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Loading... 1984 (1949)by George Orwell
  
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I read this book a year ago approximately (it was either slightly before or after I was forced to read Animal Farm at school-which I enjoyed, but that's a whole other review.) and I liked it, but of course it frightened me. What if this really happened? It seems totally possible and plausible, though not in the year the book is set-1984, which has obviously already passed. Orwell has made a world that is believable enough. (  ) kyndyleizabella | Jan 23, 2017 |  Because I graduated from high school in 1984, I’ve always had a connection with both the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell and the rock album 1984 by Van Halen. Over the years, the former has grown in my estimation and the latter has declined. The album by Van Halen is something you outgrow. The novel by Orwell is something that grows with you. I put Nineteen Eighty-four on my Classics Club list because I knew my daughter would be reading it in her senior high school literature class, and I wanted the chance to talk to her about it. Besides, it’s been at least twenty years since I read it, and I wanted to experience it again with more life behind me. I’m glad I did. For those unfamiliar with the novel, it was published in 1949, and depicts a bleak world set thirty-five years in the future, hence the title, Nineteen Eighty-four. The protagonist Winston Smith lives in the totalitarian state of Oceania, in the province called Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain). Big Brother, the Party leader, watches everyone through two-way TV screens; independent thinking and individualism are snuffed out by Thought Police; and the past is constantly being rewritten to support the Party’s agenda. Winston gets curious about the world before Big Brother, and as he begins to assert his independence he has to watch his every step to evade the Thought Police and avoid being sent to the dreaded Room 101. The last time I read Nineteen Eighty-four I was teaching Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 to seventh graders, and I was trying to educate myself in classic dystopian literature. At the time I also read Huxley’s Brave New World, and I watched Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil. Honestly, in the years that have passed since, they had all blended together like some kind of dystopian goulash. It was good to read Nineteen Eighty-four on its own. Of course, there were some things that I remembered clearly from Nineteen Eighty-four: Big Brother, doublethink, the Thought Police. But I had no clear memory of how the novel ended, and I must say that Part III was as harrowing and disturbing as anything literature has to offer. If you’ve never read it before, Nineteen Eighty-four is one of those books you shouldn’t miss. And if you haven’t read it since high school or college, pick it up and see how much it has to say to you now. (  )1  nsenger | Jan 6, 2017 | 1984 was doubleplusgood and my mind is doubleplusblown. I can't help but think that the world that George Orwell created in 1984 is a close description in many ways of the world of today and the direction it seems to be heading towards. A world where unorthodox thoughts are almost literally impossible, where privacy is abolished and mass surveillance is the essential tool for maintaining power, where family ties are destroyed and basically any pleasure is taken away from you. "The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already." The main character of the story, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party and works on the Records Department (Recdep in Newspeak) in the Ministry of Truth. His job is to continuously alter and falsify the past to suit The Party's needs and to make any unwanted facts disappear: "Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it." Winston would seem like he's just a normal Party member, unconscious of the real shit going on, or that's at least the appearance he has to continually maintain since the state watches your every movement and monitors your every thought, and even the least eccentric behavior or thought would draw unwanted attention and might even be considered a thoughtcrime! But Winston resists the continuous massive brainwashing going on and considers himself among the very few sane people left in a sea of insane and lunatic people. Or is he making all this up when he's really the insane minority of one? "Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal." The story unfolds and takes unexpected turns when Winston meets Julia and he can finally be himself and share his thoughts and hatred for The Party with her. They both try to find a way to join the Brotherhood, an underground organization of rebels founded by Emmanuel Goldstein, people trying to overthrow The Party. Does the Brotherhood even exist? Will Winston and Julia succeed in their mission? That, my friend, "[...] you will never know.[...] you will never learn whether the answer to that question is Yes or No. As long as you live it will be an unsolved riddle in your mind." ... that is until you decide to read this fantastic book :D ! But remember, you just have to keep one thing in mind... ( ) d3vr | Dec 28, 2016 | The ending made me so mad! ( ) PBugriyev | Dec 24, 2016 | The book 1984 by George Orwell is a historical books which talks mostly about the governmental and the attitudes of the governments. Just like human, every book has its own strength and weakness. The only thing to be able to persuade reader is to overcome those weaknesses by the strength within. No human is perfect, so does book. Being a reader who is able to forsee the strength rather than the weakness is what we need to become. The weakness in this book is the language. It uses hard vocabulary that I find it hard to understand. This book allow me to open my mind to those new vocabularies. I also used many other resources as my translation for those words that I do not understand; for instance, I used Oxford Dictionary to see more explanation or description of each word, I also used Thesaurus to see the synonyms and antonyms, and if I still do not understand, I used google translate. On the other hand, I really like the plot of this book and as for me, that is the strength of this book. The plot is such an interesting one for it tells the suffering of Winston. The book is just like whispering me the feeling of betrayal by my very own lover and best friend. The flow of the story which is not so usual story catch my attention. Therefore, I encouranged those affectionate reader to read this book for it may challenge you guys to be a better reader and to understand those hard vocabularies. ( ) natasyajunus | Dec 12, 2016 |
 In "1984," Orwell created a harrowing picture of a dystopia named Oceania, where the government insists on defining its own reality and where propaganda permeates the lives of people too distracted by rubbishy tabloids ("containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology") and sex-filled movies to care much about politics or history. ... Not surprisingly, "1984" has found a nervous readership in today’s “post-truth” era. Londres, 1984: Winston Smith decide rebelarse ante un gobierno totalitario que controla cada uno de los movimientos de sus ciudadanos y castiga incluso a aquellos que delinquen con el pensamiento. Consciente de las terribles consecuencias que puede acarrear la disidencia, Winston se une a la ambigua Hermandad por mediación del líder O’'Brien. Paulatinamente, sin embargo, nuestro protagonista va comprendiendo que ni la Hermandad ni O'’Brien son lo que aparentan, y que la rebelión, al cabo, quizá sea un objetivo inalcanzable. Por su magnífico análisis del poder y de las relaciones y dependencias que crea en los individuos, 1984 es una de las novelas más inquietantes y atractivas de este siglo. Most novels about an imaginary world (e.g., Gulliver's Travels, Erewhon) have as their central character, or interpreter, a man who somehow strays out of the author's own times and finds himself in a world he never made. But Orwell, like Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, builds his nightmare of tomorrow on foundations that are firmly laid today. He needs no contemporary spokesman to explain and interpret — for the simple reason that any reader in 1949 can uneasily see his own shattered features in Winston Smith, can scent in the world of 1984 a stench that is already familiar.  "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is not impressive as a novel about particular human beings. Its account of life thirty-five years hence has little fanciful or gadgety interest. But as a prophecy and a warning it is superb. The ultimate degradation of a totalitarian sates is here portrayed with repulsive power. It is probable that no other work of this generation has made us desire freedom more earnestly or loathe tyranny with such fullness...the terrific, long crescendo and the quick decrescendo that George Orwell has made of this struggle for survival and the final extinction of a personality. Is contained inThe Complete Novels of George Orwell by George Orwell Animal Farm/1984 by George Orwell Romanzi e saggi by George Orwell DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON; 1984; SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT and Other Essays by George Orwell Has the adaptationWas inspired byInspiredHas as a studyWhy Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens George Orwell's 1984 (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations) by Harold Bloom Has as a student's study guideCliffsNotes on Orwell's 1984 by Gilbert Borman George Orwell's 1984 (Monarch Notes) by Ralph A. Ranald Has as a teacher's guide
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(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:13:05 -0400)
Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities.
George Orwell has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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6 editions of this book were published by Audible.com.
Penguin Australia6 editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia.
Editions: 014118776X, 1405807040, 0141036141, 0141191201, 0143566490, 0141391707
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