1984

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful! I couldn't put it down!
Review: I've had to do alot of reading this year for my AP English class, and this is one of the best books I've read so far. It was so captivating! I had to force myself to put it down. I loved how new elements were always being added into the storyline. After I got through the first two chapters I was hooked. It sucks you in, and I like a book that keeps you wanting to read more and more. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone, especially if you like to read about what man's future could be.

Rating:
Summary: frighteningly on target
Review: to be perfectly honest, after i'd completed '1984', i feared for us all. partly because i am a perpetual worrier, partly because this book so easily depicts what can, and already has begun to, happen to us as a race. 1984 intricately details a world shot to hell by mass propaganda, scapegoating, blatant lies and brainwashing. the story is told in third person, through the jaded and frustrated eyes of one winston smith, just another poor soul gone wrong. we see what the world has become: a machine, cold, colorless, dangerous. the government, known only as the Party, literally rules each and every aspect of life, down to the thoughts in one's head. the storyline sounds somewhat complex, but in actuality it's easy, almost too easy, to understand and relate to. the saddest, perhaps, part of this book was the fleeting love affair winston becomes involved with, and its eventual, and inevitable, demise. towards the end of the story my heart sort of dropped, because it does not necessarily end in triumph. i cannot give a good enough description of this book, it's hit too unbelievably close to home. i bought it not too sure of what the premise was(which i do often because i am a fool), but once i'd opened the book, i could see i held a real gem.

Rating:
Summary: Almost too real!
Review: The book is not only well written but, in my opinion, an accurate picture of where the world is headed. Although parts may get a bit confusing, if you plow through those parts it all makes sense in the end. A bold and daring novel written as fiction but parts may be frighteningly real when you look around you at our current society. I recommend it to everyone but specifically those who are either paranoid or totally detest the way our society behaves.

Rating:
Summary: A literary masterpiece
Review: George Orwell's 1984 is one of the, if not the best science fiction novels of this century. A warning about the menaces of totalitarianism. The novel is set in an imaginary future world that is dominated by three perpetually warring totalitarian police states. The book's hero, Winston Smith, is a minor party functionary in one of these states. His longing for truth and decency leads him to secretly rebel against the government. Smith has a love affair with a like-minded woman, but they are both arrested by the Thought Police. The ensuing imprisonment, torture, and reeducation of Smith are intended not merely to break him physically or make him submit but to root out his independent mental existence and his spiritual dignity. Orwell's warning of the dangers of totalitarianism made a deep impression on his contemporaries and upon subsequent readers, and the book's title and many of its coinages became bywords for modern political abuses.

Rating:
Summary: 1984: A haunting revelation to the future
Review: 1984 would have to be one of the most intelligent, insightful novel I've ever read. It has a lot of major themes that we face today and because Orwell wrote this in the 40's, make makes it even more haunting. I would highly recommend this book to absolutely anyone. It is fantastic novel.

Rating:
Summary: Control language; control the world
Review: So much has been written by others on this classic text that I will limit my comments to that aspect of the book I feel is still the most important - the manipulation of language to control behavior. Orwell understood how crucial meaning and communication is to social and political behavior. The Bolsheviks first and then the Nazis both went to great lengths to manipulate meaning, creating an acceptable vocabulary of politically positive words and images and an equally negative vocabulary for that which was to be vilified and destroyed. Attempting to channel behavior into patterns predefined by these limited modes of expression represents the greatest part of the state propogandist's art. Orwell reduced the complexity of this enterprise to something that could be seen for the con game it is. His invention of 'newspeak' demonstrates the reducto ad absurdum of such verbal restrictiveness.

In our day, whether Big Brother is really watching or not, we suffer from some of the same contraints of limited language and, in term, limited behavioral options. On the one hand we suffer from a language of polictical correctness that strives to offend no one, but makes speech clumsy and artificial. On the other extreme we suffer from the limited categories that the professional news media use - the narrow meanings available to them for understanding and communicating what is considered 'news'. Since politicians contribute to this limited vocabulary and play off of it, it saves them from facing much real in depth analysis and critique and limits the public to shallow expositions that distort reality and make meaningful political choice impossible.

So 1984 has come and gone and we haven't fallen into the dramatic pit that Orwell pictured, but the language we use to deal with social and political issues has been so attenuated that we are in danger of becoming slaves to a limited set of possibilities because we cannot even articulate any alternatives.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing novel
Review: I find it funny that almost all of the reviews are 4-5 stars, or 1 star (with a few exceptions). Personally, 1984 is among my favorite books and is my favorite of the utopian/dystopian genre of books. No, I am not a paranoid McCarthyist nut--in fact I am an anarchist. However, I see a profound message in 1984 that is as relevant today as it was when it was first published in 1949. Among those who rated the book poorly, I found the following types of criticism:

1. "Oh, the book is too boring, too long, not enough action, too much description, hard to read, blah, blah, blah." To you I have one thing to say: Grow up. This book is less than 300 pages, significantly shorter than your average novel. Sure, it was longer than Animal Farm, Brave New World or any of the other books that fill the ranks of the genre, but only because it contained so much more.

2. "It was disgusting, the story was poor, Orwell is stupid/depraved, etc." I personally felt that the story was magnificent, and much more detailed than any similar book, but that is of course only my opinion. Every part of the story had intricate meaning. The sex scenes were vital, for they showed the importance of lust, and how they were defying the state by putting their lusts--not love, mind you--but sexual desires ahead of the will of the state. The torture scenes depict the degenerated position they forced him into--the only what they could break the will of someone so intent on either freedom or martyrdom.

3. "Orwell is just playing on Cold War paranoia to make a buck, he doesn't even know what communism is, he is plagerizing other people's work, the message isn't important anymore." I cannot see is how somebody could claim that he was working with a worn out subject or playing on Communist paranoia. It was published in 1949--the Cold War had only really been in existence for 2 years and very few people had any idea what was going on within the Soviet Union, much less the inspiration to writing about it. Furthermore, to those who think he was ignorant of the tenet of Communism, he was not. He was a member of the Communist party for a period of time in his life and he was neither stupid nor ignorant. He was both aware of what Communism was and was able to comprehend it and its implications. Furthermore, as he has said himself, he was NOT parodying Communism or socialism, but the totalitarian state that had arose in Russia and spread to its satellites, and which was masquerading as Communism (obviously what is depicted within the book is not Communism but a fascist society where the state controls commerce). Communism is a political system by which the state controls real estate and industry in order to ensure the rights of workers. Ideally, it isn't even totallitarian, but democratic, in political function. One reviewer I saw ignorantly proclaimed that Communism was an automated society where robots did all the work, right after claiming that Orwell was ignorant. Such hypocrits.

In conclusion, all I can say is that, if you're, stupid, ignorant and close-minded, by all means don't get this book, for it is far beyond your comprehension. However, if you are a reasonably intelligent person that doesn't need car chase scenes to hold your attention so long as there is a good story and a strong message, then this book is for you!

Rating:
Summary: A frightening profecy of the future
Review: This book was a fightening read. It seems so preposterous, and yet it's all true and all possible. We have to wonder when, not if it will happen. As soon as you put the book down your own future becomes insecure. Not for the weak of mind or heart! It's not just literature, it's history.

Rating:
Summary: Future Sight
Review: George Orwell looked ahead in 1984 to a time when totalitarianism might rule society. Written in 1949, Orwell wanted to force people to think about the possibility, real in his mind, that a government-Big Brother-could control our thoughts and actions. So the actual 1984 has come and gone, and nothing happened quite like Orwell might have thought. Still the book gives us something to think about and somebody to watch out for. Be careful. Big Brother is watching.

Rating:
Summary: All things to all readers?
Review: Reading all the reviews has been fascinating! A great and deep book is somewhat like a Rorschach inkblot, allowing the reader to place their own personality and ideas atop it.

1984 is part of the world's literary culture, something that is of value beyond the quality of the story and the writing. It's a satire, not a prophecy or prediction or a sci-fi novel. "Satire has, as its prime purpose, not to comment or wound so much as to reform. It seeks to mock, or invert, or exaggerate with the intention, that by doing, idiocies may be corrected." (Stephen Murray-Smith) The fact that dictatorships, of a wide range of colors, are currently in something of a decline suggests that Orwell's efforts at reform are slowly working.

There are many deep parts of the book. Orwell explores the psychological role of language and control of thought by language, something which seems to be an on-going experiment in the USA today. Despair, hopelessness, human frailty, human resilience, love, betrayal; Orwell deals with so many themes in this rich work.

Yes, it is deeply disturbing, as good satire should be. Yes, we can see the parallels in our own societies and lives. That is as it should be. 1984 is not an action book, as action and excitement are anathema to control. Satire can be very hard and not very funny, and can take us time and a sense of history and society to grasp properly.

It is good that the book is read in schools. You may not fully understand it at the time. Return to it over the years. It is a warning to our cultures and societies about possibilities, but you must understand something of societies and cultures to understand the book and its warnings fully. Let it be a guide to you, not a prescription.