1984 by George Orwell review // Recent Reads #1
Hey!
I have shared book reviews in the past but I wasn’t happy with them, so I took them down and decided to start new book review series! Today I’m sharing my thoughts on 1984 by George Orwell; it is one of the most popular books in the world, and it still continues to impact popular culture. And since it’s my first proper book review, feel free to leave any suggestions for future reviews down in the comments below!
IMPORTANT! I write book reviews because it’s fun, but I am not a skilled book reviewer so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. This review may contain spoilers and mentions of death, torture, and other similar themes, so continue reading at your own risk.
1984 by George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian sci-fi novel written by the English novelist George Orwell. Inspired by the totalitarian regimes in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, Nineteen Eighty-Four introduced terms that are widely used to this day, like Newspeak, Big Brother, doublethink, and Thought Police, and left a huge impact on popular culture as a whole.
a short synopsis of the book
In 1984 the world has been divided into four sections: the three superstates called Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia, and a piece of disputed land the states are constantly fighting for. The novel’s protagonist Winston Smith lives in a province of Oceania that used to be Great Britain, and works at the Ministry of Truth which is responsible for disinformation and changes to history. Over the years, the reality of his job awakens his rebelliousness and he starts to commit crimes: he keeps a secret diary, gets in a romantic relationship with a comrade called Julia, and seeks out people from the resistance movement known as the Brotherhood. After a while, the freshly recruited Brotherhood members Winston and Julia are arrested by the Thought Police and brought to Ministry of Love, where they are separated and tortured. During his imprisonment, Winston’s thoughts about the Party and Big Brother are confirmed through the many dialogues between him and O’Brien, and he begins to realize there is no way out of the current regime; you can either conform, or die and be erased from history. In the end, the Party breaks his spirit and his hatred towards the Big Brother changes into love. (This is a very short version of the plot; if you want to read more, check out this Wikipedia article!)
my thoughts on the book
I’m not a huge fan of the science fiction and dystopian genres, however, I did enjoy this book well enough. Most of the things written in the novel sound similar to the stories about Stalin’s regime and the Soviet times I heard growing up.
Orwell does a good job at world-building without including too many unnecessary details, and I could easily imagine what the daily life of Oceania’s citizens must be like. One thing I wasn’t a huge fan of is the way he writes about his female characters and makes them into one-dimentional harpies. Maybe it was Winston the character who thought that, or maybe it is Orwell’s style of writing women; if its the latter, those passages have a place on r/menwritingwomen subreddit for sure!
This book didn’t really offer me any ideas I hadn’t heard before, but it did a good job at collecting them together in a comprehensible way. It was difficult to read about the Oceania’s politics because I come from a country that was deeply affected by the Stalin’s regime and the following Soviet union, and I still see the negative impact it has left on my country. Many aspects of Oceania happened in USSR; the deficit of essential items like food and clothes, the fear of being arrested and imprisoned for doing something as simple as celebrating Christmas, and the constant control over everyone’s lives is truly awful to imagine.
Overall, I think 1984 is one of those books every person should read at least once in their lives.
It is tough to read, however, it offers a decent insight into what life is like in totalitarianism. I’d love to think of future in more positive terms and hope that most of us won’t ever have to live under such a regime, though I do come from a rather privileged life: I haven’t experienced war, and I live in a relatively safe country where everyone is more or less equal.
#QOTD: What did you think of this post? Do you have any suggestions for future book reviews? Leave a comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Until later,
xoCaligo
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Sources: 1984 novel by George Orwell and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four.
Thumbnail photo by João Cabral from Pexels.
I'm a 23-year-old blogger girl from Riga, Latvia who enjoys different books, tasty food, cuddling with my cats, and reviewing cruelty-free beauty products!
So actually I haven’t read this book yet, even though it has been on my list for years. You just bumped it up to the top of the list with this review 😃
The only thing I can think of for future reviews is to include something about the author too, like where was he in his life life when he wrote this book, or what was the reception when it was first published. But these additions would be just the icing on the cake, I think the review is also great as it is.
I’m so glad I was able to inspire you like that! However, I highly recommend reading it along something positive to keep away the hopelessness you might feel when reading this book. (I would switch between reading 1984 and The Mortal Instruments series, it definitely helped get through the difficult parts!)
Also, I totally forgot to include stuff about the writer, I must keep this in mind for all future reviews. But it makes me happy to hear you enjoyed this review regardless! I haven’t written essays for a while so this was quite a challenge to take upon myself. 😀
May I ask, what books do you have on your reading list? We seem to have a similar preferences and I’m constantly looking for new reading material!
Hmm, I have a lot of my country’s classics on it, because I realized that lately I was reading so many books in English, that I was barely reading anything in my native language anymore.
Other than those, I want to read Henryk Sienkiewicz’s historical trilogy. He’s a Polish writer and the books are With Fire and Sword, The Deluge and Sir Michael.
And I’m very happy, because I finally completed my collection of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. I FINALLY own the entire series, all 41 books, and I want to read them all again, because I haven’t read them in a long time. That’s probably going to take a while. 😀
The book I’m currently reading is A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft. It was written in 1792, and it is very interesting.
I replied yesterday, but I lost my internet connection while submitting the comment, so I’m replying again. If you have already received this yesterday, then sorry for the double posting.
The first couple of books on my list are classics from my country, because I realized that lately I’ve been reading a lot in English, but almost nothing in my native language.
Other than those, I want to read Henryk Sienkiewicz’s (a Polish writer) historical trilogy. The books are With Fire and Sword, The Deluge and Sir Michael.
I’m also very happy, because I FINALLY completed my Terry Pratchett Discworld collection. I have all 41 books in the series at last, and I want to reread all of them in order. That is going to take a while 😃
Don’t worry, I got both of your comments and I’m thankful for your continuous support. 🙂
Finishing a book collection is very exciting, you should definitely celebrate it in some way! 💕
I have the same issue with not reading enough books in my own language. The problem is, many of my country’s 19-20th century authors wrote depressing books and I haven’t done research on newer writers to see if they could offer something more positive.
The historical trilogy you mention sounds interesting; I don’t know much about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth so I’m adding those novels to my reading list!
I have yet to start reading my pick for September, A Tale of Two Cities, though I will soon finish reading Clockwork Prince and Jane Eyre.
Would you recommend A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft? What is it about? I haven’t heard of it, but the title and the fact it was written by an 18th century woman sounds really cool!
Yeah, same problem about depressing books in my own language. I’m from Hungary and we’ve been occupied by the Austrians first, then came the Russians and the Soviet Union after WW2. Not very happy times.
Vindication was very interesting, but it is very hard to read. Only 100 pages, but it took me like a month. It’s mainly about how women deserve equal education to men and feminism, but it’s a very old text, so quite frequently I had to read the page twice to understand everything.
It’s considered as one of the most important early-modernist book written by a woman, so it’s been on my list for a while. And she’s the mother of Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein 😀
You can find the full book online on the Gutenberg online library.
Oh, and I forgot, I also wanted to recommend Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin. They also made it into a film which is pretty average, but the book is great.
I’m from Latvia so I can relate on the depressing history front; sometimes it seems like my country was occupied by any nation that doesn’t fear cold winters! 😀
Your description of Vindication sounds interesting! I’ve been meaning to read some feminist literature and this seems like a great way to start that journey.
Old text is tough but I can deal with it as long as the author doesn’t write long paragraphs in a specific accent I can’t understand unless I down two shots of vodka! (AKA Thomas Hardy’s writing style in Far From the Madding Crowd.)