1984 BOOK REVIEW

Premise: Winston Smith lives under constant supervision of the Party, the government in control in this alternate version of the year 1984. He starts to rebel with little things, like writing an idea in a notebook, even though he knows it will lead to his demise.

Okay, sort of a terrible premise for this book, but I will explain below why I think so!

Also, I would warn of spoilers, but this book was written like 70 years ago, so I don’t really feel bad writing spoilers.

This book in a gif

A FEW THINGS TO NOTE ABOUT THIS BOOK:

• There is a lot to unpack in this book, so I will do my best, but I’m sure your junior year English teacher did it better. Or hell, Sparknotes.
• Why the premise is weird: the main character in this book is the year 1984. What the system in place, the Party, is, how it affects people, how it tortures, etc. Winston Smith is the device used to tell the story of the book. This isn’t the kind of book I’m used to reading, or really the kind of book that I like, so I’m going to knock this down a star because I will never read it again. Wanted to say this up front so you know that it’s more of a personal reason.
• This book is written in three acts: the first act is a snap shot of Winston’s life, the second is his choice to rebel, the third is after he is caught and how the Party breaks him.
• Winston Smith knows his fate the whole book, which is a real bummer because you hope the whole time you are reading that he will somehow escape the party, but alas, he succumbs to Big Brother just like everyone else.

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

pg. 298, 1984

I’m not quite sure how to best quantify this review, so these aren’t even really “things I like” but rather “things that stood out to me as impressive/creative/groundbreaking for a book written in 1950 I think I’m not sure I haven’t read every book that came out before then so I can’t be sure.”

• War is peace: this is a scary idea that is echoed through the book. The Party uses this to quell the masses, and what makes this so scary is that I’m sure it would work. A common enemy typically unites people, so if you fed a country false information about another country attacking them, they would probably be united around hating them. This is central to the world of 1984.
• The ministries: We get to see two of the four, the Ministry of Truth and the Ministry of Love, while we don’t see the Ministry of Plenty and the Ministry of Peace. These are all actually the opposite of what they say they are: people are tortured in the Ministry of Love and people change the facts of history in the Ministry of Truth (where we spend the majority of the book). These systems solidify the Party’s explanation of doublethink, a word they use to explain how something has two meanings that seem contradictory, but the Party insists they are not.
• Winston is “secretly” given a book that outlines the view of the party. It’s chilling to read (we read about 20 pages of it, so it’s a decent chunk of part two) because when you do, the sentences are logical, but the argument they are making is horrifying (taking away human dignity). Here is a few bits:
  • “With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police.” I found this sentiment horrifying because THIS COULD HAPPEN TO US SO EASILY if our government became corrupt with all the information that is tracked on the Internet. It’s remarkable that George Orwell sort of predicted this before the technology to do existed.
  • The idea of “low, middle and high people” and how they are classified. It’s pretty haunting, because it reminds you that in the world today the world’s wealthiest individuals, those owning over $100,000 in assets, total less than 10 percent of the global population but own 84 percent of global wealth (https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/). So the percentages Orwell argues in this fake manifesto, 85% are proles, sort of matches up with the global wealthy inequality today. It’s horrifying, plus in his book “low” people are just seen as a means to keep war going. It’s rough to read, and in reading it to try to find a quote to explain it, it was just too all wrapped up in each other.
• There is seemingly a nod to Animal Farm, which was published three years before 1984. Julie, the person Winston secretly dates, gets all the well made food that only the “Inner Party” gets to eat. She says, “It’s all Inner Party stuff. There’s nothing those swine don’t have, nothing.” (pg. 141) In Animal Farm, the “Party” was the pigs who took over the farm from the humans.
• The bleakest part of this book, aside from the seven years of torture in book three which is really too hard for me to write about, is when Winston is going to sleep with a prostitute (who is a prole) and she has a “cavernous mouth” because all her teeth are missing but he is so desperate for affection he does it anyway and it’s rough!
• On page 130 they say no one has memories before 1960, which I hoped would be further explained but it wasn’t. I assume their brains were zapped when the Party took over, but I wanted to know for sure.
• Also, you knew Winston was going to be caught by the Party, but it was just heartbreaking in the end of part two when he was. And even more heart breaking at the end of part three when he fully becomes a Party zombie, because you are left with feeling like there is no hope for this alternate universe.

This is a great read. It’s obvious to me why most people have to read it in high school. 4/5 Bog Berries!