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Summary: Good Book but hard to understand
Review: I am a 7th grader and I had to read this book for GT(Gifted and Talented program) and I thought it was really quite interesting, but a little hard to understand. I still don't understand the Ignorance is strength, War is Peace, etc. They are just oxymorons to me. Overall it taught me something about the power of society and that we should never let it get out of hand. I know how to speak Newspeak too.
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Summary: Big Brother is Watching Yo' Ass
Review: WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. I am unable to adequately describe to you here how utterly amazing (also horrifying, nightmarish, grim, cold, and bleak) this book is. If you feel that you're capable of transcending to a new level of intellectual awareness and intelligence, then you're ready for this book. People who read this book that aren't ready for this transition will find the experience unfulfilling.
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Summary: Gripping Reading!
Review: This book, which is really a science faction, as opposed to a science fiction book, is most disturbing. Orwell's main theme in this book is that the aim of any dictatorship is to bore it's citizens to death and thereby suppress thought.Any form of excitement is thwarted by the Junior Anti-Sex League,24 hour interactive television and repetitive labour.Orwell seems to be saying that without imagination, there can be no freedom.Still,despite the lack of a clear plot, this is the best dystopian book I have ever read.
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Summary: Literally Genius, Politically Mind-Provoking
Review: The way Orwell suck you into the book is one of the most effective ways I've experienced. His metaphysical imagination of the last decade is frightening and mind-blowing at the same time. It makes us think of the world in the book, and inevitably compare it with ours. 1984 stands as one of my all-time favourite. And to the 15-year-old reader from USA who said that it's mundane, I have a word of advice for you. If you can't imbibe the message in the book, then you're just immature. Mind you, I'm 16.
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Summary: Not a prophecy but a warning
Review: George Orwell's 1984 is really brilliant. It warns about how life can be when a totalitarian power is exerted over people. Orwell wrote this book when totalitarism was identified with comunism, fascism and national-socialism. But today we know that an apparently democratic government can use mass media, TV, doublethinking and ignorance to gain and increase its power. 1984 is not a prophecy but a warning about the evilness of power and its consequences over individuals and society.
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Summary: Ignorance is Strength, but for whom??
Review: First, I wanna say that this book is above anything else you will read during your lifetime. It is more inspiring than the scripture, and for many, more useful (no offense).
When I finished reading 1984 in my freshman year of college, I was completely depressed, devastated, yet infinitely enlightened. 1984 is not fiction by any standard; the techniques used by the totalitarian governments in the novel resemble those of today's Third World countries very much that you would think Orwell was a real prophet, or maybe just the mentor? Anyway, I come from a country with a totalitarian regime, and 1984 was like a slap on the face and a wake-up call: I suddenly realized why my country is in constant war, why we see the portrait of our own Big Brother everywhere, why my countrymen never taste the revenues of oil and how it is all achieved. Oh, in case you were wondering, I come from a country called Syria.
The novel cannot be fully appreciated by an American who lived all his or her life thinking that the biggest threat to their life was the Commies or Saddam Hussein using chemical weapons on them, or, not having milk to go with their cereal in the morning. Those who truly suffer their governments' greed and insanity will undoubtedly find some form of solace in reading Orwell's masterpiece. Alas, most of those live in countries where reading is not a luxury to be had freely, and where existence is a struggle. In short,the novel will transform you to a whole plane psychologically and intellectually. READ IT, for your own sake, for humanity's sake. Only then will you know why it is really a free (well, almost) cure to stupidity, ignorance, and apathy.
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Summary: 1984 is a brillant story about dictatorship.
Review: I believe that this book shows a great struggle between being an individual and being a follower of an unknown power. And it shows the horror of living in a totalitarian world.
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Summary: 1984 has come and gone...
Review: Orwell's "1984" is a classic piece of 20th century literature, no doubt. While I can see many things of which he speaks of in today's society (doublespeak, Big Brother, etc.), this book was not written as prophecy, as some might suggest. It should serve as a warning, nothing more.
Instead, I'll say that I read it as required reading in a high-school literature class and found Orwell's "Animal Farm" to be a less heavy-handed approach to storytelling. I enjoyed "1984" only slightly more than the later film based upon the novel <yawn>.
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Summary: 1984: holy writ
Review: Orwell has come as close to scripture as possible in this chilling, surreal, astounding book. For those of you who believe that power can be benign, just read this book, and you will NEVER fully trust any power structure again.
Rating: 
Summary: Read it....
Review: I feel that Orwell tried to warn not just the people of his time, but future generations of the atrocities a form of government such as totalitarianism would create.Yeah, it (facism and nazism) was very rampant in '48, but as '98 approaches, many of the things mentioned in the book are seemingly apparent in today's society.I read this novel my senior year in high school, and I honestly have to say that no other book has ever gotten to me... not even Slaughterhouse 5. Now that I am in my first year in college I have to write a paper on this arbitrary fanatical form of government,I understand where Orwell was coming from when he said that " BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU!" Our government, which has sworn to protect the public, says that we the people have our constitutional rights as americans to have privacy and freedoms, yet our lovely government harasses law abiding citizens by invading thier privacies and shutting them up when trying to express their opinions. Don't get me wrong... I like this country, but it is gradually reducing itself into this sadist form of government that Orwell had desperately tried to warn us about. I guess this is about all I have to say about this.
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