While reading 1984, I got stuck. It was when Goldstein (Party Enemy #1) was being introduced. I couldn’t remember who he was in real life and this put a halting stop to my reading. I had read a book about Stalin’s party purges. I knew he was Snowball (or was it Napoleon?) in Animal Farm; the name was on the tip of my tongue. I asked the people around me, but couldn’t phrase my question as a coherent request. The best I gave was ‘the guy who wasn’t Stalin’ and the best I got was ‘Mussolini?’. My mom, who tried to instill a basic knowledge of European History in me, would have been ashamed.
