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1984 (Signet Classics)

New American Library

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Average customer rating: 4.5 stars

A classic story that thankfully never happened..

An amazing story that I wanted to read for a while now. Finally I bought it and I am glad I did. It raises questions and it paints a nightmarish picture of goverment control. While this stuff never happened verbatim, many goverment attempted and still attempt to control spoken and written word much more than it is reasonable. People still disappear (vaporize) without anybody knowing if they are alive or not (courtesy of local or far-away governments including so called "democracies.")
Anyway, the book is very interesting read. Saying more may spoil it for a future reader. I am not sure how the whole Julia situation fit into the story other that adding scarier depths.

A disturbing and haunting book for young people

This is a book that I had first read as a young teen as a Freshman in High School. The main character is emotionally bonding. In the end, he is tortured into breaking his integrity to his true love. "Do it to Gloria," the words still ring in my ears 30 years later. This is a disturbing book to the first degree.

Review

I bought this book for my friend who loves to read, but didn't know a good book to read, so I bought this for him. He loves it! Thanks for the book!

Totalitarianism totally today

More than half century is gone since George Orwell depicted with 1984" a frightening picture of a totalitarian regime of oppression of all human individuality and freedom and absolute control. Principally he has only transcribed from reality, because the dictatorships of terror existed already: Nazi-Germany, Sowjetunion, Mao-China, GDR, Northern Korea and others. A better description in literary form is not thinkable! That`s all old hat? Not at all!
Orwell is about advising against mechanisms which lead to such slavery of people. And these mechanisms are still going, even with us. He wants that everybody develops a feeling in order to become able to stop such wrong developments. No wonder that this book was on the black list of many dictatorships. Why? A dog that is hit will bark! But we are all hit since in this time of a progressing media age the ideal presuppositions for the complete exertion of influence and control of people are given. In totalitarian regimes of today it is for example often practise to block websites, so that only certain information currents are available. Talking about opinion-forming. That is to say the advantages of linking ways of information in our days can be reversed at any time to a disadvantage. You believe what a majority says is right, because it is comfortable.
When Orwell wrote 1984" he thought of the Sowjetunion, but his observations of human psyche have universal validity. What he describes is the ideal type of a totalitarian dictatorship that comes automatically from the misleading human will of self-realization, being often enough wishful thinking that the paradise could be ordered on Earth, thanks to the human capability. This has nothing to do with prophecy when Orwell writes this. It is nothing than self-observation and self-realization of any reasonable human.
In 1984", similar to the Sowjetunion or the GDR or Cuba, there is a striking economy of scarcity which is being denied with the help of propaganda. Hence the ministry of economics is for Orwell the "ministry of abundance". This is a mark of totalitarian systems, that they misuse the language, twist everything, blackmail opponents and let them disappear when they get them. All for the alleged welfare of the community. Everybody understands the proper insanity but all surrender to the pressure and take part in the game. Reality sense is no longer needed, it dwindles ever more and the reversion to reason and to sustainable values is getting more and more difficult. "Why do you accuse me of not having unlocked the door?" is the question of the concentration-camp guard who stands in front of the court because the prisoners perished in the locked building. "I have not had an order to open it!"
At first one agrees with the lie until on is able to live under it by constant use. Who does not remember the propaganda of the Nazis about worthless lives and alike to praise man on one side as superior masters and at the same time devalue man by racism. That is always the same, self-elevation leads to fall. So much for ideologies where after man himself determines what is good and bad. In so far Orwell draws not the last necessary conclusions, that man cannot find truth in himself. Hardly he seems to have found it, at once it is turning destructively against him as is apparent in his "Animal farm".
Orwell says clearly in "1984" what is unjust. But, whence the individual freedom and self-determination of man should come when they cannot be given naturally, he is not able to say.
It is lost somewhere in the fog of humanistic wisdom which are always under suspicion of being misused as helpers for something else. Already the Bible warned: "woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who make out of darkness light and out of light darkness". Well, but how to avoid the evil?
It would be wrong to point at totalitarian systems and think that this could not happen to a democracy. Orwell knew about the fragility and sensibility of all man made power structures which have those above and those below. He knew that the so called free West could quickly slide into Totalitarianism. In Germany that happened very quickly. It is a deception tp assume that it would be different somewhere else. It was visible that a high culture could not withstand. And today? Sceptics discover also in our society the beginning of limitations of freedoms and of the misuse of information, even when this happens subtly. For example somebody who behaves like a Christian is in our days quickly branded as a fundamentalist or even thrown into the same pot with Islamists. Because of the relativism of today which regards as only truth that there is no binding truth it is ignored that exactly the Christians combine the notion of truth tightly to the notion of individual freedom, whereas this is not the case in Islam, because Islam has a political claim of power exertion.
It is true that Orwell makes clear that the reversal of the values goes together with the reversal of the words. "War and peace" is exchangeable with "just war". Sand this process is starting in the small, with verbal persecution and it is ending in the worst case with Holocaust. At first you are eliminated in words and then with all consequences. Marxism-Leninism possessed the impunity to call itself scientific knowledge. We laugh about it. But what about today? We have an extended faith in science. Today even the former marxists know that they were wrong. We have seen it a hundred of times what happens when man takes himself as last measure. His self-redemption programs are sentenced to failure. One day it will also be put an end to the personal freedom. Orwells book should be a warning. "1984" is one of the few books which everybody should have read. And it holds its actuality.

1984- 1999- 2010- 20?? how long?

1984, in my view, is a book that should remain on the global high schools program's lists. I do praise my teachers for making it a must read while I was young. I remember though that it was analyzed as a future nightmare relating to a far future, in a distant place. Basically it has been considered as a book of fiction. Twenty years later I traveled to England as I sought justice, and much to my indignation I discovered that 1984 was reality! Eventually I have abandoned my law degree after two years because of the madness which George Orwell describes in 1984. My literature teachers knew nothing about the society which George Orwell lived in. I thought they fail in the analysis of this book by comparing it to Russia, as if George Orwell warned us against the creation of such a Russian society. How absurd! Yes, this book could have been analyzed in general, but what about the particular? Undergoing two years of a living nightmare, I began to resent my high school teacher's ignorance. I could only wish they were in my own shoes during those two years of hell. I am not only talking about the thousands of cameras of the video surveillance all throughout the country. The video cameras were merely the external reflection of a deeper disturbing dark force devouring English society. Yes, there was the abnormal crime going on, which is a byproduct of the inner dictatorial regime, and that is the oppression of the individual by English/British society. Like 1984, fear was everywhere; it was felt in all levels of society. The foreigner in contemporary England's reality is analogous to the lovers in Orwell's `1984' who had to hide their love from the fear that the big brother might find out. Yes, love is forbidden, just as being different is forbidden. The incessant `Bloody foreigner!' exclamations do not exclude the American accent, or any other cultures to that matter. No matter where you are from, as long as you are a foreigner, the demonic masses, who are possessed by the big brother's spirit will attack you either verbally, or psychologically, but often physically. The murder of black people in bus stations were only the tip of the iceberg at that time, I believe today it is even worse. Orwell's `1984' is like a prophecy, Orwell, knew where the spirit of England was going to wind up. The suicides, the harassments, the terrible crime, the violence, the hatred, the alienations, the prejudice, all of which is depicted as the big brother, epitomize the spirit of the main stream in England. The English masses are the big brother, and the lovers are the individuals, aye, all those who dream of freedom and love in England, but will never experience it because of their parents spiritual diseases. If you show the slightest signs of love, you'd be put to ridicule, if you speak with the slightest accent you'd be attacked. The authorities, the universities, the teachers, the police, the justice system, the health systems are all slaves of the big brother. They speak like robots from fear to sound different than what the norms of the big brother's decree. Creepy! As a foreigner, you'd find out that the moronic Rugby players are not the only ones to physically attack foreign students. And that the English market seller in Colchester is not the only one to exclaim: `Bloody foreigner'. The majority of English society suffers from the rabies (big brother) of hating strangers, or anyone different than them. Today I laugh at those two lost years of my life. At least I have made the right decision, I even lost all my possessions and turned broke and bought a ticket away from this hell of psychopathic maniacs. Indeed, today I laugh because I have managed, like Orwell, to defeat English society, owing to my literary works. But what about the lovers in `1984'? The reader wants them to feel free about their love, but English society wouldn't let them, because of the fear spread by the big brother, which is the English system itself: jealous, selfish, violent, cruel, brutal, and ill. The worrying part is that the norms in England turned violence to a method of the big brother to oppress the individual. The gossip against everybody at work, the mockery of the weak, and the mockery of justice were only tiny specks of the unfolding evil which has consumed England. I am proud of George Orwell, my fellow writer, in writing this critical book against English society. I just hope that the teachers of literature world wide will be wise enough to analyze it both in the particular and in the global. Orwell did not speak about Russia! No! He spoke about England, his own country! Let us not distort his fine work of art. I am certain, however, that the education system in England will fail to deliver the message of this book to its students; for the education system in England is a part of the big brother, and that is the spirit fear and conservatism. Fear has consumed England in all aspects. George Orwell wrote this book not because he hated his country, but because he loved England, and because he was worried for the children of the future in England. He was critical because he did not want fear to oppress the lovers, Aye, the individuals. Fear is the big brother. England is under the oppression of the big brother, not only in 1984, not only in 2004, but today. For how long? It is up to the children of the future to start a revolution. The first thing to do will be to stop the BBC echoing phony laughter in all of their so called comedies. This book is an asset to English society, but I agree with my teachers that in general it is also an asset to other world societies. Think about the freedom of the individual worldwide. I believe that to some degree all world societies could learn and benefit from this critical book, but England is the first who should appreciate it and try to dispel the totalitarian dictatorship of the big brother. The masses in England are indeed bullies, but one should remember that they are only the by-products automatons of the big brother. Try to speak with an accent in England and see what happens. Take Leicester for example. And don't forget to take a look at the surveillance cameras, for you'd have been constantly watched!