About this title: George Orwell's celebrated and always timely 1948 vision of a world subsumed in tyranny and war describes the process of events by which Winston Smith, a London clerk at the Ministry of Truth, comes to understand the true nature and aims of the government he works for, and portrays his doomed attempt to create a private life for himself and his lover, Julia. One of the bleakest political novels ever written, 1984 illustrates Orwell's despair that democracy could ever summon the strength to overcome totalitarianism in his lifetime.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin, Harmondsworth
Date Published: 1983
ISBN-13:9780140009729ISBN:0140009728
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Highlighting/underlining. 267p.; 18 cm. Originally published: London: Secker & Warburg, 1949. The classic story the coined the term "Big Brother". read more
Description: [0-14-000972-8] 1984, later printing. (Mass market paperback) About good. Cover beat up and torn, textblock discolored but otherwise clean. Pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair. (Science Fiction) read more
"I recently had a discussion with Manny about why I don't like this book very much, so this would be the fruits:
For the record, I don't dislike either Animal Farm or 1984, I just don't like them nearly as much as everyone else seems to, and so I was deeply disappointed. But my liking or disliking of them makes no difference to how important they are to literature and to many people, and I like to think I appreciate that importance.
I suspect it could have a lot to do with the fact that Orwell came at the end of a fairly long dystopia-binge and that I have a huge love-hate thing happening with dystopias anyway. Nonetheless, the hate for 1984 was in greater proportion to the love than with any of the others.
I also suspect (nay, I know) that I have a leftist bent and that I am therefore much more inclined to be sympathetic to Communism and so forth, for all that I am fully aware of its drawbacks. And I have just emerged from a very intensive study of the Russian and Chinese revolutions, so the over-simplification of events and concepts in Animal Farm actually offended me. I guess I just feel like it's unfair to focus so heavily on the bad aspects of Communism and completely ignore everything that is good about it or has the potential to be good about it.
I don't think they are well written, language-wise. The prose is as strictly functional as every aspect of the regime they are trying to criticise! It's not simple or unpretentious, it's unsophisticated and clunky. Camus is simple or unpretentious. Orwell just can't write. It's like a bizarre, twisted, reversed form of propaganda.
But the more I think, the more I am convinced it is simply the lack of originality in 1984's format that makes me dislike it. Orwell himself admitted that he was heavily inspired by Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, and reading Orwell just felt like a rehash of Zamyatin. Concepts like newspeak and doublethink are interesting and important, but I wish Orwell had chosen a form of expression that didn't make me feel like I was reading someone else's work. How hard can it be to write a traditional dystopia? Milan Kundera wrote a much more convincing, lyrical, beautiful and above all original criticism of totalitarianism in The Incredible Lightness of Being. (Yes, it's a love story too, but there are a few passages that summed up Communism so perfectly that there didn't seem to be any need to look elsewhere.)
And in the end, Manny and I agreed that it is probably the date of my birth that makes the difference. I was born just days after the Berlin Wall fell; I have never known a world in which Communism has seemed a threat. The western world, at least, has learned that Communism will never work, and I believe that lesson will stay learnt until many years after my death. Possibly I am young and naive, but only time will tell. So basically I'm the n'importe quoi generation brat who doesn't realise how much her forebears suffered. Some things are universal. But I maintain that 1984 is unoriginal and not very well written, and maybe I'm more willing to admit it because the historical context doesn't mean so much to me."
"What a scary book. This is another one that seemingly everyone else read in highschool but somehow I managed not to. My favorite quote: "Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." For me this book put a whole new spin on relativism, both moral and philosophical. The past doesn't actually exist in any concrete way, all that exists is evidence (i.e. the effects the present time has on the physical world that lasts into the future) and memory; both of which can be manipulated and controlled. So is anything actually real, except in relation to the individual? This reminds me of the arguments in "the dancing wu li masters". I don't like it because it is so anthropocentric; basically stating that human consciousness forms reality, which I cannot buy into being that the universe is billions of years old, and Homo sapiens have only been around for 100,000 years or so. So basically I reject the thinking of The Party. However I do agree that people who desire power do it for it's own end, because they want power, not as a means to anything else. Amazingly good book."
""It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
Wow. I read this book a long time ago so I knew what was going to happen, but still...wow. Orwell envisioned a dystopian future and followed his vision with unblinking eye to the bitter end.
"Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia."
In most ways this book has not come true. North Korea is the only country I know that strongly resembles the book, and North Korea is hardly a success story. On the other hand, governments do love spying on their citizens and rewriting their history. Remember when Saddam Hussein was a friend, not an enemy? Or when the civil rights movement was about equality for blacks, not about making laws color blind so that colleges can't help minorities? But there are a fair number of healthy democracies today, and in democracies people are loathe to give up their rights. At least until a crisis comes along.
"WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."
With the dawning of the Information Age, I feel less of a concern about government controlling our thoughts. To me it seems more likely that we will voluntarily choose to join our cults of doublethink. There's a web site to support everyone's views. Global warning deniers. Holocaust deniers. Supply-siders. Demand-siders. Hanna Montana fans. Obama-lovers who hate Clinton. Obama-lovers who don't hate Clinton. Unitarian anti-nominalist snake-handling Calvinists. When we look for Big Brother in the future, I think the face we are most likely to see is our own.
"This is one of those books that I had always meant to read, but never got around to. Finally, one of my college classes required it, so I was happy to pick it up, though not without some reserved skepticism beforehand. I knew it was one of those books that is constantly referred to by people who are paranoid about government and distrust everything the government does, which wouldn't really describe me, in general. But, I have to admit that Orwell's writing is masterful. Right from the start, the world he presents is mesmerizing. I think I am safe in saying that in the first third of the book, almost nothing happens. Yet, I can also say that the first third of the book was just as interesting as any of the action that comes later. Every detail, every description, every movement is analyzed in the most fascinating way. Orwell is no idiot. He has that very rare ability of few great authors to show the workings of the inner mind of man in such a true and believable way that you very well believe that he could look at you and know what you are thinking. After the first third of the book, when the story actually progresses, it gets exciting almost in the way that a thriller does. You keep on wondering what move will be next and how the character is going to strategize the demise of the enemy. Then the last third of the book is a devastating, but still masterful analysis of the human mind, free will, and reality. At almost every stage, Orwell presents his ideas with a written clarity that is a language all in its own. In spite of this whole experience and my recognition at how skillful the writing and analysis was, I cannot say that I liked the book, or even if I would recommend it. The main reason for this is that I believe Orwell cheated at the end. The protagonist was putting up a fight against the machine, and in spite of its all-powerful, seemingly omnipotent status, he held off. Now, Orwell had two options. The protagonist either would capitulate under the increasingly intelligent pressure put on by the oppressor, or he would outlast and maintain his own free will to the end. I think that the ending Orwell chose was contrived, and what he did to get the protagonist there was unbelievable. Maybe it's my own principles or feelings, but I suspect that if Orwell had done it well enough, I would have at least respected his approach. But as it is now, I had to shake my head and say to myself: No. That's not true to human nature. I don't buy that. And what's worse, I felt that Orwell must have known that himself. His writing was too brilliant before, too logical, too well-reasoned. The person who wrote all of that can't possibly believe in this moment either. So, I suspect, that in order to get the ending that he wanted, he contrived the tipping point and then returned to his brilliant form to bring the story to its conclusion. One misstep is a harsh way to judge a truly exemplar book, but I believe that it was a key moment and it unravels all the true elements Orwell had so carefully set up before. Overall, however, it would be difficult to say to not read the book, because this type of writing and insight is difficult to come by. So if you are looking for a meaty intellectual treat, read it. But don't let him cheat you in the end."
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