Review for Join MyReviewer's Book Review Team

Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell (1949)

When I first read 1984 the thing that struck me was how intelligent the work was. As I was studying the history of the Russia in particular the Russian Revolution and the reign of Stalin, the parallels were eerily similar. The ascension of Stalin as the leader, overload and dictator (Big Brother) suppression of enemies including the focus on Trotsky (Goldstein) and a country spied on by a police group who were more interested in creating a unified collective society than a free society (The Party and Thought Police). I think I learnt more from 1984 than I ever did from A J P Taylor!

After I finished reading I was left stunned. No book before had ever affected me like that before (or since for that matter). The ending was so bleak that I didn't know how I was supposed to react and I believe that is one of the book's greatest strengths in that the book was brave enough not to pander to the happy ending dynamic that most fiction must. The ending of the book, with Winston a shadow of his former self, no longer rebelling against the Party but accepting the love of Big Brother is possibly one of the most heartbreaking things I have ever read and only I am Legend comes close in terms of the bleak futility of a character's ending.

1984 is possibly one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century (or indeed of any century). With this book, Orwell created a world that is the instant blueprint to which all dystopian societies are formed (It is true that he himself was inspired by Zamyatin's We and Huxley's Brave New World, it is Orwell's world that fully formed the society.). Its influence can be seen in shows like Big Brother, Room 101 and films like Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Orwell's vision is frightening not because of its fantastical nature, but by the realistic and more importantly how possible the world he created was. At the time of writing in 1948, the world had just been exposed to the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, the stories of the political purges in Russia and the effects of the war and what Orwell proposed in 1984 did not take much imagination.

In Orwell's depiction of 1984, the world has been divided into three Superstates Oceania (American continents, Australia and UK), Eurasia (Europe and Russia) and Eastasia (The Asian continent). Society is divided into three, The Inner Party (High), Outer Party (Middle) and Proles (Low.) The book is told through the eyes of Outer Party member Winston Smith. His job for the Party (who control all aspects of life in Oceania) is to 'rectify' news reports so that all of the Party's predictions appear to be accurate. The most terrifying aspect of all this is that the members of the Party swallow all of these changes even when they involve the deaths of people who then become unpersons 'they never existed'.

Winston begins to write a diary in which he documents his thoughts and as he does he reveals more and more about the society in which he lives. His encounters with Parsons, Syme, O'Brien and Julia reveal even more aspects of family life, marriage, sex, language and the political state they lived. This was a clever way for Orwell to reveal this information while keeping the story moving (Though some say the middle segments from the book which describes in detail the society they lived bring the whole story to a halt). Winston's futile conversation with the Prole to find out if life was better before 1984 is one of the best examples of duologues that I was sad to see it omitted from Michael Radford's otherwise excellent adaptation of the book released aptly enough in 1984.

As Winston embarks on his affair with Julia it exposes the book's weakness, which I believe is one of its strengths and that is Orwell's depiction of Julia. Julia is a cliché of a female character and anyone who has read his A Clergyman's Daughter (I wouldn't recommend it. Even Orwell fans, like myself, would have a hard time trying to be positive about that one. Even Orwell himself hated this book and declared that it should not be reprinted after his death.) will see that his characterisation of women hadn't developed much. Yet by reading Julia as two dimensional and just a sexual character it strengthens the character of Winston Smith. The fact that O'Brien tells Winston that Julia is converted instantly gives the impression that compared to the horrifying torture Winston endured Julia betrayed him instantly and without hesitation.

Orwell's main strength within this novel is his ability as an essayist and as we read Winston trying to figure out his world and coming to the conclusion that 'Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted all else must follow' is such a wonderful piece of writing and Orwell's work as a journalist really shows through in this. His writing of Goldstein's book and of the Newspeak language is almost like something from a completely different book and feels more like his work on The Road to Wigan Pier or Homage to Catalonia. However, his ability to analyse this world is remarkable and it seems a shame that Orwell died before he could return to delve further into the intricacies of this society he had created.

Even after sixty years, the book has lost none of its power and the reason is that even now it still feels a very credible vision of what a dystopian fate could be. With the advances of technology over the years, many elements such as the CCTV society and the renewed destabilisation of power since 9/11, the prospect of this type of Orwellian world is not the farcical future prediction that some can be. This is why George Orwell's 1984 is and continues to remains the classic that is.