"Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere."

The year is 1984; the scene is London, largest population center of Airstrip One.

Airstrip One is part of the vast political entity Oceania, which is eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia and Eastasia. At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or that it has always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Winston Smith knows this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth involves the constant "correction" of such records. "'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"

In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid fiction. He knows the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual passion. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.

Captivating

My title says it all. I was completely immersed in this novel and enjoyed reading it. It was a fast read, and much more interesting than some of Orwell's other works such as Animal Farm.

It's a rather unusual novel because it's made to be futuristic and a novel in the genre of science fiction. However, it takes place more than 20 years ago in 1984. If you can get over that fact it's a great book with jawdropping changes in plot and interesting characters.

Flowers are Red

Another great piece of literature by George Orwell, I'm just I wasn't forced to read this one in school. Animal Farm remains one of my favorite books, but I had to read it in class, so it will forever be tainted.

This book brings up so many questions it is hard to know where to begin. The most horrifying thing about this book, I think, is that it can be related to so many situations. Everything from grand-scale government to the aforementioned class room is allegorized in this book in some way. It reminds me, in some ways, of a Harry Chapin song that shares its name with that of this post. In the song a child goes to school full of imagination and creativity; through the negative reinforcement of his teacher the child is forced to conform and never again regains what he had. The tragic loss of the human spirit is really what this book is about.

What you really need to consider when reading something like this is: how far from the truth is this? As far as correcting history goes, isn't it true that every civilization writes history from its own perspective? Most American textbooks portray Christopher Columbus as a saint and Native Americans as primitive savages; they all contain direct contradictions of the truth that we are all taught to accept. Often times, even after learning the fallacies of these statements, people still cling to their ideals. A small amount of discrimination toward these engrained teachings still remains even after the facts have become accepted, our own, underdeveloped, form of doublethink. And what are these new "facts" based on? Primary sources, journals, accounts? But aren't all of these also biased by the person writing them? The only history that truly exists is the memory within one's one mind, also biased, in case anyone is keeping track. So, if history truly only exists within the mind of the individual, isn't it entirely logical that "modifying" that historical perspective would in fact change history? It's all very confusing and I commend Orwell for trying to break it down a little.

Apparently it doesn't matter that such instances of "Party" thinking occur in our own time and place, it only matters that they don't occur to such a level as to make us uncomfortable. I know I'm not clarifying my point very clearly here, but what I'm trying to say is that everything that happens in Orwell's novel happens in our world too, just not nearly as severely. It's all a matter of perspective, most of the people living in Orwell's 1984 are perfectly content, even thrilled, to be where they are in life. That doesn't make it right, but that is our perspective of the situation. By our standards, the world in which they live is intolerable. Their world is our Room 101. That sounded a lot more philosophical in my head, but I think you get my point.

He loved big brother.

Creepy. Profound. Intense. 'Riveting'. And so on goes the string of 'good book review' words that one could easily associate with this novel. If you know what 1984 is, and if you know who George Orwell is, you don't need me to tell you to read this book. Because you should.

But let's get over that, and dig underneath the book's paperdermis. Because yes, on the outside it appears to be the 1950s equivalent of 'the Matrix', a story laced with post-apocalyptic yet still relevant social commentary. But inside, 1984 proves to be much more valuable than that: this book perfectly captures the western political phobias and ideaologies of the World War II era.

Orwell's 1984 was essentially Stalin's Soviet Union (made especially evident by the spot on physical similarities of Stalin and Big Brother, for one), but almost any totalitarian state fits the fiction. The state is ruled by the party, who control everything in life through the use of ignorance, propoganda and 'dissapearances' (purges). Sound familiar?

When I first read this, I figured it was just the work of a paranoid British McCarthyist. But I was completely wrong. I came to realize that 1984 is a historical treasure worth reading, not because of the strangely convincing, yet absurd world of 1984, but because it recreates the western culture of the Cold War in an effective manner. This is not simply good fiction, but a bridge between the Cold War, and the political groups and ideas of today. A must read for all students of history.