Name: Vojtech's review of 1984 by George Orwell
Item: 1984
Rating: 5
Author: Vojtech

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

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.

Isabelle

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows. 

Jildou

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”

a novel

Nineteen eighty-four

Luca Stromann

Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice: at the most, an occasional whispered word.

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.

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. 

Vojtech

arth

I won't provide an in-depth review about this book because honestly, all I did while reading this is simply reading it without thinking about anything, about the situation where this story took place or anything related. But somehow, I still managed to fully immersed into the story and feel the emotions of the characters. I can feel the tense of politic and romance by how fluid Orwell wrote down this book. This book is just simply exciting, intriguing, and confusing in a good way.

This book was just fantastic!!! The concept is amazing and it is so interesting how Orwell created this entire new world, with a working system and even a new language. I loved that you kinda knew that it was going to end badly, the end was very fitting, because you just know Winstons mission is doomed to fail in a society like this. That makes the story and the message extra strong. I think it is really cool to see Orwell’s predictions for the future in this book and to see that some of those predictions are actually accurate. I love Orwell’s vision on the world and his works are even today, 80 years later, still relevant. This will always be one of my favourite books.

Isa Hazelaar

Jule

The first ever graphic novel adaptation of George Orwell's timeless dystopia Winston Smith, an outwardly obedient citizen of Airstrip One, dreams secretly of truth and freedom - but his rebellion will come at a terrible cost. George Orwell's dark masterpiece has enthralled readers for over seventy years. Now the dystopian world of Big Brother, telescreens, the Thought Police and Room 101 is vividly brought to new life in this first ever graphic novel adaptation, illustrated by acclaimed artist Fido Nesti.

The Graphic Novel

Nineteen Eighty-Four

This book did not capture my attention in the way I hoped it would. I found it slow and boring at times where I had to force myself to continue reading. I expected more intrigue from this book. 

Maddie Holverson

Does a great job at capturing the feeling of being surveilled and gaslit by a totalitarian state.

Quintessential Dystopian fic but nothing you wouldn't expect. 

Does a great job at capturing the feeling of being surveilled and gaslit by a totalitarian state.

Quintessential Dystopian fic but nothing you wouldn't expect. 

camila mirrorball 

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

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.

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1984 by George Orwell

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