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Classic Literature. Fiction. Literature. HTML:A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick With extraordinary relevance and renewed popularity, George Orwell's 1984 takes on new life in this edition. "Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power."�The New Yorker In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be. Lionel Trilling said of Orwell's masterpiece, "1984 is a profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book. It is a fantasy of the political future, and like any such fantasy, serves its author as a magnifying device for an examination of the present." Though the year 1984 now exists in the past, Orwell's novel remains an urgent call for the individual willing to speak truth to power.… (more)
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Dystopias have a very
In the future, the year 1984 (though, more appropriately, it should have been 1948, which is another matter entirely), Winston Smith bides his time, day after day, with the eyes of Big Brother constantly watching over his shoulder. He spends his time inscribing criminal thoughts of discontent in his private diaries, a transgression punishable by death. This goes on, until he meets Julia, a mechanic for the Minitrue's novel writing machines. They team up and form their own private rebellion against Big Brother, Thought Police, and Ingsoc. But who's really free of the watchful eye of Big Brother, or the listening ears of the Though Police?
This book is dangerous, as it breeds discontent against real-life oppressive governments. Many governments have tried to ban or otherwise prevent the People from getting their hands on and eyes in this book. So, my recommendation to you is: buy this book when you can, and when the government tries to take it away from you, get the hell outta' Dodge.
Above all, however, Orwell gives us a meditation on power, and one that is haunting long after you read the book. Indeed, the novel is relatively light on action. The protagonist, Winston, is not the sort of person to lead armed rebellion or to race down alleys to escape the Thought Police. Instead, the book is mostly composed of Winston's descriptions and analysis of his society, and the thoughts of others. The latter portions of the book are dominated by chapters of a book Winston is reading (a book within a book), and the arguments of the major antagonist of the work. These passages do not ask us to believe in the society of Oceania, or believe that this is the course of human history. What they ask us to believe is a series of claims about power, most importantly, that power (a) comes from control of belief, (b) that external power can shape our even most strongly held internal beliefs and that (c) power is sought for the sake of power itself (among many other thought-provoking aspects which Orwell reflects upon).
The former comes through most vividly in the form of (collective) solipsistic view that the Party favors. This is brought out explicitly in the scenes at the end of the book, wherein Winston is put under incredible pressure to accept it. The scenes I found most effective here, however, are in Winston's description of his daily work. His job is to correct history, to change every historical record to reflect the changing realities of the time. So if a party member has fallen into disrepute, it is Winston's job to show that he has always been in disrepute. If the enemy in the ongoing war changes, then it is Winston's job to show that the war has never changed. It is total information control, and Orwell masterfully illustrates the frightening possibility that one cannot rationally engage those who simply demand an ideological driven view of reality.
It is hard to discuss the second without spoiling the ending of the novel. Allow me simply to say that the passage in Room 101 is among the most affecting in all of English literature. It is frightening, indeed, I find it more frightening than almost anything else I have ever read. We, like Winston, tend to think of ourselves in terms of certain relationships, and ideas that we will hold on to. My wife is that limit, and my feelings for her are something I could never yield, no matter the pressure. At least, this is my self-conception. Yet, Orwell (like social psychologists after him) cast this into doubt. Are none of our most dear, most sacred, most definitional beliefs, ideas and feelings safe from external pressure and one's own deep-seated need to save oneself? Is my self-conception really simply a sign that this commitment has simply never been tested hard enough?
The third is most eloquently discussed in the final scenes of the book. When asked about why the Party rules as it does, Winston gives the answer he thinks is required of him, that the Party does it for the good of those who cannot rule themselves. Yet, with brutal frankness, the primary antagonist tells him that "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." This leads into perhaps the most famous passage from the novel:
"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—forever."
The individual who seeks power for the greater good (think of Plato's Republic) is one who can be reasoned with. If Plato is wrong that individuals who grasp the Good will, as a consequence, be motivated to do good things, he might be dissuaded of the idea that the few ought to rule. Orwell's ruler is far more frightening, for s/he rules for the sake of ruling, holding power for the sake of power. This is a position beyond reasoned argument, based purely on the intoxication of power. These are passages that will linger long after one finishes 1984.
I cannot recommend this novel highly enough. It is far more than a simple dystopian vision of a possible future, and more than a warning about certain political ideas. It is a masterwork of engaging with complex ideas (in this case, the nature of power) in the setting of a novel. Though the prose is brilliant and easy to read, this is a novel which rewards slow reading and thoughtful consideration.
What I find most impressive about Orwell's vision of the future are both its prescience and its political neutrality. All the most chilling aspects of Big Brother's totalitarian government--constant electronic surveillance of its citizens, rewriting history to serve the political concerns of the day, the infiltration of society by secret police--are really just exaggerations (well, one hopes that they're exaggerations) of practices that our own Western democratic governments engage in today, and have been engaging in for the past two generations. And what's more, they're practices that have been followed by parties at either end of the political spectrum--by supposedly small-government Republican (American) and Conservative (British) governments just as much as by liberal Democrats (American) or socialist Labour (British). Orwell's dark vision sees society as a whole, not just one ideology or another.
Orwell himself, of course, was extremely left-wing, to the point of actually advocating revolutionary overthrow of the existing capital order, and also of fighting on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. For much of the Second World War he remained convinced that the national effort required to beat the Axis Powers would necessarily place such a strain on the British social order that it was guaranteed to result in Communist revolution on the Leninist model.
But his Communism was not we now think of as Communism, the Cold War Soviet state of faceless bureaucracy and rigid suppression of individuality. Instead, he sought through Communism--or what he called "democratic socialism"--the opportunity to achieve the profoundest freedom for the individual, by freeing him from the fetters of capitalism. And that philosophy infuses Nineteen Eighty-Four, and is probably the biggest reason why it remains such a powerful story today. For while it is a novel of the inexorable expansion of government at the expense of the individual, its central theme is the necessity for the individual to maintain constant vigilance for the preservation of freedom (which is not the same thing as democracy).
George Orwell’s novel made me look at the world in a whole new way, and that’s one of the reasons why I loved to read it. I always enjoy novels that are a little “out there”, and 1984 was definitely one of them. The whole idea that minds and memories could easily be manipulated based on the ruling party’s needs terrified me, and yet I was intrigued. It’s such an unheard of concept that it made me all the more curious to find out whether or not this form of mind control would succeed. Granted, I was also scared by how simple it was for this form of mind-manipulation to control an entire population. But that was why this novel was one of my favorite reads this summer; it made me stop and consider new possibilities.
Another thing I enjoyed about 1984 was the way it was written. When I heard it’s considered a classic novel, I have to admit, I cringed. I didn’t want something hard to understand, or something with pretentious vocabulary. Instead I found 1984 was a novel that was entertaining, and at the same time easy to understand. I was able to appreciate the deeper concepts in novel because it wasn’t written in a confusing way. That was another thing I really enjoyed about the novel.
A very important aspect to any novel is its characters. If the characters aren’t strong, than neither is the novel. In 1984, there were a variety of strong characters that made the book all the more entertaining. My favorite character in the novel was Syme, an intellect whose job it was to create a finalized version of Newspeak. Although he wasn’t a main character, I found that his lack of discretion in conversations refreshing in a world that was clearly all about not acting too different. And one way to be different was to be too smart and too informed, and Syme had both of these qualities. He was too intellectual, and because of that he became a threat to the Party, so eventually he was eliminated. But all of the characters in 1984 were very well developed, and I found that having such well developed characters made the story more enjoyable to read.
So now, after reading the novel, I understand where the phrase “Big Brother is watching you” comes from and what it means. 1984 was a novel that made me reconsider what I thought to be possible, and it presented a scenario that was intriguing and terrifying at the same time. I’m glad that I chose to give the novel a chance, despite its label as a classic.
The story itself seems very basic. A man called Winston Smith is an intellectual working for the Party in the land of Oceania. Life is strictly regimented for Party members with tv screens everywhere observing their every move and seemingly able to read their very thoughts as well. Winston remembers a time in childhood before the Party had taken over, but this is his damnation. Because in the current world of Big Brother, the past is continually being edited and re-edited to fit the latest ideology embraced by the Party, and Big Brother must always be made to look as though his foresight is infallible, hence, a full-time job re-writing newspaper articles and entire books and changing photos and burning any evidence which might prove that the Party isn't all that it claims to be. Enter Julia, a woman whom Winston first thinks might be spying on him. In this world, children are raised to spy on their parents and deliver them to the hands of the Though Police if they are found to deviate in any way from the Party line. But Julia ends up being opposed to the party, a subversive who takes chances yet embodies all that the Party most prizes: complete adherence to it's principles, wherein only the Party must dominate and the individual be quashed to fit into a militaristic mould, in a world wherein the reigning slogans are WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. Winston and Julia become lovers, which in and of itself is a subversive act, because in Oceania, sex is not something to be enjoyed, but endured for the sake of bringing new Party members into the world. It is self-evident that things must turn out badly for the pair, and they do, though they both know from the beginning that the Ministry of Love, which is in charge of torturing dissidents to death, will catch them them sooner or later.
The concepts and terms in this book are difficult to describe and explain neatly in a short review. Even for those who have never been exposed to this work before, there are many notions which are familiar, because they have become part of the vernacular since the publication of the novel in 1949, such as Big Brother, Doublethink, Thoughtcrime and Newspeak. There is no question that Orwell's ideas were informed by the Soviet and Nazi totalitarian regimes of his time, and yet he clearly understood that all such regimes share common belief systems at the core.
I loved the fist three quarters of the novel, which took us into Winston's mind, his workplace and routines and describe this bleak world he is an observer and unwilling participant of. The final part of the novel, which takes us into the nightmarish edifice of the Ministry of Love, and describes the inhumane treatment Winston is subjected to in order to "rehabilitate" him, is hard to witness, especially when one knows that similar treatment has, and continues to take place in many parts of the world, so that I was quite anxious for the suffering to end. All the same, this is an excellent novel, and a very important one which should be required reading for everyone as an effective argument for why freedom of speech and thought and movement are things none of us should take for granted and must seek to defend at all cost.
The audio version narrated by Samuel West is highly recommended.
It concerns a man named Winston, who lives in a world where every movement is watched by the Party. The Party alters all records of historical facts to conform to the latest propaganda, and the people believe it. The
Winston realizes what the party is doing and he holds onto his memories of the true past. He falls in love with a girl and they conduct a secret affair until one day they are captured and ruthlessly tortured. When they emerge, they are completely changed. Winston remembers his affair with Julia but he no longer cares. He unconditionally believes all the propaganda, all the record changes, and he adores the figurehead of the party - Big Brother.
While reading it, sometimes I was very eager to continue and at other times I had to sit myself down and tell myself to skim a chapter. Sometimes the bravery of Winston and his lover Julia filled me with a sort of hope and at other times the imaginations of this dystopian world by the author filled me with horror and a disconcerting realization that what is in my mind might not necessarily be true.
The style of writing is very precise and skilled. I would say that the main reason this book affected me as it did was because of the way it was written.
When I finished the book I felt very glad that in this world, I have privacy. I am free to learn history, to read books simply just because I want to, to feel joy, to love my family, to make friends, to have crushes on people. I am glad I read this book because it made me think about the world in a different way.1984 definitely deserves to be called a classic, and is definitely absolutely worth reading.
Warning: Drenched in Spoilers.
Long after 1984 has come and passed, Orwell's book still remains relevant if a little dated. I was highly tempted to give this book four stars instead of five. In a way, the book has been outpaced by the times.
Even though Fukuyama declared the End of History and made reference to the last man, we are left to wonder if liberal democracy really did “win” and whether there is not something strangely Ingsoc about our own time. After all, we continue to see examples of doublethink and doublespeak in our own politics and times—see for example the works of Derek Gregory and other Critical Geopolitics scholars.
There is also no reason to believe that the conceits of domination through party rule are over. It seems to me that our postmodern times contain the seeds of many transformations including those that render us dominated by party or a kind of Big Brother.
As I was reading this book, many people commented to me, “Didn't you read this book in high school?” Certainly, the book seemed a bit dated. After all, while I was reading it it seemed that I had read the book without ever having really read it. The words doublethink and doublespeak, to say nothing of Big Brother, were already familiar without having read the first page. The scenes and nomenclature of Orwell have been used a number of movies and TV shows from Star Trek to that weird gun Kung Fu movie with Christian Bale. I'm not sure if negative utopian books (Fromm's word, though wouldn't “dystopia” be more apt?) have really ever evolved beyond 1984. But even if the book is too familiar for most readers, it still did have a few surprises, especially at the end.
Many of the political landscapes are familiar. We saw them in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, and still see it today in Kim Jong Il's North Korea. But the details have an infinite ability to amuse. How can one ever forget a world where machines write novels as humans toil in fields. It is not until you hear O'Brien's rants and see the lengths the party goes to control the inner reality of a person that the book really earns its fifth star.
The political philosophy of the book is also highly evolved: Orwell makes the bold claim that a socialist world will still have a proletariat and that despite our best wishes, they will not save us from corrupt oligarchies. The proletariat never revolt is the message throughout the book and even in the end, the author does not waver (sorry for the spoiler)!.
It's also good that we arrive at the book in 1984 (though we cannot be sure of the time) and not later. As O'Brien explains later, Winston is the last man (though this is somewhat in dispute). Julia might be the “last man” as well—but she seems totally uninterested in understanding the system she rebels against, only the carnal pleasure of rebellion. One of the things that is essential for this book—the one area where you must sustain your disbelief at—is that there is a human at the center of it. In other words, there is someone who is not a product of Ingsoc or Party ideology. Eric Fromm's conclusion states, Orwell assumes that humans have something innate inside them that struggles for peace, justice, and liberty. Whether Orwell believed this or not—he probably did—it is absolutely essential for the novel.
You have to care about poor Winston and his varicose ulcer. You have to feel his suffocation and long for freedom as he does. And you have to see his transformation at the end. In order for the book to work, there has to be things such as love and orgasms (O'Brien and the party of course have vowed to eliminate the orgasm). By the end of the book though, we are left to wonder if there will be anything left human to carry on a story in another ten years. After all, O'Brien calls Winston “the last man”. This of course may not necessarily be true, since O'Brien—and it is assumed other members of the inner party—are aware that there were once things that existed outside the party and the demands of Ingsoc.
The end of the book reminded me very much of Shusaku Endo's Silence, perhaps because both books end with torture and the obliteration of a person's inner self. In that back too, the novel ends with the main character a shell of a person. One of his friends too is a shell of a character. Much like 1984 also, the main character is forced to work on a project which upholds the credos of a regime he doesn't believe in—in this case xenophobic tenets of Tokugawa Japan. It's not an easy thing to read, but if the author has done his work and made us care for the character, hope that he can somehow resist, then we endure the torture with him to a degree.
Winston Smith is thirty-nine, an Outer Party member working in the Records Department at the Ministry of Truth where he corrects false information to suit the Party's current outlook. Except he know it is a lie, that it all is a lie. And he knows he hates the Party and Big Brother, its leader. And knowing this, he also knows he is guilty of thoughtcrime and that it is only a matter of time before he is found out and something is done about it. For Big Brother, and the Party, are always watching--and they probably already know.
Winston is doomed--he knows it, and the reader knows it. False hope only serves to distract from the inevitable outcome; the only questions left is when it will happen and how long will he last when it does. 1984 is certainly not a happy book. Indeed, it is rather distressing, depressive, and ominous, not to mention disturbing and relentless. Big Brother loves you, and you better love him, too.
It's hard to say, but I believe 1984 probably made a greater impact on me now than when I first read it. The book has aged amazingly well; even though originally written in 1949, it is still incredibly relevant. Perhaps even more so than when it was first published. The book is less about plot and action (there is actually very little of either) and more about the state of the world and how it got there--it is a "thinking" book. It is also a dire warning of what we as humanity are capable of, and what we could become. Some things aren't entirely plausible (yet), but one only has to look at the current state of politics and governments to realize that some things are frightening possible, and some things so probable they're likely happening now. 1984 isn't the greatest novel, but it is an important book. I may still be strange and cynical, but Orwell shows amazing insight into human nature. There is a lot of Truth in this work.
Experiments in Reading
Even ignoring this, 1984 is a dull novel that is so cluttered with ropey symbolism that it makes Animal Farm look subtle: The snow globe, the nookie in the woods, the rambling on about the measurement of beer and gin, all combine to form a picture of Orwell forever mashing his overly laboured point into a human face. The theme of human betrayal and Big Brother's corruptive influence on society that underpins much of the novel is just as awkward and clumsy as the devices through which it acts: where some art may be said to mimic life, 1984 is a mere caricature of the horrors of totalitarianism.
Even so, at least it isn't Keep the Aspidistra Flying.
i) The systematic falsification of the records of the past so that it becomes absolutely impossible to prove that the Party has ever been wrong.
ii) The development of new language with a progressively dimishing vocabulary which makes it increasingly difficult even to think insubordinately because the words in which such thought could be expressed do not exist.
Now these ideas do seem credible; and so do some of the deductions he draws from them, e.g.:
i) that it is possible not just to crush the spirit of the rebel but to change his innermost mind and make him really believe that the Party is right after all.
ii) that the younger generation, typified by Julia, would revolt, if at all, purely as individuals and on selfish grounds. The idea of the Party actually being overthrown is to them unthinkable. They take it for granted as rabbits do foxes, as he says somewhere.
This is what gives the book its power. The society as a whole may be incredible. But the techniques of totalitarianism are not. They could possibly exist.
It is odd that there should be a character in the book called Ampleforth.
(notes written 1954)
When I finished Part I and started Part II, I envisioned an uplifting (perhaps bittersweet) story about two lovers who dared to defy the
That doesn't happen. Part III is brutal.
All praise BB.
All this changed when he met a woman named Julia who eventually becomes his lover. She is the symbol of rebellion against the government(Party). She is everything that Big Brother aims to destroy.
This book had me thinking about communism and how it would be if communism would have came to the USA. It is scary to think how the government could have that much power. This book is also a psychological thriller in which it makes you think and messes with you head.
Some memorable sayings or quotes from the novel that make you think:
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU how would you feel if the government is monitoring everything you do your right to privacy is violated
WAR IS PEACE is war really peace or is it a ploy for overall control.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY are really slaves to the government, are we truly free
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH while keeping the outsiders of the government ignorant the government keeps its power.
Its amazing how some of these says make you think today and how this book is still relevant to human fears today. The fear of communism and socialism.
Overall I enjoyed this book and its one my favorites and I would reread it again.
My definition of a truly classic novel is one that is so talked about and referenced that you can know all about the book and it's message without having ever actually read it. 1984 is one of the most
The book itself gained its popularity, however, by successfully reaching a broad audience through exaggerating and reducing the complicated debate of the illusion of free will and freedom of thought in any kind of government structure that strives to control and manipulate the populace for its own benefit in an almost unbelievable science fiction setting. The extremes that are reached in 1984 may seem only possible in a work of fiction (or, as the work is seldom referred to these days, Science Fiction), yet there is a truth beneath the pulp novel trappings that most readers can not avoid recognizing.
For those who have already read this, I have a suggestion. Read 1984 again, only assume that the book actually takes place in our modern times, and that the narrator is a paranoid schizophrenic.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
How long did it take people to start pointing out that these things are already true? Or did it happen immediately?
The problem with this book is that it's a cliche even to point out that it's a cliche to point out that it's already happening.
But
One of the most glaring juxtipositions between these two worlds is in the treatment of sex. In this novel sex is suppressed and attempts are made by powers to remove people's opportunities for it, and their enjoyment of it when they are able to get some. The purpose of this is to keep people frustrated with pent-up energy that can then be harnessed for combative purposes by the rulers. In Huxley's world by contrast people are encoraged to indulge in it frequently as a shallow pleasure and by providing it the masters of the society intend to keep people satasfied and complacent. The reader may choose between these interpretations or choose to see that sex may influence their behavior in different ways in different environments.
In both this book and Brave New World the rulers find that improved processes of production require capital to be wasted in order to keep civilization in stasis. In this book they accomplish that through pointless conflict, in Brave New World it is accomplished through pointless luxury consumption.
In both cases I would argue that the supposedly permanent power structures are vulnerable to any unforseen natural disaster which would make maintaining the stasis impossible. One might consider the stasis necessary to both situations after considering [[Virginia Postrel]]'s ideas about the stasis/dynamism dichotomy presented in her book, [The Future and its Enemies].
These worlds probably also suffer from the problems inherent in all planned economies as outlined by F. A. Hayek.
[[C. S. Lewis]] might have some insights into these two largely artificial worlds in [The Abolition of Man], though [Brave New World] has a great deal more surface resemblence to his predictions than does this one.
Regardless, this is a classic.