1984

Rating:
Summary: Big Brother sees everything
Review: To me, Big Brother has to be the scariest fictional villain I have ever encountered. His "picture" is everywhere you look and it appears as though he is always watching you. Everyone believes in him but you don't know if he is an actual entity or just an omnipotent idea. This is the trouble the Winston Smith faces in "1984," a chilling novel by Orson Wells.

Those who believe in Big Brother do so religiously while those who don't are stuck in poverty on the fringe of society. Winston believes there is a way to topple Big Brother and the answer lies in the non-beliving masses. The problem is that they have no idea what their situation. Winston must find a way to organize these people while avoiding detection from the Thought Police.

Mind control is rampant, people disappear, and "history" can be changed with one slip of paper in "1984." The scariest part of this novel is that, in the information age we live in, there is the possibility that someone is always watching you. This novel is a must read for a society that hopes to avoid the level of big government that could lead to the situation contained within.

Rating:
Summary: Ain't the future scary?
Review: THe Party dominate all aspects of life and Big Brother is everywhere with cameras and microphones. Winston Smith is the central character whose diary gives him away along with his affair with Julia. Both are brainwashed into thinking The Party is always right, despite evidence to the contary and Winston ends up staing his love for Big Brother- the "victory over himself". O'Brien is Winston's nemesis in breaking him down and is a most interesting characther. ...

Rating:
Summary: personal recommendation: "1984" by George Orwell
Review: "1984" is a model of George Orwell's idea of Totalitarianism and in my opinion he wrote it to show people how a political system can suppress individual freedom. Orwell wants to warn people for the future by showing them what society could become if Totalitarianism became true.
When I read this book it was very horrifying to me realizing that almost all people, except Winston Smith and Julia, are brainwashed by the Party. They believe everything the Party tells them for example Oceania is at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. But one day the situation changes and Oceania is at war with Eastasia and Eurasia is their partner. The Party tells its people that they are always at war with Eastasia and people don't remember that this isn't true! This is incredible for me.
To my mind Winston is a sort of hero because he is aware of the danger that he gets into trouble with the Party. He knows from the very beginning that his diary will be found and later will be used against him. He also knows that his love affair with Julia is an act of revolution because sex is just allowed to produce "new material" for the Party. But I also think Winston is some kind of naive because he opens his mind to O'Brien before he is sure that O'Brien is also against the Party.
A very interesting character of the book, I think, is O'Brien because the reader only gets to know Winston's opinion about him and till the end the reader isn't sure if O'Brien is an enemy or a friend of Winston. For me O'Brien plays his "role" perfectly, with the result, that Winston is reintegrated into the Party.
The Party invents a new official language of Oceania called Newspeak and by the year 2050 this language will superset Oldspeak (=common English). I think one reason of developing this language is to make old books, which are written before the era of the Party, unreadable. It's vocabulary is so constructed that it gives an exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning. This is done by the invention of new words but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words.
Orwell also describes the bad living conditions under which people have to live at that time. The Party wants to make them concentrating on the Party and not on their own pleasure.
The reader really sees how the life of a Party member is dictated from his birth to his death.
I recognized that Orwell divides the Superstates in the book according to their division in the Cold War. Oceania stands for the United States of America, Eurasia for Russia and Eastasia for China. The "Golden Country" is another symbol which can be compared with the old European landscape.
While reading the book I asked myself who Big Brother is and I came to the conclusion that Big Brother, whose picture is everywhere, stands for all dictators that have ever existed. Orwell has certainly been thinking of Russian leader Joseph Stalin, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler or the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. But I think too that for Orwell Big Brother could be a religious figure like God who sees and knows everything but never appears in person. For members of the Inner Party Big Brother is a leader who they can use to scare people and to explain their doings.
In my opinion George Orwell wants to show with the book "1984" that there exists no chance that all people can become equal. There are always some people who have more power than the others because those have for example to rule the country or to make laws. It's very important that people don't trust their leader blindly and forget to think with their own minds. Therefore they must surely get the right education and the historical knowledge to become aware of the parallels in the past and to notice if something goes into the wrong way.
Even a person who has such a big personality as Winston Smith, can be manipulated and influenced easily by drugs and torture. For me the sentence "I love Big Brother" at the end of the book is very impressive and shocking because you feel that it isn't a sentence he says for fun, no, this is his new opinion after being brainwashed. The book shows to me clearly that nobody can resist such cruelty and that a society only needs one person to give violence and Totalitarianism a chance. There are always people who want to control every move and thought to get maximum power which lies unfortunately in the human nature.
I also think that the actuality of Big Brother isn't to deny because today we have computers and the internet which give us the possibility of looking into the private life of each person. There are a lot of people who are interesting in watching such, in my opinion, boring films.
For the future I can imagine that there will be cameras and microphones at a lot of places. So even if you want to go to the doctor or get a new job you will have to give detailed information about your person and nobody will be able to have secrets anymore.
I liked reading this book very much because it is written very exciting. I couldn't stop reading because I wanted to know how the story would end. I was very surprised about the ending because I didn't think that Winston could be changed and reintegrated into the Party.
I can recommend this novel and satire to everyone because I believe it's very important to become aware of what in our surroundings happens and how easily people can be manipulated and influenced without noticing it. For me it is possible that the story, told in this book, happens in real life again because there are many people who want to get power and look only after their personal benefit.

Rating:
Summary: A prophecy of things to come...
Review: "1984", by George Orwell, is a harrowing tale of the dismal future. The year is 1984 and the government has taken over every aspect of Joe Anybody's life. Through the use of an advanced television, called a telescreen, the government keeps a close eye on each and every citizen of Oceania, one of three world powers. If anyone does something that makes them seem "unorthodox" or unique, the Thought Police quickly show up and capture that person, torturing him and then erasing his name from any record it may have been in, thereby erasing his existence. In this way the government controls all of history. Any record or document not in compliance with the government's philosophy or ideals quickly receives an alteration to rectify the "mistake." The future is bleak and getting worse by the day.

To call this book a "classic" would not do it justice. This is the best book I have ever read, for numerous reasons. First, George Orwell writes masterfully, with words that flow like water through your mind; his complete grasp of the written word creates a profound impact on the reader which makes the book exceptionally hard to put down. Second, the questions the book forces you to consider hit with the force of a sledgehammer: what is truth? Can it possibly be attained? These questions haunt your every moment in between reading sessions with this book. The final reason that this is the best book I have ever read is the messages the book conveys. The government should not rule people's lives, censorship is a thing more destructive than most people realize, and to be forgotten is a fate far worse than death. This book made me think more than any other book I have ever read.

Although I may speak highly of it, this book may not be for everyone. It is for every person who believes the government should not have more control over people's lives than it now does, it is for every person who questions whether the information the government feeds us on a daily basis is true or not, and it is for every person who has the mental capacity to grasp the idea that the past may not exist the way you think it does. If you want to read an astounding book that makes you rethink what you now know about the world you live in, by all means read this book. If you want to remain complacent and ignorant about what the government could become, then don't read it. The choice is yours.

Rating:
Summary: Frightening...
Review: I feel relatively uneasy about saying something negative for such a classic as 1984. But, learning the book's lesson about what the world would be like if one's individuality were lost, I'll say what I truly feel. I think this book is slow and depressing. In fact, the only reason that I kept reading on was because of the introduction of Julia in the story. I found her character intriguing. Why was she put there? Who is she? Can her motives be trusted? It was only after I read the story, that I realized she was created by the author for the sole purpose of being used as a barometer for Winston's (the protagonist in the story) individuality. What Julia means to Winston is an indication of how much Winston has lost of himself. His ability to think and remember the past.

In 1984, the world is divided into 3 superpowers. Winston belongs to the Ingsoc Party (a contraction of [Eng]lish [Soc]ialism) where to have thoughts in opposition or in deviance with propaganda meant capture and subsequent brainwashing by the Thought Police. Everyone in the Party is watched and monitored by telescreens (two-way TVs that broadcast as well as receive) and hidden microphones. A new language called Newspeak is a rapidly decreasing subset of English created to make the expression of rebellious thought an impossiblity. On top of this, all books and works of literature were being rewritten in Newspeak and their essential meaning contorted to serve the purposes of the Party.

If George Orwell's vision of the future haunts you, then his objective was achieved. His main goal in writing this book was to both set a mood and give a warning. The mood he sets is for what an extreme Socialist state would look like twenty years from the time he wrote the story. His warning is of what would happen if Socialism were perverted by the ruling class where power becomes an end and not just the means.

The ideas presented in this book are powerful and well thought-out. However, the story itself is dull and uneventful. If you like a story that you can read and reflect on afterwards, this is your book. If you like faster-paced stories, pass on this one.

LEAP rating (each out of 5):
============================
L (Language) - 3 (humorless, basic English dialogue)
E (Erotica) - 0.5 (go Julia go)
A (Action) - 0 (n/a - goes hand in hand with the story being dull)
P (Plot) - 3 (dull story, good vision)

Rating:
Summary: Too popular for propaganda
Review: This book is propaganda and is still used as such. I see it as new wave literature not as our English teachers see it a comment on totalitarianism. If your going to argue about the Soviet Union with me in all seriousness I would expect you too have lived there not be someone like the author a British Intelligence Officer. Why read biased junk? Mind you I find the romance in this story to be good so rate it 3 stars. Did this book introduce me to torture? I think it might have.

Rating:
Summary: if you have to even read the reviews....
Review: just go out and read it for god's sake ! one of the best books ever written, and able to change your belief structure on society to such a level it's amazing. Once you've read it, test yourself, and one day pick up the book and read a page, and see if it's possible to leave it at that... :) i know i can't do it. This novel exists on so many levels, it's astounding. I read it in grade 9, and thought i understood it. I just read it again this year in grade 13, and I saw so much more within it. Forget all the hype around it, just read itfor yourself and enjoy !

Rating:
Summary: the most misunderstood book ever!
Review: i think it's very sad that most people get the whole message wrong.
this book is NOT another book about how bad communism is! the party in the book is NOT a socialist party! they just call themselves socialist, just like bush calls himself a democrat. (haha!)
this book is a warning of totaliarism in any form, opression by the powerfull.
orwell himself used to be a communist. and orwell's latest political conception was socialism!

i'd suggest for everybody who wants to read this book and get it right to read the afterword or whatever in the back of the book.

why are so many americans so uninformed about communism and socialism?

Rating:
Summary: loved it.
Review: I just wish my school would assign this instead of animal farm, it's a great book. I especially liked the part when Winston starts to read Goldstein's book. The concepts Orwell expresses through this part are very interesting and some of them may be applied to the current world situation. Great book. The afterword on this edition is quite interesting too.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: As an avid reader, time and time again I'm asked what my favorite book is. I remember I had to read 1984 for a school assignment, and if I had known the first thing about it BEFORE being assigned the reading, I would have read it anyway.

Time and time again I answer these folks that 1984 is one of my all-time favorite novels, as it offers some frighteningly real and chillingly recognizable flaws found in society, that, if not ammended, will result in utter destruction.

Orwell's foretelling of that negative utopia is brilliantly portrayed. Even if you're not an avid reader - or don't consider yourself to be - read this book anyway - it's not difficult reading.

And with the countless allusions encountered in daily life, you'll be a better person for it.