Week 4: 1984 by George Orwell

    Hello everyone! This is week #4 on feelingsaboutbooks.com and I have started reading the book 1984 by George Orwell. My first impression of the first part was the lingering feeling of paranoia. An eerie atmosphere of a society that is constantly being watched by “Big Brother.” This was reinforced by the description of tattered posters hanging everywhere reminding citizens that they are being watched and should behave the way government wants them to, or they would be punished. Telescreens installed in every public place and private home allows the Party to monitor every move people make and hear everything everyone says. They help to enforce the tyranny of the suppressors. Having books and diaries were punishable by death. To think, people could not express their own opinions or write down their own private thoughts and feelings without risking their lives. I could not even imagine not having the freedom to do anything I please. What an awful world.  

      It’s scary to think that George Orwell wrote the finalized version of this book in 1948, thirty-six years before the future world he was describing in his book, as a warning against totalitarian regimes and government overstepping their boundaries. He lived during the time of Hitler and Stalin. Communism in China, the Soviet Union, and East Germany. His words painted a horrible world whose slogan was “War is Peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is Strength.” This world made me feel gloom in my heart for the main character, Winston Smith, and all the citizens of Oceania. Orwell told the story of these fictious characters, and yet I can see the world we live in today preparing to repeat or surpass the tyranny of our past. The overbearing world of Oceania could be us very soon. A repeat of the world Hitler was building, or if all the stupid people get their way and decide that nuclear weapons are the only way to solve the conflicts, we may not even have to worry about being anything anymore because we will all be blown up and gone. 

    How is it that seventy-eight years after George Orwell wrote 1984 and warned the world of the evil of totalitarian regimes, we are still repeating the mistakes of the past. Everyone feels like they need to control others and tell them what they can and cannot do? The Party in the book, in my opinion, is similar in many governments we have now. The age-old question of “Why can’t everyone just get along and let everyone live their lives without poking their noses into everyone else's business?” comes to mind. Would you be able to live in a world that controls everything you do like Oceania?