It took me some time to write this review but here it is! George Orwell’s 1984 is a book about the world divided into three parts: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia.
We follow the life of Winston Smith who works for the Party, a political/totalitarian body which rules over Oceania. Oceania is always at war with one of the other countries and it has always been at war with this country only. For this fact to be true everything is always changed to the latest state. If the Party, for example, predicted that an event will happen and there are written evidence in books, newspaper or some other documents this documents will be changed. He who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past. This is the whole philosophy on which the ruling of the Party is based on. Everyone who thinks different will be eliminated, vaporized, and all written records about him will be destroyed.
There are a lot of things which might seem a bit over exaggerated, like the telescreen which is a TV like device that enables the Party to monitor you 24/7 and which can’t be turned off but only dimmed. Thoughtcrime is another thing. You can get arrested even for having your own opinion against the Party.
The strangest part in Oceania is Newspeak or the official language which has the only goal to remove as many words from the language as possible. For example it makes no sense to have words like good and bad when you can have good and ungood. There are a lot more examples in the book which you will have to discover. If you are interested in Newspeak, you can find more information at the end of the book.
This book really made me think about the world we live in and how information is carefully parsed and rearranged until it is turned upside down for the lone reason of preserving power in the hands of a few people.
There are countries now, like North Korea, which I guess are like that but luckily Orwell’s predictions didn’t come true
I give this book a 10/10 and recommend it to everyone who want to think a bit more about the world.
Until next time, don’t forget to be awesome