It's 1984 in the Third Age

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Every year or so I reread 1984 by George Orwell. The book always bothers me, and maybe for that reason alone I continue to go back. There seems to be something that's missing, just on the tip of my brain, that would refute that Big Brother and his Party would live forever. Think that it's biology-related, but that might just be my own bias.

Anyway, in this rereading I noted these passages that struck a new chord:

Originally Posted by Winston Smith in 1984, observing life

He looked round the canteen. A low-ceilinged, crowded room, its walls grimy from the contact of innumerable bodies; battered metal tables and chairs, placed so close together that you sat with elbows touching; bent spoons, dented trays, coarse white mugs; all surfaces greasy, grime in every crack; and a sourish, composite smell of bad gin and bad coffee and metallic stew and dirty clothes. Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to. It was true that he had no memories of anything greatly different. In any time that he could accurately remember, there had never been quite enough to eat, one had never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes, furniture had always been battered and rickety, rooms underheated, tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces, bread dark-coloured, tea a rarity, coffee filthy-tasting, cigarettes insufficient -- nothing cheap and plentiful except synthetic gin. And though, of course, it grew worse as one's body aged, was it not a sign that this was not the natural order of things, if one's heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness of one's socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange evil tastes? Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?

Originally Posted by O'Brien, in 1984, ranting on about 'how does one man assert his power over another?'

'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.'

Wasn't this the exact world that Sauron, Saruman, and possibly the Mouth of Sauron, wished to create? The ill-favored Southerner, the Uruks, the orcs, the Hillmen, the deception, the deprivation, the torture of being in the presence of the all seeing Eye, the environment of and around Mordor, etc, all seem to be in the world in which Winston Smith inhabits. Didn't Gandalf make some remark about Sauron not needing Hobbits as slaves, but would not allow them to remain free and/or happy out of spite? Take away some of the politics, and in 1984 you may have Middle Earth if Sauron would have reclaimed his One Ring.

Tolkien saw much of the same world as George Orwell, yet in Middle Earth we see that humanity and love prevail, unlike the hate found in Oceania. Is there some link between their writings, as I believe noted by T. Shippey?

I found this a helpful start. Thoughts?