Why does Emmanuel Goldstein's book in 1984 have a title page?

Question

I was rereading 1984 when I noticed something amiss in this passage: >A heavy black volume, amateurishly bound, with no name or title on the cover. The print also looked slightly irregular. The pages were worn at the edges, and fell apart easily, as though the book had passed through many hands. The inscription on the title-page ran:>THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM by Emmanuel GoldsteinDistracted by the wear-and-tear of the book, by the afterglow of his initiation into the brotherhood, Winston fails to ask:Why does a copy of the most-hated book by the most-hated author still have its title-page? In full capital letters?A title which arouses instant suspicion and would damn the holder if anyone even glimpses at it? My personal belief is that George Orwelle's' intends to foreshadow that, the Brotherhood as described by O'Brien, is a fabrication.>You have imagined, probably, a huge underworld of conspirators, meeting secretly in cellars, scribbling messages on walls, recognizing one another by codewords or by special movements of the hand. Nothing of the kind exists. The members of the Brotherhood have no way of recognizing one another, and it is impossible for any one member to be aware of the identity of more than a few others. Goldstein himself, if he fell into the hands of the Thought Police, could not give them a complete list of members, or any information that would lead them to a complete list. No such list exists. The Brotherhood cannot be wiped out because it is not an organization in the ordinary sense. If the organization as described by O'Brien actually existed, one member in the brotherhood would have expurgated the title-page, or replaced the inscription with something far less obvious and offensive. They don't have the luxury of religious reverence towards their book, they can't treat it like a bible; they would have taken a basic-- and safe-- precaution. Regardless of the Inner Party's motives, whether it was as an oversight or their way of strengthening Winston's entrapment-- leaving the title in the book seems like a masterful way to quietly foreshadow O'Brien's planned betrayal.Or am I wrong in assuming that level of caution is needed? Would the real-or-imagined Brotherhood actually be fine with leaving that title-page in their book? Why?

Answer 1

That's interesting--it certainly could be a clue to the book's fakeness. We're a little jaded perhaps, now, being surrounded by internet scams, and wonder how anyone could fall for big obvious titles--think emails with subject lines like "YOU HAVE ALREADY WON" or "YOUR INFORMATION HAS BEEN STOLEN"--but of course, people do fall for them, especially when they're not educated to a certain level of sophistication. Most of the people in 1984 certainly aren't, so it's easy to see why they would miss a clue like that, if indeed it is a clue.

However, two little things. One is that the key piece of the book's description is that it doesn't have a title or author on the cover. So you could argue that Orwell's emphasis is on how covert the book is rather than on how obvious it is. In other words, books have title pages, so the presence of one on this book doesn't need justification; rather, the absence of a title on the cover is what stands out. Also, and perhaps more subtly, for a book that is supposedly both the biggest threat to worldwide totalitarianism and the greatest hope of free-thinking people everywhere, that's a pretty boring title. Sure, for a politically savvy audience it's at least potentially intriguing, and it does reflect the kind of tracts that were popular in massively unstable times (most notably the months preceding the Russian Revolution), but THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM is still a far cry from "NIGERIAN PRINCE WILL PAY YOU 10 MILLION DOLLARS!!!" All of which is to say, if the title page is a clue that Winston could have picked up on, it's hardly the most obvious clue Orwell / Big Brother could have left.

And there's also this. Winston gets caught at the end, and we find out the whole Brotherhood / Goldstein thing was a ruse, an invention of The Party. But how do we know this? Only because The Party tells him. So the big question is: are they telling the truth about that or not? Think about it: it might make sense for The Party to invent an ideological enemy, someone to keep the people's attention--that Hate session is pretty powerful--so maybe they did just make it up. BUT...maybe Goldstein and his book are real after all. It would also make sense for The Party to co-opt an actual resistance, and put the finishing touches on Winston's re-education by lying to him that they just made it up. They're not exactly known for telling the truth.

So we have this book that looks like an ok-but-not-perfect fake, and at the end, a group of dedicated liars tells us that it's a fake. What do you believe?