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Nineteen Eighty-Four

By George Orwell

(2468)

| Paperback | 9780140278774

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'Nineteen Eighty-Four' by George Orwell

For those of you who have never read Orwell's masterpiece (a term I don't use lightly), it's set in London in 1984. The city, which belongs to one of the world's three superstates, is under Totalitarian rule and at perpetual war. Everyone lives under ... (read full critics)

readingmatters published on Tue, 28 Sep 2010

Plain English

Orwell took little care of his manuscripts. He didn’t anticipate that collectors of such things would pay real money for them, and that universities would think it a privilege to turn a writer’s bits and pieces into an archive. The typescript used in ... (read full critics)

lrb published on Fri, 3 Sep 2010

64 Reviews

5 people find this helpful

Due to personal reason, I re-read it in 2006. Still capture the very nature of totalitarianism and the claims come to its truest moment ever in history. Striking, stunning, we should bear this masterpiece in mind as the surveillance it has mentioned become much easier with the help of foreign techno ... (continue)

Due to personal reason, I re-read it in 2006. Still capture the very nature of totalitarianism and the claims come to its truest moment ever in history. Striking, stunning, we should bear this masterpiece in mind as the surveillance it has mentioned become much easier with the help of foreign technology. And for the ruling power -- it's all about capitalism, you know.

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張小張・Cons said on Dec 19, 2006 | 2 feedbacks

3 people find this helpful

1984 is not a prophecy (I do believe and hope) but a representation of what hunger for power and lies can do when brought to their extremes.
Orwell's dystopia is fascinating because most of it is a picture - though an impossibly excessive one - of what world and politics really are.

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Simbul said on Jan 21, 2008 | Add your feedback

2 people find this helpful

• I believe that 1984 is so scary because it identifies some aspects of power that can be found not only in the Stalinist dictatorship in which Orwell was inspired, but also in our democracy, such as the relationship between power and communication tools (TV, radio, newspapers), or power, and histor ... (continue)

• I believe that 1984 is so scary because it identifies some aspects of power that can be found not only in the Stalinist dictatorship in which Orwell was inspired, but also in our democracy, such as the relationship between power and communication tools (TV, radio, newspapers), or power, and history (Kundera wrote in one of his novels that the powerful take control over the rooms where the story is written to control the future). This is a common practice to all dictatorships: the textbooks, especially, are altered depending on what suits the ruling class.

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Cappuccino 92 said on Apr 6, 2011 | Add your feedback

Too much can be said about 1984, so I'll just focus on one aspect that pervades the whole novel: dehumanization.
All the extreme measures taken by the regime to subjugate its citizens (Newspeak, Thought Police, Two Minute Hate, Doublethink, etc.) ultimately have only one goal: to gain tota ... (continue)

Too much can be said about 1984, so I'll just focus on one aspect that pervades the whole novel: dehumanization.
All the extreme measures taken by the regime to subjugate its citizens (Newspeak, Thought Police, Two Minute Hate, Doublethink, etc.) ultimately have only one goal: to gain total control of every individual. And the only way to achieve this aim is to completely strip away every shred of humanity in people, such as love, pride, independent thought, and other inner capabilities. Every strength is quashed. Every decency is denied. Every positive quality is condemned. As a result, as we can see in Winston Smith, no trace of humanity remains after being thoroughly battered and brainwashed. Utopia is achieved - for the totalitarian regime.
George Orwell paints a truly horrible picture of absolute power gone extreme. But even more horrible is the fact that it is true after all; just look at North Korea. That is why I chose to re-read 1984 right after finishing Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. I can only say this: I'm glad that North Korea is not rich or powerful enough to prevent its Winston Smiths from occasionally defecting.

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Holmes said on May 23, 2012 | Add your feedback

testing in Beta

testing in beta review title

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Juliette Enness said on May 15, 2012 about the eBook edition | Add your feedback

*** This comment contains spoilers! ***

I feel satisfied to have finally read this classic, even though one can't really feel happy while reading it. It's a very dark and gloomy in this version of the world. The author has described in details how this oppressive world could go on forever. But I'm not really convinced that such a model o ... (continue)

I feel satisfied to have finally read this classic, even though one can't really feel happy while reading it. It's a very dark and gloomy in this version of the world. The author has described in details how this oppressive world could go on forever. But I'm not really convinced that such a model of society can be achieved and sustained. My question is always : who is/are benefiting ? It seems that the highest-ranked "Party" rulers also need to have "doublethink" to fool themselves. Why would they want to do this in the first place ? To make sure that their power in this format of ruling can last forever ?! But then who are really enjoying the ever-lasting power ? The power is not really transferred to their children.
Another aspect that is difficult or impossible to achieve is whether the inner "Party" members can be really so united to attain such an inhuman and unattractive goal, especially at the very beginning. What would motivate the members to try to attain a goal that the members themselves don't really have much to gain ?! During their revolution, I'd think, unavoidably some members might have found opportunities to divert to promote their own interests and even act against the main unattractive end.
The transformation of Winston Smith's views due to the inner Party member O'Brien was not clearly stated. We see that he's changed by O'Brien but "how" was not clearly nor credibly written. Eg. we just knew that Winston finally "loved" Big Brother but it's not clear at all how he actually succeeded in achieving that sentiment.
The book's world division in 3 superstates (p. 184 onwards) doesn't exactly describe the present world, but it's interesting and it's probably quite close ideologically (much more so than I had first thought). The 3 superstates in this novel (in terms of today's country boundaries) are like (1) Americas, UK plus Australia, (2) Russia plus continental Europe and (3) China, Japan and some other Eastern Asian countries. Thinking about it, this division is not really far away from the present reality. Moreover, the Middle East is like middle ground or mess that everybody is trying to have a role to play --- something the author also similarly implied in this novel. And of course, the author's middle ground might include as far as India and Pakistan, as he mentioned (on p. 187) a quadrilateral with its corners at Tangier (Morroco ?), Brazzaville (Congo, I believe), Darwin and Hong Kong. Just fascinating !
In the "Afterword", p.319-323, Erich Fromm has exaggerated too much about thermonuclear (hydrogen) weapon. http://wardhayeswilson.squarespace.com/a-bomb-v-h-bomb/ explains that today's typical thermonuclear weapon even using fusion is not really tremendously stronger than those that we dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (ie. not thousands of times greater but only several times). Fromm has also overestimated the development of our nuclear weapons. Today, we don't practically have 1000 megaton fusion bombs but the typical largest bombs are still around 1 megaton. In terms of "big" stuff like aeroplanes, particle accelerators and power generation, the progress has been far less conspicuous compared to some other areas such as electronics.

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Yip Kin said on Mar 28, 2012 | Add your feedback