Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984: Autonomy, Control and Communication

by Crispin Chilton Paul and Aubrey, Paul Aubrey (Editor), Crispin Chiltern (Editor)

Genres: Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1984

Reviews

[Brigi]

When I ordered the book from Amazon, it had a completely different title. Anyway, this collection of essays is kind of outdated, because it analyses if Orwell's "predictions" in his novel Nineteen Eighty-four came true in 1984 (the year the book was published).

Since most of the authors of these essays aren't literary men, they all took Orwell's words for what they were. Not all of them, but some criticised him for not "seeing" beyond, like the evolution of technology and such. Orwell's purpose wasn't to paint the future, but to warn people about the dangers of totalitarian regimes. Therefore, he didn't need to expand on the technological progress, because that wasn't his point.

Another kind of annoying feature is that this book is addressed to a very restricted audience: British people who witnessed 1984. Some essays sound like "Haha, Orwell was wrong, we're really good here in the UK, but Thatcher is awful", without taking into consideration that in Central and Eastern Europe people were actually living in terror states. Did anyone from outside do anything about it? No.