Name: Matthew Jackson's review of 1984 by George Orwell
Item: 1984
Rating: 4
Author: Matthew Jackson

George Orwell

Written more than 70 years ago, 1984 was George Orwell’s chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever...

Winston Smith toes the Party line, rewriting history to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Truth. With each lie he writes, Winston grows to hate the Party that seeks power for its own sake and persecutes those who dare to commit thoughtcrimes. But as he starts to think for himself, Winston can’t escape the fact that Big Brother is always watching...

A startling and haunting novel, 1984 creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the novel’s hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions—a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.

1984

a novel

Nineteen eighty-four

Luca Stromann

Don't you see that the whole aimn of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.

Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there was still privacy, love and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

It was curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the power of expressing himselt, but even to have forgotten what it was that he had originally intended to say.

Alex J Wolfgang

Era curioso pensare che il cielo era lo stesso per tutti, in Eurasia, Estasia e qui. E la gente sotto il cielo era anche molto simile - ovunque, in tutto il mondo, centinaia di migliaia di milioni di persone tutte cosi, che ignoravano Iuna l'esistenza dell'altra, separate da muri di odio e menzogne, eppure quasi quasi identiche -, gente che non aveva mai imparato a pensare ma che immagazzinava nel cuore, nella pancia e nei muscoli la forza che un giorno avrebbe rovesciato il mondo. Se c'era speranza, era nei prolet! 

II discorso durava da una ventina di minuti quando un messo si era precipitato sul podio e aveva infilato un pezzetto di carta nella mano dell' oratore. Lui lo aveva aperto e letto senza interrompersi. Nulla era mutato nella voce o nei modi, né nel contenuto di quanto diceva, ma di punto in bianco i nomi erano diversi. Senza che fosse necessario pronunciare una sola parola, una corrente di comprensione era serpeggiata tra la folla. L'Oceania era in guerra con I'Estasia! Era seguita una baraonda spaventosa. Gli striscioni e i poster che addobbavano la piazza erano tutti sbagliati! Su una buona metà c'erano le facce sbagliate. Doveva essere un atto di sabotaggio! Gli agenti di Goldstein erano già al lavoro! In un interludio tumultuoso i poster erano stati strappati dai muri, gli striscioni stracciati e calpestati sotto i piedi. Le Spie avevano compiuto prodigi nell'arrampicarsi in cima ai tetti per tagliare le banderuole che volteggiavano sui comignoIi. Ma nel giro di due o tre minuti era già tutto finito. L'oratore, sempre stringendo il collo del microfono, le spalle curve in avanti, la mano libera che artigliava l'aria, aveva continuato imperterrito il suo discorso.

 che vale la pena restare umani, anche senza ottenere il minimo risultato, li hai sconfitti." 

In un certo senso, il Partito imponeva al meglio la sua concezione del mondo a persone incapaci di comprenderla. Si poteva costringerle ad accettare le violazioni della realtà più evidenti perché non afferravano mai appieno l'enormità di ciò che si esigeva da loro e non si interessavano a sufficienza degli avvenimenti pubblici per accorgersi di quanto succedeva. Grazie alla loro mancanza di comprensione rimanevano sani di mente. Mandavano giù tutto, e quello che mandavano giù non faceva loro alcun male perché non si lasciava dietro residui, come un chicco di grano passa indenne dal corpo di un uccello.

I vantaggi immediati di falsificare il passato erano ovvi, ma la ragione ultima era misteriosa. Prese di nuovo la penna e scrisse: 

Ma questa era una prova concreta; era un frammento di un passato ormai abolito, come un fossile che affiora nello strato sbagliato e distrugge una teoria geologica. Sarebbe bastato ad atomizzare il Partito, se si fosse riusciti a darne notizia al mondo e farne conoscere la portata.

Come facevi a dire che non ci fossero delle menzogne in tutto ciò? Forse era vero che in media un essere umano se la cavava meglio ora che non prima della Rivoluzione. L' unica prova contraria era la muta protesta nelle ossa, la sensazione istintiva che le condizioni in cui vivevi erano intollerabili e che in un altro periodo dovevano essere state diverse.

George Orwell’s 1984 takes on new life with extraordinary relevance and renewed popularity. “Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power.”—The New Yorker In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be. Lionel Trilling said of Orwell’s masterpiece, “1984 is a profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book. It is a fantasy of the political future, and like any such fantasy, serves its author as a magnifying device for an examination of the present.” Though the year 1984 now exists in the past, Orwell’s novel remains an urgent call for the individual willing to speak truth to power.

Inês Lemos S.

There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.

In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane.

His reason told him that there must be exceptions, but his heart did not believe it.

Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?

He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear.

Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.

We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.

Ogni cosa svaniva in un mondo popolato di ombre in cui, alla fine, persino la data dell'anno era incerta.

1984, is a dystopian novel published in 1949 by English author George Orwell. The novel is set in Airstrip One, formerly Great Britain, a province of the superstate Oceania, whose residents are victims of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation. Oceania's political ideology, euphemistically named English Socialism (shortened to "Ingsoc" in Newspeak, the government's invented language that will replace English or Oldspeak) is enforced by the privileged, elite Inner Party. Via the "Thought Police," the Inner Party persecutes individualism and independent thinking, which are regarded as "thoughtcrimes." Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 - 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism. Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism. He is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working class life in the north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, are widely acclaimed, as are his essays on politics, literature, language, and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945."

“Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick”-Kevin Malone

Athena

We're destroying words --scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. 

Ruby Long

It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love

Mr Charrington only pretending to be old to trick Winston so he would seem reminiscent of the past. When O’brien says the Brotherhood transform peoples appearances it never occurs to Winston that the Party do the same. 

Evie Sprite

Pick up those pieces,' he said sharply. A man stooped to obey. The cockney accent had disappeared; Winston suddenly realised whose voice it was that he had heard a few moments ago on the telescreen. Mr Charrington was still wearing his old velvet jacket, but his hair, which had been almost white, had turned black. Also he was not wearing his spectacles. He gave Winston a single sharp glance, as though verifying his identity, and then paid no more attention to him. He was still recognisable, but he was not the same person any longer. His body had straightened, and seemed to have grown bigger. His face had undergone only tiny changes that had nevertheless worked a complete transformation. The black eyebrows were less bushy, the wrinkles were gone, the whole lines of the face seemed to have altered; even the nose seemed shorter. It was the alert, cold face of a man of about five-and-thirty. It occurred to Winston that for the hrst time in his life he was looking, with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police.

Winston has been lulled into a stupefied sense of safety. It affirms his own beliefs so he no longer feels alone. 

Orwell may also be reminding audiences that the warning he is delivering is one they already know?

The book fascinated him, or more exactly it reassured him. In a sense it told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the attraction.

The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already. 

Winston stopped reading, chiefly in order to appreciate the fact that he was reading, in comfort and safety. He was alone: no telescreen, no ear at the keyhole, no nervous impulse to glance over his shoulder or cover the page with his hand. The sweet summer air played against his cheek. From somewhere far away there floated the faint shouts of children: in the room itself there was no sound except the insect voice of the clock. He settled deeper into the armchair and put his feet up on the fender. It was bliss, it was eternity. Suddenly, as one sometimnes does with a book of which one knows that one will ultimately read and re-read every word, he opened it ata different place and found himself at the third chapter.

Matthew Jackson

Tyler Moore

renni

Olha, eu não tenho uma coisa inteligente pra falar sobre esse livro pois todo mundo já sabe do que tem que saber. Aí que o Orwell previu isso e aquilo, e que é igual o mundo atual, que é anticomunista, que a Oceania tá em guerra com a Lestásia, e que é um clássico e sei lá o que.

Keep the people hungry, miserable and uneducated. Pump them daily with nonsense. Erase their language so that cannot express their thoughts and feelings. Erase history and memories of anything better than what you are offering them now. Taint their basic desires and instinct. Monitor their every move and sound. Now, chanel their anger into something that benefits you. This was the best horror book I have read. I would say it's great fiction, however, I see it happening. The third part was extremely heartbreaking to read. 

Jovana Gjekanovikj 

I mean what is there to say that has not being said about this classic ?

Olivier Betil

Benedict Neo

A compelling and prescient fictional portrayal of a global superpower totalitarianism.

Andrew John Kinney

Read this in high school. Later I discovered Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, Burmese Days, and Homage to Catalonia, all of which I prefer to 1984, but it is still a very good book. I feel it got co-opted by the 1950' and '60's anti-communist movement in the US, and enjoys a higher status than it otherwise might because of its promotion by schools during those decades.

It was a hard read for me in the start. I literally did not want to finish it, but i still did. Part three was only interesting part i had read in this book.

Wirt

grazie alla mia prof di filo per avermelo consigliato

gioiaa

Erik Wallace

Somehow I didn't read this in school... and frankly, that's a little disappointing. Orwell's themes and ideas would be ideal for classroom discussion. Unlike a good majority of what I read in school, this book is interesting, and also relevant to the times (even though it was written 58 years ago). I can't begin to imagine how much different this book would have been if it were written in the last twenty or thirty years. Besides the obvious parallel of Big Brother and the current administration spying on American citizens, too many similarities are to be found.

There's a plethora of things I could discuss about this book, but I don't want to reveal any spoilers. I highly recommend this book for those who haven't read it, and even for people who haven't read it for years.

“who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” 

alyssa 

Lisa-Maria Hofmann

Surprising amount of literal and unimaginative torture in this dystopian classic.

Mae Erceg

I was surprised I liked this as much as I did seeing as how political it was but it truly is meant to wake you up and remind you to use your own brain to think for yourself. I enjoyed the characters and story development but was honestly bored some of the time (I’m not a huge fan of dystopian/end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it worlds though). I see why it’s a classic and would recommend in that sense to learn something but it wasn’t something I’d pick up again and again! 4/5 stars :)

Good warning against totalitarian regimes and giving up democratic rights in the present. 

Derek Graf

Dark cautionary tale. Could've been more fun to read if I read it when I was younger. Ideal for high school age maybe

Alican Sungur

Nineteen Eighty-Four (Vintage Dystopia)

Library Edition

Nineteen Eighty-Four

A very dark story with a compelling and complete world.  Some of the information dumps do drag on a bit, but the amount of background info and motivation explanations really pull you into the anxiety and paranoia of living in Oceania.

Robert Scaplehorn

Orwell was so on the ball with what the future could look like, although I think he'd be displeased with his accuracy. 1984 shocks, terrifies and paints a dreary picture for the future -- our present. 

From "Big Brother" to the dreary perspective on migrants in boats, 1984 is a horrifying tale of censorship, totalitarianism and fear, where simply looking too long at someone else can be the reason for life or death. 

This is such a daunting book that leaves a feel of profoundness on the reader. I'd absolutely recommend this to everyone, it's a must read.

Holly

Orwell was so on the ball with what the future could look like, although I think he'd be displeased with his accuracy. 1984 shocks, terrifies and paints a dreary picture for the future -- our present. 

From "Big Brother" to the dreary perspective on migrants in boats, 1984 is a horrifying tale of censorship, totalitarianism and fear, where simply looking too long at someone else can be the reason for life or death. 

This is such a daunting book that leaves a feel of profoundness on the reader. I'd absolutely recommend this to everyone, it's a must read.

Truly amazing, a little hard to read but enjoyed most of it

Ieva Valachaviciute

Jonathan Tysick

Dark, disturbing, relevant, and gripping.

I haven’t read this since high school but I found it in a little library in my neighborhood so I decided to pick it up again. I actually enjoyed it for the most part and thought it was super interesting I’ll always love a dystopian type book 

Savannah

1984 is a dystopian novel, following a rather sexist (doesn’t really matter to the plot but it’s annoying in the first part of the book) member of the “outer party”, Winston Smith, who grows hateful towards big brother. Big brother controls every part of people’s lives, his watchful eyes haunting Winston. 

The characters all feel real, except Julia who seems like a bland human lacking any intellectuality or personality. 

The story itself was page turning, especially during part 3. My favorite part is where everything unravels and it feels even more disturbing. I particularly enjoy how the political aspects are a reflection of today’s society, the contradictions in order to brainwash people seems all too real. One  scene was particularly well written, the feeling of unease before the climax.

One thing i have to say, i could not find myself giving a sht about Winston. I had low expectations from him. Which i feel is what the author wanted us to feel when he described him. He seemed so incapable and weak. 

1984 is a dystopian novel, following a rather sexist (doesn’t really matter to the plot but it’s annoying in the first part of the book) member of the “outer party”, Winston Smith, who grows hateful towards big brother. Big brother controls every part of people’s lives, his watchful eyes haunting Winston. 

The characters all feel real, except Julia who seems like a bland human lacking any intellectuality or personality. 

The story itself was page turning, especially during part 3. My favorite part is where everything unravels and it feels even more disturbing. I particularly enjoy how the political aspects are a reflection of today’s society, the contradictions in order to brainwash people seems all too real. One  scene was particularly well written, the feeling of unease before the climax.

One thing i have to say, i could not find myself giving a sht about Winston. I had low expectations from him. Which i feel is what the author wanted us to feel when he described him. He seemed so incapable and weak. 

Overall amazing book. 

I thought that this book was good when I read it 

Lexy 

classic dystopian, but thought it was overdone on the sexual explicitness 

Xin Ma

Astor Reinhardt

This book suffers from what I like to call "being wordy". As in it sometimes gets so convoluted that it throws me right out of the book and it's hard to get back into it.

It's not the worst thing I've ever read, but it's not the best. Still better then The Handmaid's Tale, another...flawed...dystopian novel.

I like it enough that I'll read it again, and I might have to because some of it just went right over my head. So I'll hold off on giving a "final" review.

But from just my first read through...it's good, if a bit dull and "wordy" at times.

Matthew Jackson &
1984 by George Orwell

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