Author: George Orwell
This edition: Anniversary Edition, Paperback, Penguin Books (2009)
Pages: 355
Tagline: 'War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength'
Summary...
"Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, Orwell's narrative is timelier than ever. 1984 presents a startling and haunting vision of the world, so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of multiple generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions a legacy that seems only to grow with the passage of time." (Goodreads)
My thoughts...
I read The Hunger Games about three years ago and fell in love with the dystopian genre; since then I have read many of the countless other dystopians that seem to have recently flooded the YA genre. Seriously. I have read A LOT of dystopians, and A LOT of them have been amazing, and I have loved A LOT of them. So, it was probably about time that I read a classic dystopian, I thought. 1984 was the obvious choice (and I intend to read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley sometime soon too.)
I read The Hunger Games about three years ago and fell in love with the dystopian genre; since then I have read many of the countless other dystopians that seem to have recently flooded the YA genre. Seriously. I have read A LOT of dystopians, and A LOT of them have been amazing, and I have loved A LOT of them. So, it was probably about time that I read a classic dystopian, I thought. 1984 was the obvious choice (and I intend to read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley sometime soon too.)
I know that a lot of teenagers
will be deterred by the idea of ‘classics’ – for some, they conjure up the
image of musty, old-fashioned books – but I loved 1984. It was completely on a
whole different level to all the ‘modern dystopians’ I have been reading
recently. Not to discredit any of those at all, but 1984 honestly is in a
league of its own.
The world created by Orwell is fascinating and so plausibly and realistically portrayed that I felt, not like I was reading a fictional novel, but a real, non-fiction account of what actually happened in 1984. That’s how believable Orwell’s writing was. I think what may have added to the depth of the dystopian world created in 1984, as opposed to other dystopians I have read, was that there was a political background and reasoning given for how things were the way they were.
I found it absolutely fascinating to contemplate some of the concepts of the 1984 world. Could it really be possible to keep a whole population docile by limiting their vocabulary, thus not giving them a means to express any disagreement or dissent? Could it really be possible to effectively wipe out everyone’s memory of the past by continually changing it to fit whatever version of events the government wished to tell? Would people actually accept this? Would they, or the majority at least, remain oblivious to what the government was doing?
This dystopian world that Orwell created is one of the most shocking I have read about, and it is made all the more terrifying by how realistically it is portrayed. I strongly recommend this to anyone who enjoys the dystopian genre, and, in fact, to anyone who wishes simply to read a truly praiseworthy novel.
