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  • What people often forget is that politics is not a straight line going left & right, but a circle which is topped by despotism. Hitler was extreme to the "right" while Stalin was extreme to the "left". They met at the top of the circle where all despots meet: dictatorship.

    

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• ― darkwalker said on Feb 12, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Thought Police. Big Brother. Orwellian. These words have become part of our national vocabulary because of George Orwell's classic novel 1984, the story of one man's nightmare odyssey through a world ruled by warring states and a power structure that controls not only information but individual thou ... Continue

    Thought Police. Big Brother. Orwellian. These words have become part of our national vocabulary because of George Orwell's classic novel 1984, the story of one man's nightmare odyssey through a world ruled by warring states and a power structure that controls not only information but individual thought and memory. A minor functionary named Winston Smith joins a covert brotherhood and pursues a forbidden love affair against the cold, gray backdrop of the Republic of Oceania - only to become a hunted enemy of the state...and of Big Brother.

    Today, half a century after it was written, Orwell's prophetic, haunted tale of conformity and identity strikes a disturbing chord. As we follow Winston Smith through his rebellion, imprisionment, torture, and reeducation, we witness firsthand the worst crime we can inflict upon ourselves and others: the destruction of the truths and freedoms that make us who we are.

    

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• ― meganzing said on Oct 11, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • great book. This book becomes more and more relevant everyday. A must read for everyone.

    

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• ― Dave Sanders said on Feb 24, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Thomas Pynchon intro - 2003 Plume

    

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• ― db's.books said on Aug 4, 2009 | Add your feedback

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  • best book ever

  • i have read many many books, but one has yet to touch me and open my eyes as this one did. i suggest to anyone with an open mind and a curious soul to read this book.

    

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• ― Michealwade69 said on Nov 26, 2008 about the Hardcover edition| Add your feedback

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  • Throughout junior high and high school I had a tendency of just keeping the books the teacher would give us as a reading assignment. If I really enjoyed the book, I would never return it. That's how I got this one. This is a classic, the best book of it's type I have ever read, I can't say enough ... Continue

    Throughout junior high and high school I had a tendency of just keeping the books the teacher would give us as a reading assignment. If I really enjoyed the book, I would never return it. That's how I got this one. This is a classic, the best book of it's type I have ever read, I can't say enough. Did anyone notice the parallels between this book and V for Vendetta?

    

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• ― RaechelM said on Nov 8, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

The new novel by George Orwell is the major work towards which all his previous writing has pointed. Critics have hailed it as his "most solid, most brilliant" work. Though the story of Nineteen Eighty-Four takes place thirty-five years hence, it is in every sense timely. The scene is London, where there hsa been no new housing since 1950 and where the city-wide slums are called Victory Mansions. Science has abandoned Man for the State. As every citizen knows only too well, war is piece.

To Winston Smith, a young man who works in the Ministry of Truth (Minitru for short), come two people who transform his life completely. One is Julia, whom he meets after she hands him a slip reading, "I love you". The other is O'Brien, who tells him, "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness". The way in which Winston is betrayed by the one and, against his own desideres and instincs, ultimately betrays the other, makes a story of mounting drama and suspense.

Aside from its high literaly qualities, Nineteen Eighty-Four has profund implications for our times. It points the path towards which society may now be heading, and leaves the reader with the shocked feeling that there is no single horrible feature in the world of 1984 - only two generations away - which is not present, in embryo, today. In the final section of the novel George Orwell spells out, for the first time in literature, how the spirit of every man living may be broken in Room 101, and how he can be made to avow - and believe - that black si white, two plus two equals five, and evil is good.

When George Orwell's Animal Farm was published three years ago, critics compared him to Jonathan Swift. Nineteen Eighty-Four justifies their virdict. This distinguished novel will be remembered as one of the most important and moving works of fiction to be published in this generation.

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• science-fictionGeorge Orwellpolitical criticismfictionpoliticalLiterature in Englishhigh school2808Literature
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