Nineteen Eighty-Four
This week for my reading log, I read 1984 by George Orwell as my psychological drama. The book is about a sort of utopian society in which everyone is ‘watched’ by the government. The main protagonists are Winston Smith and Julia (whose last name is never made known in the book) who are both part of the Outer Party. They fall in a love that is not allowed, but they continue to love each other. The main antagonists of the book is Big Brother, a political figure who’s face is seen everywhere around the city and has the slogan of ‘Big Brother is watching you.‘ Winston befriends an Inner Party member named O’Brien, who eventually goes on to betray him. In the end, after Winston has been brainwashed, Winston ‘loves Big Brother.‘
1984 eerily reminded me of the present-day American government. Every day, the government is getting more intrusive by tapping our phone lines and searching through our emails. Also, the government is now requesting that some of the large search engines release the log of the search queries that people have made to try and detect ‘terrorism.‘ In my opinion, we should be more scared of our own government then we are of the foreign terrorists. People who are outspoken against political topics are silenced and ridiculed, and America is slowly becoming stratified into a sort of social hierarchy. In 1984 the hierarchy was the Inner Party, Outer Party, and the proles. In America, my opinion of the social hierarchy is that it goes as follows: government, politicians, celebrities, and then the working class.
I’ve learned many important lessons from 1984. The most important one was that ‘the future lies in the proles.‘ I always thought that it was up to our politicians to change the world, but it is in fact, our job as the working class men to help make the world a better place. There are only a thousand or more politicians, but there are billions of us. Who does one think would make a greater difference in the world, the thousands of politicians, or the billions of people who are in the working class? It took me quite some time to be able to fully understand this concept, but after I understood it, I feel a lot higher up in the society then I felt before. However, I also learned that it’s going to take more then one person to help change the world. In order to the change the world, an entire group has to take action. Another lesson that I learned was that the truth isn’t always what it seems. In the book, Winston was in charge of changing the historical documents to make sure that Big Brother was always right. This fooled the people by making them believe things that never really happened. An example of this was when Oceania announced that it was now allies with Eurasia, the country in which they were caught in a war with not too long ago. The government made Winston and his colleagues change all of the documents in which it said that they were fighting with Eurasia to make it seem like Big Brother was always right. Anyone who stood up against this was vaporized and erased from the historical documents. An unusual lesson that I learned from the book was that people shouldn’t take anyone else for granted. For example, when Winston was a little kid, he stole chocolate from his baby sister and ran away. When he came home a few hours later, his mother and his sister were gone, and he never saw them again. It made me realize that I take a lot of people for granted and that I should appreciate them all more.
When I first started the book, I was pretty confused because I didn’t know what was going on. I also thought that the book was going to be boring, but as I read further into the book, the plot seemed to emerge and everything seemed to make sense all of a sudden. I was really surprised to find that no one revolted against the government like one would expect them too. I wanted to yell at them and tell them to wake up, but no one decided to protest or go against the government. Also, I was shocked to see that the people actually believed all of the lies that the government were feeding them. However, I believe that a lot of the people didn’t actually believe the government, but they were too scared to do anything about it. When I finished the book, I felt really gloomy because of the story’s ending. I was expecting for Winston to somehow get out of the brainwashing and keep on believing that Big Brother was evil, but instead, O’Brien had brainwashed him into believing that 2+2=5.
1984 was another great book by George Orwell. It made me really look at the government’s actions and think, ‘Hey… this reminds me of 1984.‘ I believe that every day, we are nearing a sort of 1984-esque government, and I hope that there is something that we can all do to stop it from happening. If it does happen, I for one, will not be silenced.
By Hadeel · on September 24, 2008
I love how you took the chance and reviewed this amazing novel. It is an all-time classic that, unfortunately, is not given the credit it deserves! Thank you for showing me that there is more to life than just peppy books and shit music.