1984 by George Orwell

298 pages

"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." -Back Cover

I love dystopian fiction which is why I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I'm not sure that I've ever read this classic, so I wanted to rectify that. I have to preface my review by saying that I love to read because I enjoy being transported to new worlds and/or entertained or moved in some way for a few hours. I don't necessarily want to have to think very much while I'm reading. I am the mother of three and the wife of a busy executive director so by the time I do 2nd-6th grade math and listen to my husband's worries, my brain's done. There's not much left to put towards deep literary thinking.

Having said that, I did try to pay attention! I'm amazed that this book was written in 1949. Its message still resonates today in different ways. I believe George Orwell was writing to warn of the dangers of communism. The threat of Big Brother today comes in a different form yet is no less real. Government is increasingly present in our lives. Big Brother watches us and monitors our actions in many places. Government tries to assert itself into our families and tell us what's best for us. Mass media tries to tell us what is real and what is not. In a lot of ways our society accepts what is given to it by government without question.

1984  is not a happy story. It is a cautionary tale. Winston Smith does not win his fight against Big Brother and the Party. In fact, he stands no chance of winning from the start and the tragedy is that he knows it and the reader knows it. He is manipulated, tortured, brainwashed, and ultimately stripped of his humanity. He becomes exactly what the Party wants him to become - a human machine that suppresses any real memories in exchange for "truths" given to him by Big Brother and acts in an automated, predictable way. He's so reprogrammed that he has lost all feeling for anything. You almost feel relieved that that's the case because of the hopelessness O'Brien instills in the reader via Smith during his time in the Ministry of Love. You feel like it would almost be better to live in trained stupidity than to rage against such a big machine. Big Brother destroys everything good and leaves nothing but hatred and loneliness. Its sole purpose is to destroy the individual and control thought.

As depressing as the story was I also found it be hopeful. I still felt, even at the end, that there was hope for humanity, that even though Winston failed someone else might one day rise up and succeed. Maybe that's what George Orwell was trying to tell us - that we must be the ones to succeed. I'm sure there's probably a deeper message than that. One of these days I'll let one of the 2,000 reviewers of this book on Amazon tell me what it is.