Reviews

In junior year of high school, my English teacher walked into class stern and serious. She gave us all worksheets with the new "rules" of the class, a tyrannical take where every grade point was scrutinized, every slightly bad behavior resulting in detentions, and discipline, and points taken off our final grade. Excellence was expected, not a hair could be out of line. We all sat and listened, taking in this new information. We all felt that this new structure was unfair and unrealistic. But we kept silent in our seat, too afraid to speak up and have the new rules implemented. After lecturing us for a while, her serious expression broke, and she smiled. She passed us all a copy of 1984.

She told us that all of those rules were just an introduction to George Orwell's 1984, and that she was disappointed that none of us spoke up for our rights. No one stood up and left, no one fought her on these rules. We processed them, and accepted them quickly. For weeks after I felt weirdly guilty and disappointed in myself for not taking a stance. I still think about how I wish I would've responded. Prior to this event if someone asked me "what would you do if you were in an Orwellian universe?" I guarantee that I would've told them that I would rebel. That I would fight Big Brother. That I would have the courage to maintain my own individuality. It's easy to read this and think Winston and Julia cowards for their mutual betrayal. "I would never do that, I would never stoop that low." To be faced with the situation in my own context shook me.

1984 is the closest thing to a horror novel that I think I'll read. In this context I listed to the audible original version. I think when I read it in high school the novel affected me, but listening to it is a whole other story. This version is so so good. it's worth a month's subscription. The sound effects and the dramatization of it, wow. I wish I had this when I was reading it for the first time, if anything for a supplemental reading. I recommend that you fully read the book in its entirety, but to experience it in this way was to feel it viscerally.

plus, the casting is great.
Andrew Scott as O'Brien? Stop. My BBC Sherlock's Moriarty loving heart is quaking.