Reviews tagging 'Violence'

1984 by George Orwell

305 reviews

patchedspines's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0


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verisarg's review

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dark reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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malloryjo0521's review

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Difficult read, poor pacing. Very important message.

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pupaebug's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

This book was so good. Obviously everyone knows the premise of 1984. Everyone can use the phrase "Orwellian" and have a semi-understanding of what they are actually referring to. So going into this book, I knew the base level of what I was getting myself into. A male protagonist disillusioned with a totalitarian regime. However, I was absolutely not expecting this book to be such a gripping read. A real page-turner. 

I absolutely love the world-building of a totalitarian regime. It is why I loved the Handmaid's Tale so much, it was really cool to see a regime that seemed to spring out of our own society and our own history. After reading this, I realized that all the things I loved about the Handmaid's Tale were inspired by this book. Just like Winston, I wanted to know absolutely everything about the Party. Did the
Brotherhood
exist? What was the
Inner Party, what did they know, and how did they get the privileges they have
? Could
O'Brien, or Julia
be trusted? How did this regime come to be? Is the Party
lying about the wars with Eurasia and Eastasia
? Was
Big Brother
real? And, just like Winston, I was engrossed by any new information I received. I meticulously read
Goldstein's book,
accepting it as fact about the Regime. I fully accepted that
Winston and Julia were safe in Charrington's shop
and
were learning the real truth about Oceania.


"You are the dead."
was shocking. It was great. It felt like I had the rug pulled out from under me. As much as I was wary of
O'Brien
and felt that
him giving so much information to Winston so quickly was a trap
, I never expected that
Charrington and the shop was in on it.
That was insane. After this point, the book's
slow devolution into a horror novel
was both difficult to read and difficult to put down. It was truly scary. It made the reader fully understand how a person could be convinced that their very reality is changeable, just because the government says so. Every single thing in this novel came back to haunt Winston. His
dreams about O'Brien, his love for Julia, his fear of rats, his mom, all of the people in Oceania he had known, his diary, everything
. That is incredible horror and a true nightmare. 

Winston being released from the ministry of love at the end of the novel was unexpected, but a perfect ending. We were able to see just how broken he was. He was nothing of his former self, be truly believed that all of his real childhood memories were false memories, and he was brought to joy throughout his day only by news of Oceania's war victories. The last line of the book, "He loved Big Brother," to me suggests that he is about to be shot and killed. He did not even get those final ten seconds of regaining dignity and individuality that he dreamed of before getting shot.


I know that this book is going to stay with me for the rest of my life. What an incredible read. 

P.S. Throughout reading this book I felt I could pinpoint the exact moments that inspired Margaret Atwood to write The Handmaid's Tale. The use of the word Unperson (Unwoman, in THT), The emergence of a new society in the wake of the old one, with the war effort always in the background to encourage patriotism and limit rationing of goods. The presence of a regular scheduled catharsis time for all of the citizens to get their rage out on the "enemy" (Two Minutes Hate in 1984, Particicutions in THT). I also really think Margaret Atwood read the Appendix in 1984 and was inspired to include the Historical Notes section in the Handmaid's Tale. It's just too similar. An essay written by an academic after the events of the story that suggest that things have gone back to normal and the totalitarian regime has ended. Newspeak is no longer used, the Party is spoken of as if it is a thing of the past, free thought is free again.

This review is so long. This book is amazing. The general consensus is always about how important a book this is, and it absolutely is important. However, I think a lot more people would choose to pick it up if they knew how genuinely enthralling this book is as a piece of psychological horror.

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gethin_burke's review

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challenging dark sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0


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simplyv375's review

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challenging dark informative reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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haiqanoor's review

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it’s so boring, all the main character does is complain and be a misogynist -
the only mildly interesting thing he did was was write in that book and then he went straight back to having beef with some kids
- i don’t remember the guy’s name and orwell is a snitch so

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aayatisbooktok's review

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0


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taliare's review

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

3.75


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misscaroline09's review

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challenging dark reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

4.5 stars for the last third of the book, 0-2 stars for the first two thirds.  

You can read a quick character overview of 3 people (Winston, Julia, and O’Brien), then skip like 18 chapters to Part 3 of the book, and probably get far more out of it than you would if you read the whole thing.  

The first two parts of the book have the potential to be interesting, but then basically nothing happens for most of it and also I hate everyone.  I normally like characters with their personalities, but these people are just insufferable.  I tried to justify it by saying to myself, “They’re intentionally written this way in order to show how horrible the world is.”  But I could only get so far with that thought process before I started to dread reading any more.  

Winston straight up talks about [trigger warning, not even gonna say it] and murdering Julia numerous times, then they just laugh it off.  Hullo?  Also he’s just generally self righteous and spends most of his time stroking is own ego.  I swear, there’s one chapter (that’s unnecessarily long) where he just reads stuff that he agrees with, then stops and goes, “Hm, I’m so smart!” then continues reading, like BRUV.  PLEASE.  Also that chapter is basically a book inside a book, author, why T-T

Julia’s whole character is very “r/MenWritingWomen.”  She has no character of her own really, she’s just a body for him to sleep with and a manic pixie dream girl.  

O’Brien is the only character I actually found enjoyable.  He makes you both comfortable and fearful at the same time.  10/10, I appreciated how he was written.  

There were things about this book I did like, and even things about the characters I was into, but they were so few and far between that by the time I got to part 3, I wanted to pry my eyes out.  Thankfully, at that point, things started to pick up and the author finally said what he wanted to say.  If I ever read this again (unlikely), I’m just gonna skip to the end and I recommend you do the same.  

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