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lordmax412 's review for:
1984
by George Orwell
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Really interesting read, in terms of the way, in particular, totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and the use of language, propaganda and brainwashing can control a society.
A really bleak and hopeless world is outlined, and while some hope seems to shine through midway into the book, it is fairly quickly dashed towards the latter half
The ideas of Newspeak and Doublethink in the book are really interesting to me...
Newspeak from the linguistics perspective and how language shapes our consciousness and understanding. So to have a language created and taught that doesn't allow you to even consider opposing the government. I guess we can see it in the US already with words being banned.
And Doublethink is just mindbending as a definition!!
It scarily relates to many governments of modern day and really goes as a warning as to what kind can happen when things go unchecked.
Politically I think it can be read as a pro-socialist book, contextualised within the period of writing of the late 1940s, hopefully people won't read INGSOC (so called "English Socialism") as anything related to real socialism as outlined by it's forerunners or current practictioners. In the same way that Nazism really had co-opted the name (but people still don't make the correct distinction).
The ideas of Newspeak and Doublethink in the book are really interesting to me...
Newspeak from the linguistics perspective and how language shapes our consciousness and understanding. So to have a language created and taught that doesn't allow you to even consider opposing the government. I guess we can see it in the US already with words being banned.
And Doublethink is just mindbending as a definition!!
It scarily relates to many governments of modern day and really goes as a warning as to what kind can happen when things go unchecked.
Politically I think it can be read as a pro-socialist book, contextualised within the period of writing of the late 1940s, hopefully people won't read INGSOC (so called "English Socialism") as anything related to real socialism as outlined by it's forerunners or current practictioners. In the same way that Nazism really had co-opted the name (but people still don't make the correct distinction).
Content Warnings
Moderate: Torture