1984

Rating:
Summary: Postcard to the Future
Review: Viewed one way, George Orwell's work reads like a quasi-biography. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a man trapped in a totalitarian society whose first major act of the novel is to begin a diary, so that people in the future can piece together what his present was like and what the past was like, too. That, of course, is exactly what Orwell was doing: writing this novel as a warning to future generations. Orwell was not, as one earlier viewer noted, ahead of his time. He was very much a man of his time. The world during the period preceding and contemporaneous with his work was afire with the sorts of totalitarianism - Nazism, Communism, well-intentioned but disastrous Keynsian socialism - descibed in this work. F.A. Hayek's book ("The Road to Serfdom") on the threat socialism was to basic human freedom, which may or may not have influenced this work, came out around the same time. Orwell makes it personal. And he reminds us, rightly & properly, to fear anyone who would bend and distort the truth for their own purposes. When others fear the truth WE have reason to fear THEIR motives. We have, of course, seen this recently: the college newspapers refusing to print an anti-reparations ad or the theft and destruction of conservative newspapers on college campuses. No one who genuinely believes in the validity of their argument need fear the effects of dissent: if wrong, it still helps them to clarify their argument; if right (presuming they care for the truth), it serves as a valuable course correction.

Orwell's novel also serves to show the importance of organizations - civic groups, churches, even corporations - as a bulwark against government power. Without them, the government can quickly crush any individual it deems a threat. A lone voice in a large country is seldom heard. The freedom of assembly allows men to magnify their voices. In this novel there is nothing that stands between the government and its citizens. When the government is able to bend any group to its will (think of the lawsuits against the Boy Scouts or the Rotary Club), nothing stands in its way, and the end is truly near.

Given the dreariness of the movie I was rather scared to pick up this famous novel - I was 12 when that red letter year came around, and I wholly remember the hype. But through the depressing storyline the personal struggle of Winston Smith shines through. And so does the storyline of mankind itself.

Rating:
Summary: Kick in face
Review: This book is a real kick in the face for anyone who has read it. Especially if you are in the middle of an instituition (prison or school...is there a difference) and have grown up hating beuracrats. Read this book, and burn down London to paraphrase Shaw.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: Interesting book. I first read it in 1984 and had a lot of fun picking out the items he got correct. I reread it recently and it is even more fun. The writing is not real uplifting, but all in all it is a good book. Everyone should read it.

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Summary: A Truly Canonical Literary Masterpiece
Review: Huxley's book was smart; Orwell's is intoxicatingly so. Huxley was before his time, but not only was Orwell before his time, he also managed to create a world so real and believable that it is almost as if all of this really took place in 1984. This book is obviously very important for so many different reasons. The book is extremely definitive, aptly describing every aspect of a self-sustaining totalitarian empire, and is as much a social essay as it is an engaging piece of fiction. The book has probably forever redefined the way that I look at government. I'm a very stubborn person, so the book for me is genuinely something special.
One of the things that struck me as being very impressive is how Orwell wraps up the whole thing. I think it shows a lot of intellectual maturity to write a book of this kind and not succumb to the literary desire to end the story happily. Had it been otherwise, the book would not have been nearly as important a work. Logically a society crafted around the ideal of oppressing the individual will never fall to a single person, and it speaks highly of Orwell that he did not sacrifice the theme to make the story more fulfilling for the reader. In fact, I think Orwell was trying to discomfort the reader in a way that they start looking more critically at the architecture that society comes from. This is one of the things that makes a book historically important, and is one of the reasons that 1984 had such a deep impact on me.
On the topic of Oceania and the Party, it is very important that they separate themselves from all preceding governments because they do not exist under the pretense of any false concern, such as the well-being of the populace or economic stability; instead they exist only for the sake of gaining power. This important distinction is probably the main reason that their society is more likely to survive for forever than any totalitarian government that came before it. Societies fall when the people become discontented. If you prevent the people from being discontented through brainwashing or getting rid of the people who are immune to brainwashing, there is no threat, no matter how bad the society really is.
Of course, the ideas relating to modifying history are equally profound. The quote, 'Those who control the past control the future. Those who control the present control the past,' is likely to stick with me for the rest of my life. The idea of controlling a source document and changing it's content whenever necessary is even more relevant now that we live in a society where all definitive editions of information exist in a freely modifiable, digital format. Newspeak is also a very interesting thought in and of itself. Part of the reason that Winston was such a threat to the Party was because he was so deeply rooted in English, the language of poetry, because it comprises the words (and therefore thoughts and ideals) of most of the major peoples of the world. Newspeak removed this potential for the expression of emotion.
In short, 1984 is thought provoking and brilliant. It is a book that anyone with any potential to grasp its meaning should read, and absolutely deserves a position as one of the most important works of literature in modern times.

Rating:
Summary: Much better than "Brave New World"
Review: Although Brave New World has been written before Orwell's masterpiece - which is the great merit of Aldous Huxley - and these books show different views of the future, I consider 1984 much more mature than the other. When I started to read it, I couldn't stop. It's intelligent, interesting and VERY well written. Besides, it deals with many, many issues, not only totalitarism, as people use to say. It deals also with loneliness, mass media and the power of verbal language. I really like Orwell's description of a profesional "building" a new language, a language so limited that would control human's thought. George Orwell was very inspired when he wrote this book. Congratulations to this sensitive writer.

Rating:
Summary: Everyone should read this book
Review: This is one of my favorite books. I read it again every few years. This is such a scary look into what the future could be. I can't imagine what ran thorough peoples minds who read this book when it was first written in the 1940s. They must have held great fear for what was to come. Since I was 7 in 1984 I, obviously, did not read this book until well past that year.

The world that this book describes is a scary place that none of us can begin to fathom living in. Upon reading the first few chapters it was odd to me that people existed in this world without striving for change. Upon finishing the book, I can state that I quickly saw how overpowering the government was and how things would most likely be impossible to change.

Lastly I want to add that the scariest part of all is that some of the ideas in the book no longer seem so "out there".

Rating:
Summary: 1984 Review
Review: ...1984 is about totalitarianism. It is about a society ruled by a dictator named Big Brother. The thought police carefully scrutinize everyone in the society. They arrest you if you show signs of rebellion or dangerous behavior. Everyone is under constant observation by devices called telescreens; devices that are like two way TVs. One of the points of their society is to make everybody the same. They are working to destroy all things that are individual about people. They also destroy all evidence about the past. They invent and change events so that they are made to look good. They have abolished marriage in the common meaning of the word. You may only get married if you do not have any interest in the person. The main Character, Winston, questions this society. He longs for a time in which people had freedom. He starts a journal, a crime punishable with death, about the things he feels is wrong with the society. He meets a woman named Julia and they begin a secret affair. They find hideaways in the woods and go there separately because if they are seen too often together the thought police will get curious and investigate. They get a room over an antique shop in a poor neighborhood and use that to meet in. Eventually they meet up with a man named O'Brien who asks them to join the brotherhood, an anti Big Brother organization. O'Brien turns out to be a member of the thought police in disguise and they are arrested. They are tortured and made to confess everything. When they are released, they have no strong feelings for each other anymore and are for the rule of Big Brother.
I think the significance of this story is to bring to attention the dangers of dictatorships. What Orwell did with his novel was create a hypothetical situation representing what could come if we are not careful. This book was written at a very tumultuous time in history where there were many emerging dictators. This book is Orwell's warning to society.

Rating:
Summary: A difficult and insightf look into a very possible future...
Review: This is perhaps one of the most difficult, and chilling books I have ever read. This book throws you into a possible future where people are name-less, and privacy is non-existant (sounds familiar somehow...)

If there is any book about utopia (or complete and utter oblivion in this case) you should read, it's this one. A classic, and a highly remarkable read. It is also a good idea to read "A Brave New World", that is, if you enjoy this book.

All I've got to say is this is a book that will leave you thinking forever. After reading it I questioned everything from provacy in our computer age... to the meaning of life, and a host of things as well. In the end I was left with a rather profound feeling. All I can say is, read it, the rest is up to you...

Rating:
Summary: The mind machine
Review: All right, I don't see there is anything new I can add to the endless list of reviews written on this thrilling, wonderful book. So, I will just make an attempt at scribbling some of my impressions.

Orwell builds a world where no single detail is left to randomness. From all the constructions the reader comes across in this book, the most astonishing ones are, (of course this is a personal view):

The dynamics of time: More than what the author has created as future, what impresses me most is what he has created as past. To start with, the treatment of past throughout this book is from a philosophical and logical point of view simply overwhelming. The idea underlying the novel is that the past is in your hands, you can do whatever you wish with the past, which implies that no matter what course of actions you take, you can always modify what you've done so far without the necessity of traveling in time. There is no room for history or memories here. Your personal history is what you want it to be at the very moment you are thinking of it; this is: you have as many personal histories as you choose, which also means that you have none. Orwell has shaped a time machine that doesn't presuppose any physical change in space or time for the entire process takes place in the mind. This leaves the main character in a helpless situation since his quest, is the quest of past. He craves for learning something from a world he would have liked to live in, but that he only knows by intuition. As he experiences the feeling of being cheated he grows anguished: he wants his intuition to become certain. If it happens, he will recover his past, his own existence.

Newspeak or the economics of language: language is a human construction to help us naming the world we live in. Words are born to serve expressive necessities. In a similar fashion, they disappear when they no longer symbolize something we want to communicate. In Orwell's world, on the contrary, language is a means to modify reality: when a word ceases to exist, the object it used to represent ceases to exist as well. Language is the tool used to shape the world as man wishes. It is not a means to express ideas. It is the idea itself, what has to fit words and not the other way around. If something can't be named, it simply doesn't exist. As Borges says: "Words create past". Then if words are suppressed, history is simply erased and becomes nothingness, creating a space that has to be refilled by something new.

The logics of doublethink or the art of canceling opposites out. The ability to justify everything in an impeccable logical way. (I wonder how many politicians today have taken hold of this "technique" to justify their actions even when they are aware of the contradictions they entail).

Actually, there is a lot more to say, but I'll stop here. Just go and read it.

Rating:
Summary: An insanely chilling, haunting masterpiece
Review: My senior class was made to read George Orwell's 1984 in our English class. I had heard about the book before but had never read it, and truthfully I didn't really want to read it, but considering it counted as a major portion of my grade, I read it anyway, and I liked it. Orwell envisioned a future world with totalitarian rule, almost Nazi-esque, where everything anyone does at anytime is watched by "Big Brother", the nickname for The Party which runs Oceania, the city the story takes place in. It is during the first part of the book when main character Winston Smith realizes that The Party is not as great as they claim they are with their propoganda, and starts to question his memories and past events if they really happened at all, or if they are just imaginary images implanted by The Party. Winston begins a dangerous affair with a girl named Julia who feels the same way he does, and the two try to rebel against the party. Orwell wrote with such vivid descriptions of this dark and desolate world, while keeping the feeling in your mind that this is no more than a satire of totalitarianism, but it really depends on how you interpret 1984. Warning of the future, or satire, whatever it is, 1984 is a haunting, chilling vision of the future that everyone should read, it is a true classic.