1984 by George Orwell
Standalone novel
Publisher: Signet Classics
Published Date: 8 June 1949
Read Date: 8 September 2014
Tagged under: 5, Book Review, 2014 Read, 2014 Favourites, Classics, Dystopian, Adult Fiction
Book Summary
While 1984 has come and gone, Orwell's narrative is more timely than ever. 1984 presents a "negative utopia", that is at once a startling and haunting vision of the world - so powerful that it's completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of entire generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions - a legacy that continues to grow, not less, with the passage of time.
To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone - to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone:
From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink - greetings!Words escape me as I try to put down on paper my thoughts on this book. Animal Farm is a novel that stayed with me, even though it has been years since I studied it in year 9 English. And if I am blown away by that, what would I think of George Orwell's masterpiece?
In short, it is amazing. To say that my eyes have been completely opened wide would be an understatement. Never have I had to think so hard whilst reading a novel. Orwell has crafted such an intricate and frighteningly real society in which Big Brother and the thought police are always watching you. This is a dystopian society at its finest. It's perfect. It's impenetrable. And there's nothing anyone can do about it.
The characters are all extremely ordinary - in appearances, personality and careers. They hold no special abilities or secret plans to overthrow the government. Yet they are so believable and realistic that I couldn't help but grow attached to them.
And the message within this book. At first they didn't make any sense.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
These three short sentences sound almost like oxymoron. However, once I finished the book, they make so much sense that it's actually quite scary. The world created in 1984 is not impossible. And perhaps that's what's so haunting about this book.However, for fans of modern dystopian YA-fiction, this may not be what you are looking for. There is no action-packed plot or soul-consuming romance. !984 is a classic and you should approach it as such.
what is scarier is that the book was written in 1948, where George Orwell thought that 1984 would look like
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