he has mental issues and the stories don't line up within the movie/book.

[enriquto]

I agree, it is absurd to say that 1984 uses an unreliable narrator (and any other Orwell writings for that matter, it's just not his style).

[082349872349872]

It's not absurd because in 1984, Goldstein's writing shows evidence of thinking like Orwell (based on Orwell's other writing) and evidence of rational thought processes, while Smith is an extremely dislikable protagonist, a wannabe acid-throwing murderer[1], which makes me think he's cardboard, suitable for the "fast-forward".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737728

[1] part II chap 8. By comparison with 1984, the FBI usually gets violent nutcases to come up with their own scenarios without such explicit prompting, but in real life these sorts of people are not lacking for supposing that (their often paranoidly fictional) ends justify the (thankfully equally fictional, at least when they procure "bombs" from HumInt sources) means, either.

[disown]

> the FBI ... but in real life

You really are failing to understand the criticism. You can't claim a narrator is unreliable because the fiction doesn't align with reality. That's not how that works.

You do realize that 1984 was written in the 1940s predicting describing a fictional world nearly 50 years in the future?

It's a simple concept you are intentionally ignoring. If you want to claim "unreliable narrator", you need to show that within the fictional world. You can claim it because the fictional world doesn't match the real world. Because using that absurd logic, everything is unreliable.

[082349872349872]

Except Goldstein, another character in the same work, does align with reality...