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""Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold. Down in
the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into
spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there
seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered
everywhere."
The year is 1984; the scene is London, largest population center of
Airstrip One.
Airstrip One is part of the vast political entity Oceania, which is
eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia and Eastasia.
At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show
either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with
Eastasia, or that it has always been at war with Eastasia and allied with
Eurasia. Winston Smith knows this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth
involves the constant "correction" of such records. "'Who controls the
past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present
controls the past.'"
In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always
Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston
is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still
functions. He knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid
fiction. He knows the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and
narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and
brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives
him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual
passion. 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.
Newspeak, doublethink, thought crime--in 1984, George Orwell created a whole
vocabulary of words concerning totalitarian control that have since passed
into our common vocabulary. More importantly, he has portrayed a chillingly
credible dystopia. In our deeply anxious world, the seeds of unthinking
conformity are everywhere in evidence; and Big Brother is always looking for
his chance. "
Amazon.com Editorial Review
"...This book is a historical masterpiece. The characters, the
setting, the message, still ring true today. Individualism is crushed in
this books world; humans become like insects, and think with a hive mind.
The doctrine that the people of this world chant like a mantra are all basic
contradictions, such as, "War is peace". Putting the mind in a double bind
where normal thought is paralyzed. A lot of people say that we are moving
forward towards the 1984 world. I agree in a sense but we are going about it
in a subtle different way. Such as the current cry for everything in the
name of safety, really, Can you ever be safe enough? Therefore any law could
effectively get passed in the name of safety, or battling terrorists or
global warming, or equal rights, or etc infinitum. We have to remember to
use common sense when something is presented as truth. Further we must be
careful and ever vigilant when it comes to human rights and freedom of
speech, and learn the lessons that Orwell tried to teach us."
Killerwokz Review at Amazon.com
