Why Was Syme Vaporised in 1984? 

Greetings Brothers and Sisters! I hope you will or have enjoyed this video on Syme. Just an acknowledgement of a typo with the written quote (onscreen) at around 5:20. It's not "soft" but "sort". Oh well, my bad, at least it's read OK. 😆👍

Syme just had that "he's too clever for his own good" quality about him. His intellect and candour made him remarkable. And remarkable people get noticed, which is a bad thing when living under a brutal totalitarian regime

Syme had the intellect of an inner party member, but his sheer enthusiasm for the destruction of ‘oldspeak’ piece-by piece marked him out. The fact that he found the destruction of words “beautiful” suggests unorthodoxy. He liked the sound of his own voice too much. He liked his own opinions being enthusiastically agreed upon by others even more.

Syme is the kind of person who, while being utterly loyal, had the potential to be a danger just by existing.

Syme was conscious, while apparently also loyal and a true believer. Since he was conscious, he had to be vaporized. Consciousness itself was the great enemy of the Party.

I figured Syme was a true believer and would never turn on the Party but the Party itself is a prisoner of its own beliefs as much as anyone else, hence why they presumably liquidated him. Syme's a believer but he was also too smart, like you said and the Party would consider there'd always be the possibility he'd turn just because of that combined with their own paranoia and need for control. Then there's also the fact that the Party would ultimately want to not just erase Oldspeak but also that there ever was an Oldspeak and part of that would involve erasing the people who made Newspeak and hence once knew there even was an Oldspeak.

Syme has another problem alluded to in these scenes but never explicitly stated. He is being closely watched by another party member sitting to his right and rear. It is he who is watching for any signs of unorthodoxy and who will denounce him. The motive is jealousy. Syme is chess champion. When Winston re-writes the chess article, the new picture that he pastes in is of the same individual, who he also notices in Syme's old seat in the Ministry later. He got his job as well. This is an allusion to how many of the denunciations and disappearances under Stalinism were for petty personal reasons; the better flat, the better job, personal differences. The writer Isaak Babel was destroyed because the head of the NKVD, Yezhov, was married to a woman who had had an affair with Babel years earlier had then renewed the acquaintance and gave him a writing job. Yezhov was not going to risk that going further. The wife got disposed of into a sanatorium and died under mysterious circumstances. Yezhov, the loyal killer was himself liquidated later. Part of the terror is its randomness and whimsical nature. Bulgakov was added to a death list by Molotov for a certain work. Stalin crossed his name off because he happened to like a previous work, The brothers.

Syme may have also received a promotion. Smith says the Party does not like such people, but that could well be doublethink. An unperson becoming another person within the Inner Party is quite Oceanian in nature

He said the quiet part out loud. It was useful for Orwell to have someone willing to spout exposition. It was clever of him to turn Syme's tendency to play Captain Exposition into an object lesson in party psychology. Orwell used Syme to show and tell simultaneously. It's missing the point to speculate whether Syme ever saw room 101. The past doesn't exist. Syme never existed.

Slavoj Zizec (whatever the spelling) mentioned how in Yugoslavia in the 70s and 80s, those who were hardcore Marxist-Leninist youth activists were often viewed by the State with suspicion because the State was no longer a strict adherent to this ideology and it feared that such activists could overthrow the state. I know Yugoslavia wasn't exactly this Stalinist nightmare, but the point still remains.

I don't think Syme himself would have ever become a thought-criminal himself, but that he was a threat in the way that he would have led others to commiting thoughtcrime by so openly and understandable revealing the Party's method of control by the way of newspeak, causing them to reflect more about other ways they may be controlled and wanting to rid themselves of that control eventually.

Eventually anyone capable of thinking in oldspeak would become a thoughtcriminal.

I've always thought there's a chance that Syme was a plant of the inner party, like the shop keeper. His whole demeanor always struck me as strange for a common party member. It's not a point I'd agree is true by any means but always seemed like a possibility to me, could explain why we never get a definitive answer as to what happened to him.

I once had an educational tour in a German concentration camp. There they told us how the prisoners (victims?) valued not drawing attention. Drawing attention to oneself made one more likely to die. I think the same applies here. Syme draw attention to himself, which marked him as a potential threat.

Syme was too smart for his own good

What doomed Syme was that he honestly believed in the ideals of the party instead of wanting to use the ideals of the party to get something. He wasn't cynical enough to be bought off or threatened so he had to go.

I recently finished 1984 a couple months back, it’s a very dense and flowery read but I recall Syme’s liquidation being an assumption on Winston’s part. Not a fact. It’s never explicitly confirmed or denied. So for all we as readers (and Winston) know, Syme could have very well been reprogrammed into a different sector. Winston was very naive and quick to judge. Syme’s dogmatic adherence to the party may have been a ploy. Maybe Syme was a more cautious version of Winston. That’s the genius of 1984, that every interpretation no matter how farcical or terrifying may be valid.

IIRC Syme doesn’t even get to make a confession that is subsequently telescreened. He’s just “unpersoned” and poof 💨

Loving the channel btw. Its nice to hear somone discuss 1984 from a lore perspective. Most content ive found seem to always try to relate everything to modern politics.

It's perhaps indicative of the inevitable demise of the Party that they wouldn't simply have allows Sim to become an Inner Party Member.

I always thought it was odd that they didn't initiate him into the higher cadres of the party. Surely the folks there must be of similar quality while also being fanatically loyal. Maybe they did and they erased his old identity.

Other than that he was too generally smart for his own good I think one important reason they killed him was his knowledge specifically about the future of language, INGSOC needs to have total control of all ideas about time past, present, and future so Winston openly making people conscious of both independent ideas about the future actions of the party and ways they’re changing the world, as well as ways the system operates to change things in ways that are less than obvious to the masses and middle class of 1984. If I remember correctly his opinions he casually shares with his friends are so dangerous and anti-establishment they weren’t even explored as concepts in the false dissident book Winston reads later on, which was itself created by the party to obliterate wrongthinkers’ smallest hopes that ideas and philosophies not originating from the party are real.the world of 1984 is completely hopeless and possible

This is really good, thank you, and you have reminded how brilliant the actors who played Syme have been.

As always, another great analysis.❤

That is a very specific subject to make lore videos for, gotta admire the dedication

Syme's intellect and deep understanding of how Oceanic society worked was, to me, his ultimate downfall. As you said, I don't think he was killed because of a capacity for thoughtcrime. In every way, shape, and form, Syme was ideologically committed to Ingsoc, the Party, and the society they were building. He never would have rebelled. He never would have attempted to overturn the system. What he could have done though, was use his understanding of how it all worked to possibly take power for himself. That is something the party could never tolerate.

Great channel and video(s), thank you.

I recently finished reading the novel and these videos have been a really nice to watch lol

I looked at Syme in a different way. We know that Winston thinks Syme will be vaporized and we know that later he disappears but we don't actually know what happens to him. The party is sophisticated enough that it doesn't throw away someone like Syme on the off chance that his intelligence will lead to thought crime. If he does commit thought crime the party will eliminate him. The party has confidence that thought crime will be found. I think he got promoted or a transfer, he's not dangerous. Winston was wrong.

The inner party is probably deeply cynical. It’s the ability to be both a true believer and a thorough cynic at the same time that is necessary under this system.

In reality, perhaps Syme was promoted to the Inner Party and shipped off to one of the other colonies of Oceania.

Syme said the quiet parts out loud, and that the Party could not allow.

Syme’s work was the deliberate destruction of words, and he was very conscious of this fact. This went against Party orthodoxy because, due to the ingrained practise of doublethink, Party members are required to revise history, then forget the original events, then forget that they had ever forgotten anything. Their continual revision of reality is required to be unconscious. Syme’s crime is that he knows what he is doing, and loves his work. What happens when his work ceases to be challenging and interesting to him? What other thoughts will his formidable mind entertain if allowed a moment of idleness? The Party will never allow these questions to be answered.

Being an adherent to ingsoc doesn't excuse you from the crime of eloquent and direct explanation of complex ideas. The inner party wants the outer party to be repressed, paranoid, and insecure: not joyfully yapping about their (unspokenly confidential) work. Oceania will be a society completely stripped of thinking out of line besides, what do you need this man who provides intellectual input for?

New to your channel. While I do agree that 1984 is very pertinent to the modern age, I really like that your analysis stays within the confines of the book. It seems that (correct me if I’m wrong) your take is that the book in and of itself is a hugely rich, deep, multifaceted, nuanced vein to be mined without comparing it to other things. I think that when people make comparisons to the present, legitimate though that entirely is, it often (not always) amounts to a reflection of their own political standpoint. This reflection is also often knee-jerk and superficial, and distracts or detracts from the depth and perceptiveness of the book. I totally get why people do it, and it’s entirely natural and valid - I guess I’m saying it’s often not done as well as the richness of the book deserves. I guess I’m saying thank you for not falling into that trap and for sticking with the source material. And I think you really do it justice. Great work!

Because the party rules by terror. No-one is safe. Everyone's turn comes sooner or later. At best, you can postpone your inevitable fate by conforming totally - until the party decides that total conformity is itself a sign of subversive thought. It's not about individual guilt, actions, character, etc. It's about total power. The party alone decides what it is criminal at any time. Hannah Arendt understood this very clearly.

In a way, I think Syme was actually a good friend to Winston. He clearly knew he was an oldthinker (borderline thought criminal) but as far as we know never ratted Winston out for it. It might even be one of the things that got him in trouble besides having no filter.

Some things that have come to mind about Syme over my readings… 1. The main reason he was vaporized was because he was thinking about INGSOC and the whole point of INGSOC was to end thought. 2. The secondary but still very important factor is that, for the Party, the arbitrariness and thoughtlessness of vaporizing people was the point. 3. A necessary feature of NEWSPEAK would be eliminating entirely all people who ever knew or even heard OLDSPEAK, starting with the people who created NEWSPEAK. Note how *nobody* in the Outer Party seemed to have any idea of how the Party came to power. They didn’t even think about it. It just appeared. Once it was in power, it was *always* in power. Did they already do a Stalinesque purge of anyone who could remember what happened or even that anything happened at all? 4. Finally, Syme talked a lot about NEWSPEAK but he didn’t speak in NEWSPEAK. That’s a fatal flaw. He was focused on the external words and not on controlling his own thoughts. And while I’m on a roll… I’ve long thought that the very first person disappeared was Big Brother, whoever he was before the Revolution. He’d have been the most dangerous person of all. He knew how it was done and he was capable of getting it done. That made him capable of getting it un-done. This may have even been part of his plan. The whole INGSOC system was set up to overcome the problem of every revolution containing the seeds of its own destruction.

Two interactions between Smith and O'Brien has me wonder about whether there is an extreme initiation to promote people to the Inner Party. When Winston answers questions on the lengths he was prepared to go to undermine the Party and when he see's O Brian in the Ministry for the first time and exclaims 'They got you too'. O Brian almost ruefully adds they got him sometime before. So its possible that perhaps Syme has a promotion as such and for this to happen all traces of his former life or vapourised and he becomes something new. Winston is broken but reconciled at the end, loving big brother.

There is logic in what youre saying but I dont think the eliminated him. I dont think they eliminate anyone that gets caught. Altough I do believe they dealt with him differently. I could actually imagine him "getting a promotion" like O'brien. Since he already had a fanatic mindset and was also smart he couldve been a valuable asset.

Syme reminds me of a "friend" of mine. He's smart in certain areas but he lacks discretion. He also treats ideas like toys, including dangerous ideas. He wouldn't last a day in 1984 - not that I would either or want to.

People like Syme are broken in a way that requires continuous upkeep. Whether through validation or admiration, they must be continuously reminded that they are doing and have done right by whoever is minding them. the rate of this only ever moves towards increasing intervals. Eventually, even the mere silence where the subject expects validation is seen as a betrayal, and for a mind like Syme's, that betrayal is the planting of the seed that leads to a full undoing of the self and a rejection of all previously held understanding of the proper operation of the world. and then you have a very dangerous traitor who fully understands the scaffolding you've built your power upon, and is willing to tell whoever will point him in a new direction towards what is "correct" with the right amount of praise, everything he knows. Indeed, the torture he would endure would be unending. his stubbornness in the face of 'betrayal', his capacity to hate those he perceives as his enemy, would only be reinforced by those kinds of methods, and as someone already broken, he would be incapable of being broken further, or broken in a way that would 'fix' him, set him on the correct path that the party desires for its citizens. In the real world we have things like therapy and medication to break people like this out of their self-destructive cycles, but in the world of 1984, life is cheap and a bullet saves far more time.

Im wondering if the party would go so far as to say that syme even having the knowledge of what came befoe was enough, almost as if the newspeak should of completely erased what came before, with this being impossible, his death was always a certainty, being a thought criminal was as easy as remembering a different answer, even if you were the one to come up with the new, acceptable answer.

Great channel. Have you done any video podcast interviews? Our audience are mostly entrepreneurs but thinking of a separate channel for subjects like this.

In the '84 movie they kind of make it look like the "glasses guy" (who appears in the book too but is less of an actual character) rats Syme out in order to get his job. Although not a bad touch to the story, it's not in the book, which is why it's important to take in the book and not just the films.

First Law from Robert Greene's 48 Laws was "Never Outshine the Master". Could be Syme's managers were threatened by him.

Syme "had to be" eliminated. If "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." is a given ... [SIDEBAR: did George spend as much time deciding which of these two sentences should precede the other, as I've spent trying to analyse why(?) he chose to put them this way?😂🎉] ... then Syme could not remain alive. Oceania needed to eliminate Syme's connection to Oldspeak.

Here's a thought, perhaps Syme was in fact a secret Inner Party member and his observations and reports were directly responsible for Winston's eventual downfall.

reminds me of the TV series of La Femme Nikita - the organisation just kept killing off its own agents

'Happiness must be earned' - The thief of Bagdad, Hollywood, USA (1924) 'Work sets you free' - Concentration camps, Nazi Germany (1933) 'Only fools and horses work'- BBC, England (1981)

Syme was capable of digesting ingsoc through his intellect, which is a thought crime in the end. He was able to think through ingsoc and convince himself he loved big brother, bit this was through denial not bellyfeel. He was the male feminist of ingsoc.

I'm actually a fan of the theory that he was actually invited into the inner party and given a new identity, as that just makes much more sense from a purely pragmatic standpoint.

Even when i was reading the novel for the first time, i noticed. Yeah, this guy is gonna go. He knows too much.

Useful until he’s not. That’s sort of the point. I’m a world where you are nothing more than an economic unit, guess what happens to you.

Like a drunk, he didn't know when to shut up.

Syme may have been promoted and reassigned. Inner party members probably scheme against each other all the time and fresh blood is needed occasionally to fill in a new opening.

Maybe ( Unknown to most ) Syme was Promoted ? maybe the Oceanian government relocated him onto more proper facilities on someplace else

I don't recall any place in the book where it is clearly stated that Syme HAS been vaporised. It's purely speculation on Winston's part.

Donald Pleasance was perfect as Syme in the 1954 version’s cafeteria scene.

It's like understanding the word "bias", it implies understanding of when someone is trying to present information in a way that makes you think a certain way that they want you to or that there is alternative information that might be free of influence and thus the truth.

if syme turned, i think it would depend on the circumstances. Does he see something that pierces his intellectualizing? Does he realize he is in danger? Does BB start to weaken?

Syme was all intellect and no instinct.

Intelligent AND genuinely devoted? It would have made more sense to promote him into the party apparatus. I doubt they'd have many candidates as suitable as Syme.

Was Winston then killed at the end, since he was now cured?

He was liquidated to maintain the blessed purity of oblivion.

working on the newspeak dictionary - which means he had to understand Oldspeak and all the cultural context, so he could deconstruct it to create Newspeak. He remembers what was which is something the party can not allow, he's a living link to a past the party will not allow to exist.

I was not expecting young Donald Pleasence.

Syme was too clever and therefore a threat. Also, he was careless. "Do you realise", he asked Winston in Chapter 5, "that by the year 2050 not a single person will understand such a conversation as we are having now?" "Except the proles", Winston began. Syme answered "The proles are not human beings". That was too outspoken and unwise to say out loud.

The simple answer is that Syme was a "useful idiot." Winston was the prize, Syme the means to win it. I keep thinking about the law ending to shin megami tensei iv, where the hero willingly sacrifices himself and his seraphic companions to the "expanse" after obtaining victory, so that there would be no possible challenge to order as decreed by God, just the small population of those "chosen" who are grateful to survive and will happily live in reverence and worship while everything else is swallowed by the void. They didn't build a monument to Syme though, so I'm probably wrong.

I always took Syme to be a bit too sincere in his support for the party and their principles. The people who did best were suspicious little beetle-like men. Mistrustful idiots who supported the party because they were too stupid to imagine something else. Syme liked thinking and growing. Even if entirely along party lines that's not what the party selects for.

I always wondered why they didn’t induct him into the inner party. His intellect would be an incredible asset to the party.

Either disappeared or promoted to Inner Party, and sent to some distant province with new name etc

5:32 Syme had a habit of saying things that were better left unsaid, so when they vaporised him they unsaid everything he had said in life.

If he was not so smug or showing off with his work he would have been promoted to the inner party

2:57 what adaptation is the old footage from?

I love that you have the peter cushing version. John hurt was ok, but cushing was better

Syme was much like Russian ultra-nationalists challenging Putin from the right. “This war is just and our cause is righteous, but you aren’t running it correctly, you aren’t going far enough”

Syme never existed

Syme committed the classic mistake of entry-level commies: he read theory and ended up understanding it, instead of memorizing lines mechanically.

Orwell wasn't a good writer or storyteller, so it's silly to speculate about what happened to syme. Orwell would do that all the time, where as soon as something or some one wasn't a tool for the story, it just ceased to exist.

Syme was vaporized because the party still remembers the saying: A stitch in time saves nine.

I think Syme was recruited into the Inner Party. O Brien too expresses a similar clarity of thought as Syme does. Every Party member is going to be vaporised whether or not they are ever put through the Ministry of Love but I think except for whoever the originals were the way you become an Inner Party member is by demonstrating a sophisticated intellect. The reason we never see Syme again is because he is reassigned. We never see Outer Party members getting promoted. The Inner Party and how you join it is never discussed. No process is mentioned. Inner Party members just 'are' and not even Winston meditates on how they come to be. The Party probably wants it that way as the idea that there could be turn over from the bottom could lead to competition, to questioning, to rebellion so if you are promoted to the Inner Party you are transferred elsewhere in Oceania so you cannot run into your former colleagues.

Syme is such a great tragedy of a character.

personally i always thought syme and similar people who are smart but also indoctrinated were taken into the inner party. he was smart, knowledgable, and clearly knew well the inner workings of the party. thats someone that is a hell of a waste to just kill off. i imagined he was scrubbed from the records, yes, but was given a new alias and set to work in the inner party where his bluntness could cause less harm.

Whether he could have become a thought criminal depends entirely on whether he could make the jump from "This is what they do" to "what they do is wrong". I don't know whether he could, but hell, Winston did, and Syme was smarter than him, so maybe. Mind you, O'Brien proves that you don't have to be good to be smart. Mind you, O'Brien's also REALLY far up his own ass. Make a video on him if you want my opinions on that clown.

what does vaporized mean in 1984? Be murdered or that only the person make "spoof´s" from the people's minds? instead, syme become part of the inner party with a new name and all privileges that make it easyer to forget his old life.

Do you think that Orwell's character Syme was based on Trotsky who was assassinated on the orders of Stalin.

My curiosity is how the country people lives, the people that work in the fields in the unnamed villages far from everything. This places still exist?

A perfect mechanism consists of simple parts. Syme was too complicated

It's possible that Syme became an Inner Party member, is it not? He seems a good fit, except perhaps that he doesn't have the reflexive dishonesty of an O'Brien

1984 is pure genius

1984 needs to be adapted to a Mini Series

The most loyal followers often become the most bitter critics when they see past the bullshit.

song?

Everyone is a thought criminal.

He knows too much it’s that simple.

Double plus good.

Peter Cushing!

Syme knows too much

1:53 Is it Peter Cushing?