1984 by George Orwell

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” 

1984 by George Orwell is a science fiction story that attacks totalitarianism. The book is set in the superstate of Oceania, in the province called Airstrip One. Everything and everyone from the party is monitored all the time by Big Brother, the supreme leader. Anyone who shows any sign of rebelling against IngSoc (the government) is punished, tortured until they confess to all sorts of crimes and then killed. Winston, the protagonist, works in the Ministry of Truth. His jobs are to falsify records. Smith inwardly rebels and finds that there are others like him. However, the Party can see everything and so Winston is not as successful as he thinks and is ultimately betrayed by his co-worker in the end.

Should you read this book? Definitely! Not only is this book a classic and references to it all the time in media, pop culture and everyday life but it is surprisingly entertaining and easy to read. From the beginning, I understood everything and I was actually invested in the story, I say ‘actually’ because the classic novels are not always so accessible to modern teen readers and this was an exception. Although, I have to warn any future readers, that the ending is not a happy one and while this was necessary to prove Orwell’s point, I am never one to be satisfied with a sad ending.

George Orwell uses the novel to warn the readers of that time about communism and totalitarianism in general. George Orwell sets the story in 1984 - only 35 years after the publication date – so to warn the English public that this could easily happen to them if they didn’t ward off totalitarianism. The Cold War at that time had not escalated yet and so there were still some academic supporters. As Orwell put it, “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for Democratic Socialism as I understand it." Orwell was against the communist up rise in Russia and Spain and so sought to warn the British and Americans of this. Personally, I agree with Ben Pimlott’s introduction (Penguin publication) which stated that this book was also an attack on the direction of the British Labour government, at that time, into state socialism. Orwell may have been a democratic socialist but I don’t think he was pleased with the direction the Labour government was heading in. Mostly, because the name of the government in 1984 was IngSoc, meaning English Socialism in Newspeak. This meant that England/Britain was still the power house of Oceania; it wasn’t another country such as a Russia who had taken over England and turned it communist. [NOTE: Going back now, I really think George Orwell wrote about Totalitarian Russia. As I am studying Russia in Stalin's period, I see more and more similarities about the past Russia and 1984 - it is really shocking. Things like the no persons, trials for people who used to be part of the party and even thought crime occurred in Russia.]