1984

a novel

Paperback, 298 pages

English language

Published Oct. 20, 1960 by Signet.

ISBN:
978-0-451-52493-5
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OCLC Number:
913039905

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5 stars (3 reviews)

The year 1984 has come and gone, but George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. 1984 is still the great modern classic of "negative utopia"—a startlingly original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing, from the first sentence to the last four words. No one can deny the novel's hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions—a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.

143 editions

Super dystopia, depressive and triggers, too realized in real life!

4 stars

1984 by Orwell isn't your typical feel-good, hopeful sci-fi novel. It is a dystopian, cautionary tale, that sadly has even more relevance now in 2018 than when it was first published, and this thought is scary.

Its main protagonist is Winston Smith. He works for the Ministry of Truth, London, chief city of Airstrip one, Oceania. During the 1960's, the world had gone through revolutions, and now it is divided into 3 super-continents, at constant war with one another. Every person is monitored and listened to by the over-powerful Big Brother, when every act and even its mere thought are crimes, punished in the most horrible, brual and sadisitic ways imaginable.

The novel portrays a totalitarian future (for the author), where every person and every thing in the world is monitored, catalogued, created, and un-created in a tyranical regime enslaving everyone. Language is re-shaped, history is written and re-written over …

reviewed 1984: a novel by George Orwell (Signet Classics)

Horrifyingly Excellent

5 stars

Absolutely excellent book, a must read for everyone in my opinion. It does get a little dry at certain parts, but picks right back up. It is entirely worth pushing through.

The book expresses an insanely scary, yet completely plausible future of the world, or more likely certain places. Some places around the world share many similar core values with the world of 1984, which furthermore helps strengthen the fearful possibility. 1984 is a great fusion of non-fiction, history, futurism, and fiction in a dystopian world ruled by people who quite literally want nothing more than power, pure, unadulterated power. They will do anything to get it, and do anything to keep it. This is all done in a fictional world, but sometimes it really feels like you're reading non-fiction, due to how completely possible the world created is. Many values shown in the book, you hear and see about …

reviewed Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (The Complete works of George Orwell -- v. 1)

Review of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

The contributions of this book are far too grand for me to go into all details here. To make it short, I believe that Orwell provided a fitting explanation of how individual thought is suppressed under totalitarian regimes. The principles of doublethink are also used in democratic states whenever it is politically necessary to hold two conflicting opinions. I even claim that it is a politician's most essential skill to perform this mental gymnastics convincingly.

However, this propaganda does not necesarrily manage to convince everybody. Regardless of the political system, it seems that generally, the people under its influence tend to root for it. But also regardless of the system, the capacity for subversive ideas can never be eliminated. Whether this capacity is actually of any use, though, depends on the system. The dystopian world of 1984 deals with subversive thoughts in such an efficient way, that revolutionary spirit is …

Subjects

  • Classics
  • Science Fiction - General
  • Literature - Classics / Criticism