About something old

[Cee-Jay Aurinko]

1984 is a work of Dystopian Fiction. Finishing this novel was a daunting challenge; long paragraphs, and little dialog. But I cannot say I hated this book entirely. The mechanics of this novel is different from all the books I've read over the years.

In the first chapter, you already get a feel for what it's like to live in the main protagonist's world. A world where there is no such thing as privacy, where the only privacy you do have--as stated in this book--is inside the little space you have inside your own head. And at every corner you turn, there is a poster of someone known to all of Oceana simply as Big Brother, on which a caption reads: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. Even the thoughts of everyone are monitored via a device called a telescreen, plugged into every citizen's house, where something as simple as a nervous tick can get you into serious trouble with the Thought Police.

The story starts with Winston Smith, who is some sort of history changer for a government division called the Ministry of Truth, entering a residential building called Victory Mansions. As soon as he enters his flat, the telescreen starts blabbing out figures that has "something to do with the production of pig-iron." This telescreen (as you will learn in the first half of the book) is some sort of monitoring device by which the Party can keep tabs on all of Oceana, at any time they choose to do so. No privacy; not even in the bathrooms. He does a precarious thing, although not completely illegal--he opens a diary and begins to write.

At first, the novel starts at a slow pace, as most of the first chapters merely describes the state of the world Winston lives in. But then an interesting character is introduced--a woman named Julia. She pops up everywhere Winston goes, until one day when Winston comes out of an antique shop in the residing habitat of the proles, a division of mankind the Party deems unworthy to control, and sees the same woman again. He wonders if she is following him, if maybe she is an agent for the Thought Police, and if he should kill her in a very violent way. But he decides not to, and goes home instead. The next time they meet, however, the woman stumbles and falls, and as Winston helps her up, she slips a note into his hand, saying that she loves him. In Winston's world, you must understand, sex is not seen as an enjoyable pastime for lovers or married couples, but rather as an obligation to society to produce children. Julia herself is a beautiful woman, a member of the Junior Anti-Sex League, and wears the custom red scarf all members must wear to "advocate" their celibacy.

Winston does the unthinkable thing--he makes contact with Julia. A series of arranged meeting places and love making ensues. They are breaking the law and their relationship can only end badly because even Winston knows, one day, Big Brother and his Thought Police will find out what he's been up to. "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU." And the two of them might not only be executed, but be made unpersons, people who never even existed, erased from history and completely shunned from society's memory. But they go ahead anyway. And finally, taking this novel to a whole different direction, the two of them join a terrorist organization known as the Brotherhood through an Inner Party member named O'Brien, whose sole purpose is to see Big Brother fall.

What I loved? The neat vocabulary stood out for me the most; not the story. What I hated? There is one chapter near the end of the book where Winston reads a book written by a man named Goldstein, named simply The Book. Goldstein is the name of the notorious leader of the Brotherhood, and in the "The Book" he explains the mechanics of the current government and how exactly the world is being run in an excruciatingly abundant amount of pages; never in my life have I read such a long, almost novella-sized chapter. I had to will myself to stick through it and just finish this one chapter because I really wanted to know how this story ended.

In conclusion, I recommend this to the more political-minded individual, or if you are a patient enough reader, you can finish this novel without risk of plucking your own eyeballs out. If you prefer fast-paced novels with short chapters, this one really isn't for you. Although the writing itself wasn't exceptionally bad, and because I didn't really like the ending and the appendix about Newspeak that ensued, I'm only giving this novel a 2 out of 5 rating.

[gali]

Duplication - there is already a topic open for this book