Why does the Party allow playing chess in Orwell's 1984?

Question

At the end of Orwell's 1984, Winston was a regular customer of the Chestnut Tree Café. He would go there every day, and the waiters would always bring him a chessboard and the current issue of the Times, which contained a new chess problem every day.

Now, chess requires deep thinking. Isn't this something that the Party would never want?
Yet, the game was allowed. Actually, considering that the newspaper published a new problem every day, it could be said that playing chess was not only allowed, but even encouraged. And the problems weren't trivial: on the day on which the last chapter is set, the problem was a "tricky" ending.

Doesn't it contradict the spirit of everything that the Party does?

Newspeak, for example, is meant to be really simple, in order to discourage complex thought. Syme explains that

In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
_{—1984, Part 1, chapter V}

Considering the length the Party goes to in order to make people incapable of thinking, why is the game of chess allowed?

Answer 1

The real reason is that, of course, 1984 is inspired by the USSR. Many other stylistic and aesthetic elements mirror the USSR, chess (very popular in USSR) is one of these.

Now, chess requires deep thinking. Isn't this something that the Party would never want?

No. The Party is concerned purely with dissent. So long as there is no dissent, it doesn't particularly bother them. Activities they interfere with are those conducive to inducing dissent, such as spending time alone (away from the pressure of one's peers).

The later passage does mention thinking, but context is key here. They mean unorthodox thinking. So long as the thinking can be channeled into a narrow technical area and isolated from political or social dissent, there is no problem. The Party's government employs numerous writers, engineers, doctors and other technical people, for instance. All of these jobs require thinking. However, these workers are taught to confine their thinking to harmless, apolitical subjects (which is considered possible in the book's universe). Chess is another such narrow, technical field.

One would wonder why the Party is not more hostile to chess when:

• It has a history of being regarded as developing strategic thinking ability, which could help citizens feel confident about rebelling
• It is played only with one other person, and requires substantial solitary effort (reading and practicing)

But in practice these are very minor factors, compared to more pressing sources of dissent, such as individuality. The Party is not tackling every threat at once indiscriminately, they are starting with the highest priority ones first. Eventually, they might consider modifying chess, but at the time of the novel's events there are more important issues.

Answer 2

The party allows those things that take up time (in the company of others) and fritter away energy. Their ultimate goal is for the individual to have no life outside their work or simply burning up spare physical and mental energy before returning to work.

He had walked several kilometres over pavements, and his varicose ulcer was throbbing. This was the second time in three weeks that he had missed an evening at the Community Centre: a rash act, since you could be certain that the number of your attendances at the Centre was carefully checked. In principle a Party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in bed. It was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or sleeping he would be taking part in some kind of communal recreation: to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: OWNLIFE, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity. But this evening as he came out of the Ministry the balminess of the April air had tempted him. The sky was a warmer blue than he had seen it that year, and suddenly the long, noisy evening at the Centre, the boring, exhausting games, the lectures, the creaking camaraderie oiled by gin, had seemed intolerable.

There's also the fact that chess (and the inevitable chess problems shown in the paper) offer a salutary warning to any would-be anarchists. White always wins.

He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights. 'White to play and mate in two moves.' Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates.

Answer 3

Here are some reflections:

• It's a game about war, and "War is Peace"
• All chess pieces have precise functions and privileges in the game. You follow the rules. You don't question them. A pawn is a pawn and has to move like the other pawns. A castle can do different things, but it's a castle and no pawns will ever act as a castle, or any other pieces
• It's encouraging massive sacrifice for the protection of only one piece, the king

It's quite a good game for maintaining an Orwellian society.

Plus, I think it'd be really easy to translate the rules into Newspeak. Also, everyone knows that Big Brother is the inventor of the plane, so he's probably the inventor of chess too.

Answer 4

Chess puzzles are not chess.

White to play and mate in two moves, means:

There are approximately 20 possible moves for white's first turn (depending on the chess puzzle). 19 of these are objectively wrong.

Black has no genuine choices, - all possible moves put white in a 'mate in 1' situation.

There are approximately 20 possible moves for white's second turn (depending on the chess puzzle). 19 of these are objectively wrong.

Chess puzzles are about working out which of 400 possible outcomes is acceptable to the author. There is no freedom, no choice. You can conform, or be wrong.

Answer 5

TL;DR 1984 is an allegory of Communist Russia and chess has always been popular in Russia.

From Wikipedia, quoting the author:

[Nineteen Eighty-Four] was based chiefly on communism, because that is the dominant form of totalitarianism, but I was trying chiefly to imagine what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office.

Regarding the popularity of chess in Russia:

In the Soviet era, from 1920, chess was included in the courses for military pre-draft preparation. This stipulated the foundation of the Central Chess Club. And in autumn 1920, Moscow took the first All-Union Chess Olympiad, as the future world chess champion Aleksandr Alekhin won this tournament.

Source: visitrussia.org, How did chess become so popular in Russia?

Answer 6

The Party's efforts to remake society aren't finished yet; that's why Newspeak is still under development, and (according to O'Brien) other projects, like eliminating the female orgasm so women won't be tempted to bond with men, are still on the drawing boards. So chess may be a holdover from the old days that is convenient to keep around for the time being, because in some ways it reinforces the new order (as other answers above cleverly suggest), but eventually it will be replaced with a Party-devised game or activity that is more perfectly designed to achieve the Party's purposes.

However, it is possible that Orwell just messed this one up. (It happens. Writing novels is hard.)

Answer 7

Chess is not a game that requires abstract or 'deep' thought. It is pure pattern recognition. The best players have winning patterns memorized as well as the moves to force them. It actually furthers the Party ideology to get everyone playing chess from that perspective.

Answer 8

Beyond beginner/casual chess, chess is very much a game of following the strategy set out by better players.

This reinforces the Orwellian society as, people who think for themselves are just naive idiots who lose every match to players who know to respect the views of the elites.

Also either has an elite class that are permitted to break rules or make them, or these new rules are so frowned on that players are shunned socially for attempting them giving them no player to practice on ending the development of any new thinking in chess.

(disclaimer, I neither play chess or know the book in any more than passing knowledge)