Book: Buy 1984 Online

Average Rating:

Unlike many accepted classics, this is not regal, dry, stuffy, nor thick. 1984 is mostly a light read, with some exception towards the end when Winston starts repeating from 'the book' to Julia. Other than that, words generally flow down the pages, and you quickly find yourself engrossed by the story, such that it becomes hard to put down...and hard to stomach at the same time.

Orwell creates a world that is both absurdly terrifying yet strangely familiar. Strangely familiar because of what we see happening right now in our present day history. Orwell proclaimed that he did not think 1984 would happen, but that it could happen. If he were still alive today, he would be no less convinced that it could happen.

Today, reality does not give us leadership which is this draconian. 1984 presents a possible reality; a reality that is an extreme case of government gone bad. While I don't see this as our eventual fate, I enjoy the eye-opening approach Orwell takes in creating this story to make his point.

The result of his foreboding is eye-opening and fear-inducing. Those familiar with Animal Farm will recognize his ability to paint a very nefarious, yet realistic, scenario in which leaders of any societal order strive to exclude. Those not familiar with Orwell are in for a treat and should read Animal Farm in addition to this.

This review is being written in early 2003. At the moment, US politicians are attempting to create legislation which will enable federal agents to track every electronic move that people make. In light of that, this book is a required read. Disregarding that, this book is still a required read.

While I do not think this book represents a potential reality, it does highlight the danger of losing one's freedom to think independently. And in that vein, Orwell forces you to ask questions about the core of humanity and just how far things could possibly go.

In perusing some of the 821 reviews of this book, I don't think it's fair to say that this is the best book ever written, or even one of the top 10 for that matter. It is a good book, and one that I highly recommend. But I cannot in good faith call it one of the best ever.

The only issue I might have is that Orwell does assume that the average person is so mentally broke that he could allow this to ever happen. I don't know if this was his aim, or if it's to proclaim this *would* happen if the upper echelon got their way. Then again, in the day and age of media-fed TV junkies, perhaps he was more right than he could possibly have known.

A very good book and certainly worth the read.

After all, in the corporate world, as in the "Oceana" of this book, the "proles" (common laborers) can pretty much think and say what they want, although it IS possible for individuals to go to far. But if one wants a comfortable life in an office job, one not only has to watch what one says, but how one says it, and what one can be demonstrated to think. If one is caught in the "thoughtcrime" of being insufficiently enthusiastic about one's company, or showing doubts about whether what it's doing is right or not, one will surely be "disappeared"; one's co-workers will show up one day and simply not find you there, and if anyone is foolish enough to ask what happened, they will simply be told, in a tone of voice that brooks no further questions, "s/he is no longer with the department". If the offense was serious enough, that person will never work in as high-level a position again, anywhere. They won't have been taken off and tortured; they will simply have been exiled to the status of common laborer, where they're no longer dangerous.

Also, if you doubt the existence of "doublethink", consider that corporations want honest, trustworthy employees, but heaven help the employee who speaks his/her mind (even quietly, on his/her own time) if it disagrees with corporate policy.

The real world may be more subtle than the novel, but truth is no less truth for being subtle.

Orwell builds a world where no single detail is left to randomness. From all the constructions the reader comes across in this book, the most astonishing ones are, (of course this is a personal view):

The dynamics of time: More than what the author has created as future, what impresses me most is what he has created as past. To start with, the treatment of past throughout this book is from a philosophical and logical point of view simply overwhelming. The idea underlying the novel is that the past is in your hands, you can do whatever you wish with the past, which implies that no matter what course of actions you take, you can always modify what you've done so far without the necessity of traveling in time. There is no room for history or memories here. Your personal history is what you want it to be at the very moment you are thinking of it; this is: you have as many personal histories as you choose, which also means that you have none. Orwell has shaped a time machine that doesn't presuppose any physical change in space or time for the entire process takes place in the mind. This leaves the main character in a helpless situation since his quest, is the quest of past. He craves for learning something from a world he would have liked to live in, but that he only knows by intuition. As he experiences the feeling of being cheated he grows anguished: he wants his intuition to become certain. If it happens, he will recover his past, his own existence.

Newspeak or the economics of language: language is a human construction to help us naming the world we live in. Words are born to serve expressive necessities. In a similar fashion, they disappear when they no longer symbolize something we want to communicate. In Orwell's world, on the contrary, language is a means to modify reality: when a word ceases to exist, the object it used to represent ceases to exist as well. Language is the tool used to shape the world as man wishes. It is not a means to express ideas. It is the idea itself, what has to fit words and not the other way around. If something can't be named, it simply doesn't exist. As Borges says: "Words create past". Then if words are suppressed, history is simply erased and becomes nothingness, creating a space that has to be refilled by something new.

The logics of doublethink or the art of canceling opposites out. The ability to justify everything in an impeccable logical way. (I wonder how many politicians today have taken hold of this "technique" to justify their actions even when they are aware of the contradictions they entail).

Actually, there is a lot more to say, but I'll stop here. Just go and read it.