1984 in Penguin Classics

Sep 15, 2013 Rowena rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: banned-book-challenges, dystopia, favourite-authors, orwell

“Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.” - George Orwell, 1984

It’s been over 5 years since I last read 1984 and I still find the storyline as horrific as ever. It's terrifying to think of a world in which your own children are spies for the government and can turn you in, where cameras are watching you 24/7, where one could be accused of committing a "facecrime" or having an "ownlife", a world in which we live nervously worrying about “Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.” - George Orwell, 1984

It’s been over 5 years since I last read 1984 and I still find the storyline as horrific as ever. It's terrifying to think of a world in which your own children are spies for the government and can turn you in, where cameras are watching you 24/7, where one could be accused of committing a "facecrime" or having an "ownlife", a world in which we live nervously worrying about whether the sensitive machinery that is watching you will pick up an increase in heartbeat that may incriminate us.

When I first read this book I imagined a similar dystopic world taking place in a Communist country or perhaps in a dictatorship like the one so many of my relatives were raised in. Now I realize it could just as well take place in a so-called democracy under several guises, and that’s the scary part. My mind did wander quite a bit while I was reading this book, thinking of the eerie possibilities, trying to find parallels between what I was reading and what I was observing in society. We are witnessing so much propaganda which may not be as obvious as some of the hilarious pro-Stalin and pro-Mao posters that I’ve seen online and in history books, but it’s there in an often subtler form.

I think one of the scariest parts for me was seeing how language can be used to manipulate and control:

“All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory.’ Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink.’

Language is definitely becoming more simplified and some of the words that are making it into the dictionary are just laughable.

I kept thinking about the following Virginia Woolf quote while reading this book:

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” - Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

Freedom of mind is something I take for granted. We all want to believe we’re untouched by all this propaganda but are we really? Yes, this is definitely a cautionary tale. I wonder how many are listening. ...more

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Jul 03, 2008 Brent rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Time to read Orwell again!

5 likes · Like · see review

Dec 29, 2018 Irwan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: finished, 2018

Finally caught up with the often mentioned book, with its famous quotes like "Big Brother is watching you", "thought police", etc. It is a meditation of tyranny and totalitarianism to the fullest. How humanity is susceptible to manipulate or to be manipulated. You can almost read it as a manual and a case study of absolute power. It also provides "tools" and concepts to express or detect manipulation in the systems around you like economy, politics and religions. Think how much "thought policing ...more

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