George Orwell, 1984 Review

Overall Rating

This is a classic that fantastically makes its readers hate totalitarian government for giving the characters such a hard time.

"It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen." This is the first sentence of an immortal classic narrating Winston Smith's life under the dictatorship of Oceania headed by Big Brother. Sex and family have been turned from things of pleasure in people's lives to means of control over them. Everyone is divided into three classes: the Inner Party, controlled by Big Brother to a limited extent and living in comfort, the proles, poor but free, and the Outer Party, who are monitered 24/7 and living in poverty. Oceania is at war with Eurasia (later Eastasia). When Winston Smith buys a blank book with the intention of writing a diary in it, he has guilty feelings, knowing that it is thoughtcrime. In this diary, he writes of his former life before the war and in it, you see his inner longing to be free of Big Brother once and for all. This is an excellent book and it is a shame that I only know one teenager who has read it. Everyone 13 and older should read this, in my opinion.