Product Description

Presents the complete text of the Orwell novel, with documents and essays that will help students appreciate the anti-utopian genre.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #441708 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: School & Library Binding
• 328 pages

Customer Reviews

A sign of things to come?
The book at first appears to be a sick fantasy of a world gone mad, until you read a little deeper and realise that it is actually potentially our world some time in the future - only the names have been changed.
The world that Orwell describes is constantly at war, although the people never really know who is the enemy. They are in a constant state of high alert, and therefore the people have given up all their rights to privacy - Big Brother watches them at all times through their television screens, searching for potential resistance within the population.
The main character, Winston, appears to be an anomoly in the system. He thinks that he is alone in his secret hatred of Big Brother until he meets and falls in love with Julia, and together they attempt to join the resistance in order to bring about the down fall of Big Brother.
Orwell creates tension and suspense from the first page and is relentless throughout.

You love Big Brother, don't you?
This is the book I wanted to study in English Lit at school, but I was palmed off with the cloying sentimentality of 'To the Lighthouse' instead. 1984 is a powerful claustrophobic novel that evokes an impression of a post war, brown-grey, totalitarian Britain where a national state of emergency is maintained to preserve the status quo. Everything about this book is original for its time, from the use of Newspeak, to the overwhelming sense of paranoia and fear that infects every thought and movement of the central characters, to the chilling reminder of just how frail the human spirit really is. 1984 can only be judged as a ground breaking literary event. Whether Orwell was writing to warn of the 'horrors' of communism, or the austerity of post war Britain is irrelevant. What he has single handedly achieved is to define the very essence of dystopian fiction. The date 1984 has become a brand term of description for mind control, totalitarianism and the police state. At the time Orwell wrote this, no piece of fiction had been as brutal or as terrifying in its portrayal of ideas and the determination with which a ruling body could obliterate them. It is hard to imagine the effect his novel could have had on its readers at the tail end of the 1940s. The book opened my eyes to a lot of things. I just wish the book had done so when I was 14.

Indescribably good
"1984" comes from the mind of a genius. I had something against Orwell after reading "Animal Farm" years ago and not enjoying it, but after being encouraged to give "1984" a chance, I somewhat reluctantly gave in.

I am extremely glad that I did so; the book is an excellent essay in politics, (extreme) oppression, romance and linguistics all in one! It serves as a timely warning to humanity. OK, so it's unlikely anything quite so dramatic could occur, but it demonstrates the dangers of dictatorship. It encourages us to be careful who we let into political office.

Orwell also spends the final part of the book exploring how far ethics will go in 'curing' people of social ills. This reminded me considerably of Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" (though of course that was written much later than "1984"). Both books provide a very interesting take on this, asking where the government should draw the line between right and wrong.

In my humble opinion, "1984" is very much a must-read for anyone interested in the future (or lack thereof) of democracy and freedom.