Winston Smith is a member of the Outer Party living in England (now called Aistrip One and part of the superstate Oceania) in 1984, but it is only his guess that it is 1984. Oceania is in a constant state of war and keeps its citizens under equally constant surveilance using devices called telescreens which are found everywhere. With the slightest amount of deviant behavior, a person will be taken away by the Thought Police and "vaporized". They are lifted clear out of the stream of history and anyone who ever knew them, by a disturbing self-hypnosis called doublethink, forces themselves to deny their existence. Winston Smith feels alone in his belief that the Party is wrong, and believes that even if he is alone in clinging to this truth, he is not a lunatic.

The thoughts presented by 1984 are amazing. The way in which Orwell creates a nation where insanity reigns is fantastic. The best part is he makes the reader see how the people who go along with the Party are deluded by it. He shows the thought processes of what we would see, but also the thought processes of the self-hypnotized masses of Oceania.

The section in which Winston reads "The Book" is a bit dry. Sometimes it seemed pretty repetative. Even if the ideas are interesting, they might have been compacted more.

All I wanted to do was sit and think about what I had just read for a little. It was the type of book that really puts you into a daze after you finish it.

Thoughtful. It was an interesting view of how the majority isn't always in the right, and even a minority of one could be the sane one.

George Orwell wrote this. His real name was Eric Blair and he was born in India. He was educated at Eton (I believe) and was a member of the Imperial Police of Burma. He didn't like this job and became a writer, mostly writing political works such as this and Animal Farm.

It fills you with so many thoughts and ideas and is extremely interesting. You really can get into this book.

There is no reason I wouldn't recommend it. I always tell people to read it!

These are a few of my favorite 1984 quotes.



"He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage."



"Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting."



"Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minory of one."



"Freedom it eh freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."



"On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralyzed by fright of screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth."



"...they would cling to each other with a sort of despairing sensuality, like a damned soul grasping at his last morsel of pleasure when the clock is within five minutes of striking."



"In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane."



"If human equality is to be forever averted...then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity."



"There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad."



"It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody...And the people under the sky were also very much the same..."



"In the face of pain, there are no heroes..."



"What can you do...against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?"



"The object of power is power."



"To die hating them, that was freedom."



"...there was not a bud anywhere except a few crocuses which had pushed themselves up to be dismembered by the wind."





Sorry I have so many quotes..hehe it's just I keep a little journal as I read and anytime there's a quote I really like I write it down, and those quotes are so cool!

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Created Nov 24, 2002 at 10:30am • Submit your own review...