1984

Rating:
Summary: Fine book to read
Review: Even if some people disagree with me, I will say this is one of the best books you can read. Everyone must read this book, it has the power to change your beliefs about the world.

1984 goes deep to show you what the world COULD be like if a ruling party did all the right things to gain complete control over the populace. Your daily life monitored continuously, no rights to show individuality or freedom of speech, and constant fear of being whiped clean off the world if you did anything not in accordance with the Party, also known as Big Brother.
I sure hope something like this doesn't happen to us any time soon, not until I build my rocket ship to go to Mars and live in a cave.

I would certainly recommend this book to you, for only 300 pages it is some good reading.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing, gut-wrenching, and horrifyingly prophetic prose
Review: I read George Orwell's classic 1984 in High School, as a summer reading project. I still have that dog-eared and worn book sitting somewhere in my library, and I refer to it or quote from it quite often. It is haunting and horrifying. I both love it and hate it; in many ways, I believe that is the reaction Orwell wanted a reader to have when he or she put down the book, having read those four, final words (for those who've read the book, and understand it, you know exactly what I mean). I remember asking a friend of mine in that high school what books she had read for the summer. 1984 was on her list as well, and she hated it: she claimed it was depressing, that it was too dark, too dismal. That she didn't think it could happen. To that idea, and to others who would argue the same thing, I say that it is SUPPOSED to be dark, and depressing, and dismal. It is supposed to horrify you, to grab you and tear you from one revelation to the next, and to finally make you realize, through the conversion of the most average man in the world (Winston Smith, the protaganist), that any person in the world can be made into a machine, and learn to love it.(...)

One can walk away from this book with many different feelings on it: Orwell's predictions and fears leave a reader with so many ways of interpreting his prose. One can, and should, be horrified and sick to one's stomach at Smith's surrender to blissful ignorance. Personal freedom and thought, sex, love, honor, and hope are all crushed beneath a government that wants to reduce humanity to worker ants. The Party promises a future in the image of a boot stamping on a human face for all eternity. Reading this book, one immedietly begins to look upon the rest of the world, and begins to see how dangerously close to Orwell's fears humanity has come.

Wonderfully written, with incredible complexity (he did, after all, make up his very own language--NEWSPEAK-- to prove his points), and full of imagery that only furthers the sense of hopelessness and hollowness that makes up the theme of the book, this book is simply incredible. Love it. Hate it. Fear it. Read it. It is, without question, one of the great classics of the 20th Century.

Rating:
Summary: FIVE STARS ! ! ! !
Review: 1984 is an awesome book! It changed my life. It will change yours.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent -- Good Companion to Solzhenitsyn
Review: An excellent book. Fast reading and riveting, though certainly not pleasant. In its depiction of what could happen to our societies if the Liberals/Socialist/Communists take power, it's like an extension of Solzhenitysn's "Gulag Archipelago."

Rating:
Summary: Proof that a must read is not necessarily a good read.
Review: Written in the late forties, Orwell's 1984 is clearly a product of its time; a time when the advent and eventual use of the atom bomb threatened the end of civilization. I admire Orwell for the amount of thought and imagination he must have put into the development of this book. It is an example of how a powerful imagination can teeter between extremes of pure optimism and, in this case, paranoia. In 1984, Orwell's vision of the future is grim: war is constant; freedom, as we know it, is an ancient and outdated concept; and love, for anything but government, is perverse. Winston, the book's protagonist, struggles with a lost sense of self and his fear of a government (the Party) that punishes the pursuit of individual fulfillment. Most disturbing is that, in the end, rather than die as a martyr, he embraces his oppressive government fully aware his capitulation will precipitate his own death.

Orwell's commentary on the evolution of totalitarianism is profound. Orwell asserts that post-Neolithic governments, with the benefit of written history, were, over time, able to reduce the threat of overthrow using lessons learned by fallen predecessors. Orwell argues that throughout history people have been divided among high, middle and lower classes; and that, with the advancement of successive governments, the intent of the higher class to maintain power over the lower classes has become less explicit. This has left the lower classes less inclined to revolt. In 1984, the proletariat is under the illusion that their government represents their interest. The Party fosters this illusion, in part, by constantly "updating" any record of the past. As a result, people are unaware of how terrible their lives are relative to the lives of those who lived before them.

Newspeak, the language created by the ruling party in 1984, is amazingly detailed and seems feasible. It is based on the English language, and its vocabulary grows smaller instead of larger every year. An appendix, included in the book, enumerates some of the terminology and syntax of the language, and explains how the language is designed to control the thoughts of those who utilize it.

Orwell's prose is not noticeably good or bad. The book's strength is in its power to make people think.

Rating:
Summary: Big Brother is Watching
Review: I've recently finished reading Nineteen Eighty-Four, and it has to be one of the best books I've ever read. It's about the life of Winston Smith, who lives in a alternate future, where the world is ruled by power-hungry socialists who control every aspect of people's lives, right down to their very thoughts.
Winston believes that he remembers a happier time before the revolution, when people were free, wars could be won, and laws dictated governments. He decides to rebel against the system, despite the threat of being killed, by starting a journal.
This is definitely one of the best books I've ever read. It offers insights not only into the possibility of a horrible future, but also into a confusing present. An example of this is how the book introduces the idea of "doublethink," a practice where a person holds two contradictory beliefs at once, and can still believe both. Orwell leads us to believe that this is but an evil communist idea, but in fact, he is satirizing the propaganda of our own "free world."
All in all, I immensely enjoyed what is undoubtedly the author's biggest masterpiece, and would instantly recommend it to just about anyone.

Rating:
Summary: eye - opening
Review: This book, which was George Orwell's basic predicitions for what to come can have many different meanings. It all depends on you, the reader. Not only does it make you wonder if your trapped, or in a totaltarism kind of the world, but it then makes you think your glad your not. (or are we?) I'm only a teenager, but I have a tendency to question authority. This is one of the best books I have ever read. 1984 is filled with intellectual thoughts and ideas. Youi will definitly NOT regret reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Greatest Book Ever
Review: Why are you even spending time to read reviews of this book. Any educated individual should read this masterpiece. What a book, what an ending, what does our future really hold?

Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking and at times chilling
Review: Many have heard allusions to Big Brother through television or movies. Many have heard that they should read this book because it's a classic, or because of the amazing predictions from 1949 about life in the future. Everyone should read this book.

If you read it hoping to find action, or hoping to find a tie to the world as we know it, you most likely won't comprehend the actual meaning of the words. You'll be most successful if you consider what we have today compared to what we had when Orwell wrote the book in 1949. Think of how much the world has changed, and how far there is left to go.

Read this book, and every chapter think of the relationship to everyday life. This isn't a book that should be skimmed. Think of the implications of Orwell's predictions. Realize that it could happen.

Is it a novel, or is it possible? Are we starting to live in Orwell's world?

Rating:
Summary: Increases its relivance in post 1984 years
Review: This is a spellbinding book. George Orwell has created in this book a society that could very well the most horrific situation any human being could ever find itself in. I loved every aspect of the book: the plot, the characterizations, the future shock, the political and religious allegories and the appropriate bleakness and gloominess that eventually wears you down towards absolute fear of the future.

Though I loved the relationship between Winston Smith and O'Brien and their encounters in Part III of the novel, it was the affair of Winston and Julia that was central to the novel. With these two characters, Orwell gave us two completely identifiable and realistic characters that we like immediately. It was as though the two of them were thrown into a maze of oppression and tried to free themselves, just like any of us today would do. It is here that Orwell gives us the sense of hope that all humans have that good will of course triumph over evil and freedom will come from their slavery. Though it is obvious that they probably won't be succesful in their rebellion of Big Brother, we admire them for being human: to fall in love and to be distinct humans and to have regular thoughts, feelings and memories. In the end, when they are captured by the thought police, seperated, tortured like animals, brainwashed and released back into the collective, it is all the more heartbreaking that they, like human nature, has fallen prey to them enemy: communism. Their final meeting at the end is more heartbreaking in how they know they betrayed each other and have been conformed, resulting in the loss of their love for each other. I don't believe that this was a love story but I thought this relationship served as the means by which the reader would identify their rebellion of the Party and their failure.

To those who felt cheated by this ending, it would have underminded and ruined every theme that Orwell made throughout the book about totaltarianism: a man cannot break free of the state and overcome it if the state can succeed in taking away his individuality and place the state within him. To give the book a pleasing ending would take away the message that communism should be feared; for if Winston could beat the Party, everyone after him can as well. To give him that victory would cheat the audience more.

Above all, 1984 succeeds in how it will always be relevant in todays society. The U.S. now wants to monitor all activity over the mail and internet for security reasons because of Sept. 11. We are at the starting point of a war which may conduct itself over a long period of time. Security cameras are stationed at every corner in downtown london to monitor the activity of the citizens. We have experienced the serious threats and wide spread fears and panics of communism of the 1950s and 1960s and a cold war between captialism and communism which was very close to being an Orwellian Revolution of sorts. It is a great book in not only being entertaining but being insightful. It surpasses horrific masterpiece, it is a warning.