Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell
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Book Reviews of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Book Review: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Summary: 3 Stars
Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of those books which you feel you must read at some point in your life, and after sitting on my shelf for a long time I finally decided it was time to pick it up.
It is 1984 and in the state of Oceania, Winston Smith is struggling with the oppression of Big Brother. Everything is under the watchful eye of the party and with most things being banned, everyone must be very careful of what they do and even more so what they think. Winston is trying hard to hang on to his memories of when life was different, but nowadays he is starting to doubt if things were ever better or if everything was in his imagination. He does not agree with what the party is doing and has always had rebellious thoughts, but it is only when he decides to pursue a relationship with Julia that their actions bring him under the spotlight.
I had great expectations for this book but I was somewhat disappointed to find that it was not what I always thought Nineteen Eighty-Four would be. The beginning was good and it had me hooked for a while, until it started to dwindle and even got a little tedious at times. I liked the premise however the characters seemed weak and most of them not very interesting. My biggest complaint about this book though has to be the entire excerpt from "The Book", this was too long and it quickly got boring, I would have preferred if there were shorter highlights or even just a brief description of the concept. If this book is meant to instill the fear of Big Brother in the reader, it didn't do that at all for me and that is probably why I was disappointed, I was expecting it to be more thought provoking in the way that Animal Farm was. I am still glad that I read Nineteen Eighty-Four and perhaps this would have been more valid in the time it was written, I am just a little let down that it wasn't the great book I was hoping for.
I must say that I loved Animal Farm by the same author much more. When I finished Animal Farm I had to stop and think for a while and it was scary how true it felt. I expected to have the same reaction to Nineteen Eighty-Four but in the end it wasn't quite the same.
Book Review: 1984 and my childhood
Summary: 5 Stars
Mindlessly mechanical, very few things move her emotionally. "Things will be all right for future generations," she tells my father. She has no need for family history, her own or mine. She fears creativity until recently. My mother, a misanthrope who grew up under communist China's educational system, even after residing in the States for more than twenty-five years, cannot seem to snap out of her past "education" by the communists. In my memory, she seems to hold little joy in her life. What a novel 1984 is; it sheds light on my questions: "Who is my mother?" and "What is my mother?" In a sense, "Chapter One" of the Book rings a personal truth to my upbringing, so many things that my mother said to me about the world, during my childhood, puzzled me. Whatever psychological lessons my mother went through during her "education," I doubt she'd ever share it with me. Nonetheless, I would not be surprised if she received training in doubletalk, doublethink and the indoctrination "freedom is slavery." It was very easy, almost too easy, for me to project myself into the novel, because it felt so personal and real.
So it was easy for me to imagine myself living in a Totalitarian society, but it would be too much of a nightmare, for I already have a slight taste of it in my childhood. Unknowingly, in the past few years, I have worked in my small ways to strengthen my knowledge and belief in a democratic society, may it be researching history, studying the structure of mainstream media, or becoming more aware and decoding the means of deception and misinformation, which is so pertinent to understand the actions of current Bush administration.
Even though the main character, Winston Smith, in 1984 eventually learned to love the Big Brother after forty years, I am still optimistic about meeting my responsibility as a US citizen, participating in quasi-democracy and reading once more 1984 as a novel, not a history book. But, if it ever becomes truly historical in content, by then, 1984 would have been either re-written or George Orwell vaporized out of existence.
Book Review: 1984: Orwell's nightmare society.
Summary: 5 Stars
"Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind," George Orwell wrote in his essay, "Politics and the English Language." "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it," George Orwell wrote in 1946.
Best known for his haunting novel on totalitarianism, 1984 (1949), Orwell (b. Eric Arthur Blair; 1903-50) was a political and cultural visionary in his anti-Stalinist writings. In his novel, Orwell envisions a bleak society controlled by the state. His name ("Orwellian") has become synonymous with the government oppression depicted in 1984, and the euphemistic and misleading language employed by the government (e.g., "Ministry of Defence," "collateral damage," and "pacification") as a manipulative tool for its own political purposes.
"We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then fill you with ourselves" (pp. 264-5). More relevant now than ever, 1984 not only tells the profound story of man's search for love in a world devoid of truth ("IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH"), freedom ("FREEDOM IS SLAVERY"), and individuality, it also demonstrates totalitarian government's power to break the human spirit. There is no "happily ever after" for lovers like Winston Smith and Julia in an Orwellian society of Thought Police and Big Brother, and where "WAR IS PEACE." Orwell's 1984 offers readers an important message about these times.
G. Merritt
Book Review: A disturbingly vivid alternate reality!
Summary: 5 Stars
"Big Brother is watching!" This phrase has been so popularly used that the meaning is now synonymous with issues like "manipulation of truth", "violation of privacy", "conspiracy theory", etc. `1984' is a cleverly written political satire often induced with dark humour, exploring life in a would-be fascist-like totalitarian future where everyone was being monitored and compelled to keep in line ('thoughtcrime' is a crime!), where the individual could no longer differentiate between truths and lies (through the practice of `doublethink'), where history was being constantly re-written to suit the prevailing political agenda, where language had been simplified to the point of uselessness (through Newspeak), where war had to be kept ongoing to reduce economic surplus so that the population could be held under control, and where party ideology had absolute power over a society dominated by fear, suspicion and distrust.
We follow the story of Winston Smith, one who disagreed with the party and was secretly envisioning a different kind of life without being under the ever-watchful eye of Big Brother. His hatred for Big Brother and his attempt at joining the rebelling Brotherhood ultimately ended in tragedy and he was captured, tortured and brainwashed. Orwell's gloomy depiction of life in Oceania (his future version of London) is realistic and convincing. The last section of the book is especially thought provoking and really sends chill to the spine. Overall, Orwell's vision of the future in 1984 is intense and highly disturbing. Although we all know by now that our 1984 (dominated by the MTV/big-hair/yuppie culture) has occurred very differently and that the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s marked the final triumph of liberal-democracy over socialism/Marxism, Orwell's `1984' remains relevant today as a warning against a post-global age of resurging absolutism and religious fundamentalism. This book is highly recommended.
Book Review: War is Peace, feedom is slavery, and Owell is amazing
Summary: 5 Stars
1984 by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about the totalitarian regime of the Party, it's the story of Winston Smith and his intellectual rebellion of the Party, and consequent captivity, torture, and re-education. The Party and Big Brother totally control the people by psychological manipulation to dictate thoughts and actions.
Imagine a world where you are being constantly watched and you don't know it, and a common enemy is used as the object of fear and hatred for the party- a means of controlling the population of course. Imagine a world where the party wishes to have all human desire disappear, sex is a grotesque act committed only for two reasons; reproduction and duty to the Party. To desire anything was a thoughtcrime, you should only want Big Brother's love and acceptance, as O'Brien says,"There will be no loyalty, except loyalty to the Party."
You believe everything the Party says, it is always correct. They have lost the ability of independent thought, and memories are lost and never were. A new language is created "Newspeak," essentially the destruction of words. So thoughtcrime against the Party is impossible because there are no words that can correctly express emotions.
So, "freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four" and this freedom is never granted. Two plus Two is anything the Party wants it to be, and "war is peace" because war is used as a tool to control the people.
The novel takes the reader to a world that is so scary and vivid and almost possibly like ours.' It's a masterpiece and Orwell will take you to a world that will shake you because it is almost like our own, but thankfully and hopefully will never get as bad. Orwell tells you how important freedom really is, and that you might not even notice that you don't have it, and that two plus tw0 should always equal four or somethings not right.