Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell
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Book Reviews of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Book Review: Perpetual Relevance - now is the time to read it
Summary: 4 Stars
I wondered why it took me so long to read this classic.
Orwell chronicles the life of one member of a totalitarian society run by the all-seeing eyes of 'Big Brother'. It is a surveillance society in a nation always at war with an amorphous enemy. Fear is the Government's weapon of choice and the image of omniscience and omnipotence it projects upon its people is seemingly insurmountable. The society is deeply stratified and hierarchical with the privileged few at the core going out to the tentative citizens and the listless prolatariat (called proles) at the very bottom of the pile. The story surrounds a very common man and his struggle to be fully 'himself' in a society that frowns upon individualism and independent thought.
The context of this book renders it somewhat prophetic of the past 8 or so years of the Western world. Orwell's insight is worthy of canonization because of how right he seems to be about the tools of societal control and influence. He includes the dubious 'tele-screens' eerily reminiscent of the broadcast media, numberless CC TV cameras employed by some cities and perhaps even the ubiquitous Internet and vulnerability it implies on our privacy. Then there is the growing power of Homeland Security laws.
Orwell seems like he may be attacking autocrats and dictators but there may be another agenda. It is not Big Brother himself that is to be feared but the system which he represents. The Goverment is as faceless as their ceaseless enemy and Orwell depicts a society that slowly became what it was with time. Can he be saying that any society is prone to the evils of control?
The fight of our hero is admirable and leaves us questioning the role of the individual in society. The ending you must read for yourself. But by the time you finish you might be a believer or a revolutionary depending on whose side Orwell convinces you to join.
Book Review: Tremendous book
Summary: 5 Stars
George Orwell's book 1984 was a tremendous, very enticing book. It shows a government under which no one can trust anyone. Everyone has to watch what is said to everyone because there is always a chance that the other person they are talking to is a spy.
It starts off with Winston questioning what is going on in the government. He is wanting to revolt against them. He realizes that all the people are changing the history everyday to go with what the government says.
He isn't careful of what he does and he gets caught. That goes back to always watching what the characters say around other people because if they aren't careful, they will get caught. That leads to George Orwell's purpose of this novel.
George Orwell was a very good writer. He had a reoccurring theme in this book and in Animal Farm, which was communism. In 1984, he showed his vision of how the world would be if communism took over. There would be no freedom, and one supreme ruler, or in the book, Big Brother.
Orwell accomplished his goal in this book. He was warning people against the negative aspects of communism. It may have been a little dramatic, but still there is not much freedom in communist countries. He showed that the government would have a hand in everything, even what people said in private.
This book has many strengths and a couple weaknesses in it. The first strength is that it is written very well. It is put together so that everything fits together perfectly. Another strength is that it is a very enticing book. Once the reader picks the book up he or she can't stop reading it until it's done. The one weakness it has is the ending. It somewhat just cuts the reader off at the ending. It basically says Winston gave up on loving Julia and he accepted the party. So, Orwell is saying that Winston gave up and accepted communism. Overall though, it was an excellent book.
Book Review: Doublethink
Summary: 3 Stars
While 1984 is now considered a cautionary tale about totalitarianism, it should be remembered that Orwell was an ardent socialist. Perhaps the most important (and least discussed) element of the story of 1984 is the doublethink of its author: Orwell's ability to condemn an outcome, while advocating its cause. Even as Orwell portrayed the corruption of socialist government in Animal Farm and the cruelty of totalitarian government in 1984, he insisted that these are perversions of socialism, rather than the inevitable fruit of socialism.
This is the same foolish idea as Marx had; that human nature is malleable and can be forced to adapt to a socialist zeitgeist. Sadly, many people suffer the same delusion today; believing that government has the right to mold human nature rather than the responsibility to yield to human nature and respect our natural rights. Socialists do not like that human nature opposes slavery (i.e. socialism) and insist that with enough socialist indoctrination and through the force of socialist government, human nature can be remade to love subjugation.
When we look to the troubling conclusion in which the rebellion is crushed and minds are retrained by imprisonment and indoctrination, it appears to be a break from the tradition of a successful resolution for the hero of the novel. Could it be that this was a successful conclusion in the mind of a socialist? Just as Brave New World ended with society purging its misfits from its midst, 1984 ends with the arrest and reeducation of its misfit.
Could it be that socialists are so wedded to their ideology that they have lost the ability to sympathize with human rights to liberty and freedom of conscience and would rather sympathize with the State? What if the ending reveals that the hero of a socialist novel was never meant to be the individual; is the hero in fact the State?
Book Review: Disturbing and Relevent
Summary: 5 Stars
It may be said that great books comment on their times, and on the human experience, but masterpieces actually shape history. We may look at George Orwell's 1984 in two ways: first, his description of the terror of totalitarianism, which his generation witnessed firsthand in the form of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Orwell does a masterful job of presenting such a world in its day-to-day reality, the unspoken weight of oppression found in police states, the everpresent fear that becomes natural after a while, the ease with which that fear eventually makes you just go along with it all.
But history has also shown us that totalitarianism eventually burns itself out, that it cannot be sustained in the long run. This is scant reassurance for its millions of victims, true, but maybe a bit of hope for the rest of us. The second point about 1984, and the thing that makes it a masterpiece, is the way that it has shaped our culture today, not through its description of totalitarianism itself but the way it describes the very real methods used by governments and ideologies to control us. Terms like "doublethink" are now a part of our daily discourse, describing not the subjects of totalitarian states like North Korea but the modern, wealthy democracies that claim to be free. And this is the most chilling message of Orwell's novel: you don't need to be in a totalitarian regime to be controlled by clever propaganda. You don't need to have the police cameras in your home. You only need the fear of them, or the belief that war is peace or that torture is justice or that history is a thing that the powerful are entitled to rewrite for their own ends. Because self-censorship is every bit as complete as the regular kind, and is actually preferred by those who would control us, since it's far cheaper and easier than putting an actual gun to your head.
Book Review: Science fiction or science fact?
Summary: 5 Stars
Whether you enjoy science fiction or not, Orwell's 1984 is a must read. Orwell writes like Monet paints, in that his description of 1984 is opaque yet colorful, mysterious, and beautiful.
Throughout 1984, the reader follows Winston Smith, who lives in Airstrip One. The world is subdivided into three major super powers. Winston lives in Oceana, which is run by Big Brother. Three ministries govern Oceana: The Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Love, and Ministry of Peace. Winston works for the Ministry of Truth, and it is there he meets Julia.
Much like Orwell's description of the scenes themselves, he creates a world in which the reader feels they are looking at Oceana through a sheet. Orwell never describes Oceana or 1984 in too much detail; though, in his descriptions of Winston's relationships to the world he lives in, Julia, and Big Brother, he writes with enough description that Orwell's vision of the future becomes more apparent with each page.
The most striking scene is when a poet is thrown into prison because he refused to take out the word, "God" from a poem he transcribed because no other word fit. No matter a person's spiritual background, the critical person should find it uncanny that in 1949 Orwell imagined a world in which the name `God' would become illegal.
Though, we do not live in a world in which three empirical superpowers govern us, the critical person should wonder if we are closer to Orwell's 1984 than we realize. Or, perhaps, ideologically, we are there and realize it; though, we have become so accustomed to living in Orwell's 1984 that we willingly give up our rights and personal identity in the name of government sanctioned security and equality.