1984 Book Review Essay, Research Paper

Through chilling glances of a hereafter that could hold been, and black mentalities at life, George Orwell conveys a message of warning, and of hope, for all the people of the universe. 1984 is a perfect illustration of a negative expression at society. It serves as non merely a warning to what the hereafter may go, but besides as a changeless reminder that everything is comparative, and when 1 is left with no comparings, any state of affairs can look normal.

If you want a image of the hereafter, conceive of a boot stomping on a human face & # 8212 ; forever

The supporter in the narrative is a adult male by the name of Winston Smith. Get downing with his name, it is clear the writer planned his character out to the last item. Take the last name Smith, for illustration, which is one of the most popular last names in America this allows the reader to associate more to the character. In add-on, if you look at his first name, Winston, you would detect that it happens to be the name of a cardinal individual from Orwell s clip, Winston Churchill. When combined with his last name, the readers are left with the feeling of a kind of hero, with a obscure relation to themselves. Winston is a sad adult male, in that he takes things as they come, and does non pull out joy or exhilaration out of any state of affairs. His personality, for deficiency of a better term, is tiring. Everything is apparent and ordinary to him. However, deep interior of him is a virtuousness that shines through as the novel progresses, and that is his human inherent aptitude to desire to cognize the truth, and to lift up and unrecorded better. It is about epic how he mutely stands for what he believes in, and cognizing the effects of traveling against The Party were terrible, he still pushed frontward. Physically, Winston is about mean compared to the others in the novel. He is losing a few dentition, has worn tegument, and tired articulations. He is a adult male of around 39 old ages of age, and is non fat, and non excessively scraggy. He is a quiet, non-assertive individual, and goes along with any Party event, so as non to look leery. He is the sympathetic character in the novel, because people can associate to his state of affairss.

The adversary in the narrative is a adult male named merely as O Brien. O Brien, throughout most of the narrative, was a cryptic chap, with an old, tired, yet trusty face. The reader gets the feeling he is a friend to Smith s secret plan. However, 2/3 of the manner through the book, O Brien turns against Smith and Julia and reveals himself as the leader of the thought-police, an organisation within the Party responsible for penalizing people who thought of, or really committed offenses. O Brien reflects everything that is hated in modern society, and at the same clip he is everything that the Party represents. He is the friend of Winston, but at the same clip his enemy. He is the adult male, beyond everyone else, that strives for power merely for the interest of holding power. He is besides the leader of the Party that Smith really confronts, and as such is Smith s chief struggle.

Some of the back uping characters included an attractive immature adult female named Julia, who becomes Winston s love involvement someplace before the center of the novel. If Winston is the rational Rebel against the Party, so Julia is decidedly the physical Rebel. She does non truly believe about the regulations much, but she knows she likes to make anything possible to interrupt them. Another back uping character is Large Brother himself ( or the posting of him that is ) . The description Orwell gives of the adult male on the posting would about give the thought that it was Stalin, and that he had started the whole thing. Large Brother is present in about every scene of the novel, and is a key, yet silent, participant throughout the full novel. He is the driving force behind the Party, and its efforts toward absolute power.

The full narrative is set to the background of an on-going war in the mid 19 1880ss. Sometime in the 1950 s, legion atomic bombs had ripped through most of the America s and European states, destructing their authoritiess, and directing the universe into political and economic convulsion. This scene of desperation, and arrant hopelessness served as a perfect accelerator for the Party to come to full power. Although the lone metropolis the book negotiations about in any item is London, it is made clear that other metropoliss must be the same because of the Party s attitudes. London, in 1984, was nil like it was before the Revolution. It had turned into a dark, bare topographic point, filled with slums, and overruning with crud. A few edifices from the past, now changed to be about unrecognisable, stood out among the Ministry edifices of the Party. This new universe, devastated by atomic war and poorness, shows the West as a

totalitarian authorities, with an all-powerful dictator, known merely as Big Brother. A political figure and spiritual leader all in one, Big Brother’s power is so absolute that some people doubt if he even exists at all. The streets in the slums are hit by projectile bombs at random intervals, directing the people into a craze, and doing them fault the state they are presently at war with.

Winston Smith becomes a Thought Criminal. An Outer Party member, his occupation is to really rewrite the archives of the London Times so that they match current Ingsoc ( English Socialism ) policy. When Ingsoc changes its confederation with another world power and begins engaging war on its old ally, Winston & # 8217 ; s occupation is to rewrite all the old information to demo that the old confederation ne’er existed. So baffled are the heads of the people he meets that they do non even recognize that these alterations have been made. However, Winston is a smart adequate adult male to understand the alterations being forced on the society.

Due to his ideas that things might hold been better at one clip, Winston obtains a transcript of a banned radical book by the celebrated enemy of the Party, Goldstein. Inspired by what he reads, he gets involved in a love matter with a colleague, Julia, and seems to happen a friend in O & # 8217 ; Brien, an Inner Party functionary. Looking for an flight from this awful universe to a better life, he does non even recognize that everything has been a set-up. O & # 8217 ; Brien is really the caput of the Thought Police, and it is he who really wrote Goldstein & # 8217 ; s book for the intent of exposing revolutionists and seting them into the awful Room 101 & # 8211 ; a anguish chamber where a individual s worst frights are made existent. After his imprisonment at the Ministry of Truth, where he betrayed Julia, Winston, now a wholly broken and brainwashed adult male, is returned to society as another truster of Big Brother. All of Winston s dreams of freedom, and a better life, are for good taken from his encephalon, as he becomes another automaton in society.

I picked this book non cognizing what to anticipate, since no individual I knew had even read it. When I eventually put it down, I was left in a province of daze. I would non quite describe myself as angry, but I was decidedly defeated and at the same clip worried. The whole clip I was reading, I hadn t realized that what Orwell had wrote was coming true more and more every twenty-four hours, merely non every bit drastically as in his novel. In 1984, every house is equipped with a device called a telescreen, which feeds sound and picture of you to the authorities, and allows them to air any message they want to you. This seems to be pathetic, with no manner of going world, but look around. Policemans are already utilizing cameras and mikes so little you can non observe them, and although it is really limited right now, one twenty-four hours it is possible that it will be widespread. Throughout the book, Orwell depicted a really negative life ( a negative Utopia, I found out through research ) with really few good things in it. The people lived, worked, and died, all for the promotion of the Party. They truly were machines working for a bigger machine. I guess what shocked me the most was how much the people s personal freedoms were violated. Not merely were they non allowed to make anything they wanted, they could non even think about making those things. This book leaves the reader with a image of pure horror. This was decidedly one of the best books I have of all time read. It had many analogues to Fahrenheit 451, since the yesteryear was non allowed in that book either. I have a positive position on this book because I believe it carries a really of import message for all of humanity. It is a message of freedom, freedom to believe what you want, freedom to move out on those ideas, and freedom to cognize that 2 + 2 = 4. The Party s doctrine was that by commanding the head, one controlled everything, because everything that existed, existed in the head. They easy, but certainly, took out all ideas of immorality from the people, the most drastic agencies by cut downing the figure of words in their linguistic communication to do negative idea impossible. I could travel on for many pages about the thoughts presented in this book ; there is literally tonss of messages to be had. In the terminal, Winston Smith became precisely what he fought against, and he could care less. He was no longer a human being in the traditional sense, but a slave.

& # 8220 ; The solid universe exists, its Torahs do non alter. Rocks are difficult, H2O is wet, objects unsupported autumn toward the Earth & # 8217 ; s centre. With the feeling that he was talking to O & # 8217 ; Brien, and besides that he was puting Forth an of import maxim, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to state that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. & # 8221 ;