1984 (1 Viewer)

[bored of sc]

Orwell's political novel - 1984 - anyone read it? Can you outline the plot for me and tell us want you think of it... Thanks

 

[CaityJane08]

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/summary.html

 

[selablad]

I don't know if I really liked this book...I wanted to, but at times it just didn't seem realistic enough to have an impact? Maybe it would have been better reading it prior to 1984 I read it ages ago and I liked it at the time, but now...

I think for me, 1984 (like most of those dystopia-type novels) was really interesting on that political level, but kind of failed on the English-writing level, if you know what I mean? And that distracted me... But I really did find the whole "controlling your thoughts" thing really spooky, because for me my thoughts are intensely private and it would terrify me to have people/organisations/whatever controlling them...

Haha, my sister is watching Big Brother in the next room

 

[bored of sc]

I don't know if I really liked this book...I wanted to, but at times it just didn't seem realistic enough to have an impact? Maybe it would have been better reading it prior to 1984 I read it ages ago and I liked it at the time, but now...

I think for me, 1984 (like most of those dystopia-type novels) was really interesting on that political level, but kind of failed on the English-writing level, if you know what I mean? And that distracted me... But I really did find the whole "controlling your thoughts" thing really spooky, because for me my thoughts are intensely private and it would terrify me to have people/organisations/whatever controlling them...

Haha, my sister is watching Big Brother in the next room

yer, just read contextual information, plot overviews and other info about the political ideologies in it and it is a very scary prospect...

 

[ASDFGHJKL:""]

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/summary.html

I found this really helpful when I was studying this text.

If you can't find anything in the resources section then ask your teacher for some help.

 

[Aerath]

There's also Wikipedia.

 

[jazzbaby]

i STILL have not read 1984

 

[agua.fuego]

I loved it.

 

[kaz1]

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_%28book%29#Plot

The intellectual Winston Smith is a member of the Outer Party, lives in the ruins of London (the "chief city of Airstrip One", a province of Oceania), who grew up in the post-World War II United Kingdom, during the revolution and the civil war. As his parents disappeared in the civil war, the English Socialism Movement ("Ingsoc" in Newspeak), put him in an orphanage for training and employment in the Outer Party.
His squalid existence consists of living in a one-room apartment, eating a subsistence diet of black bread and synthetic meals washed down with Victory-brand gin. He is discontented, and keeps an illegal journal of dissenting, negative thoughts and opinions about The Party. If detected, it, and his eccentric behaviour, would result in torture and death by the Thought Police.
In his journal he explains thoughtcrime: Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. The Thought Police have two-way telescreens (in the living quarters of every Party member and in every public area), hidden microphones, and anonymous informers to spy potential thought-criminals who might endanger The Party. Children are indoctrinated to informing; to spy and report suspected thought-criminals — especially their parents.
Winston Smith is a bureaucrat in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, revising historical records to match The Party's contemporaneous, official version of the past. The revisionism is required so that the past reflect the shifts of the day in the Party's orthodoxy. Smith's job is perpetual; he re-writes the official record, re-touches official photographs, deleting people officially rendered as unpersons. The original or older document is dropped into a "memory hole" chute leading to an incinerator. Although he likes his work, especially the intellectual challenge of revising a complete historical record, he also is fascinated by the true past, and eagerly tries to learn more about that forbidden truth.
One day, in the office, a woman surreptitiously hands him a note. She is "Julia", a dark-haired mechanic who repairs the Ministry of Truth's novel-writing machines. Before that day, he had felt deep loathing for her, based on his assumptions that she was a brainwashed, fanatically devoted member of the Party; particularly annoying to him is her red sash of renouncement of and scorn for sexual intercourse. His preconceptions vanish on reading her hand-printed note: "I love you". After that, they begin a clandestine romantic relationship, first meeting in the countryside and at a ruined belfry, then regularly in a rented room atop an antiques shop in the city's proletarian neighbourhood. The shop owner chats him up with facts about the pre-revolutionary past, sells him period artifacts, and rents him the room to meet Julia. The lovers believe their hiding place paradaisical (the shop keeper having told them it has no telescreen) and think themselves alone and safe.
As their romance deepens, Winston's views change, and questions Ingsoc. Unknown to him, the Thought Police have been spying on him and Julia. Later, when approached by Inner Party member O'Brien, Winston believes that he's come into contact with The Brotherhood, opponents of the Party. O'Brien gives him a copy of "the book", The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, a searing criticism of Ingsoc said to be written by the dissident Emmanuel Goldstein, the leader of the Brotherhood; it explains the perpetual war and exposes the truth behind the Party's slogan, "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."
The Thought Police capture Winston and Julia in their sanctuary bedroom and they are separately interrogated at the Ministry of Love, where the regime's opponents are tortured and killed, but sometimes released (to be executed at a later date); Charrington, the shop keeper who rented them the room reveals himself an officer of the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Love torture chamber, O'Brien tells Smith that he will be cured of his hatred for the Party. During a session, he explains to Winston that torture's purpose is to alter his way of thinking, not to extract a fake confession, adding that once cured — accepting reality as the Party describes — he then will be executed; electroshock torture will achieve that, continuing until O'Brien decides Winston is cured.
One night, a dreaming Winston suddenly wakes, yelling: "Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!" O'Brien rushes in and questions him, and then sends him to Room 101, the most feared room in the Ministry of Love. This is where a person's greatest fear is forced upon him or her for the final re-education step: acceptance. Winston, who has a primal fear of rats, is shown a wire cage filled with starving rats and told that it will be fitted over his head like a mask, so that when the cage door is opened, the rats will bore into his face until it is stripped to the bone. Just as the cage brushes his cheek, he shouts frantically: "Do it to Julia!" The torture ends, Winston is returned to society, brainwashed to accept Party doctrine.
After his release, Winston and Julia fortuitously meet in a park. With distaste, they remember the "bad" feelings they once shared; they acknowledge having betrayed each other; they are apathetic. Torture and re-education were successful; Winston happily reconciled to his impending execution, and accepting the Party line about the past and the present. In his mind, he celebrates the false fact of a news bulletin reporting Oceania's recent, decisive victory over Eurasia. Winston imagines himself back at the Ministry of Love and finally accepts that he loves Big Brother.

 

[jessjackowski]

It was really different, but also great. My english class are studying it at the moment and the forum on sparknotes is really helpful if your struggling with understanding any parts of it.

good book, definetly one you have to read

 

[dpospination]

obviously, i think u should read the book to fully understand it, i dont think any plot outlines for any novel will get you far... in the end he is captured and tortured by the Party, in the elusive and feared room 101--- the room of everyone's worst nightmares. but yeh, Winston is bascally a mental outcast, he works within an organisation he despises, trying to live a life free from censorship and buerocracy

 

[jassono]

I love this book
It's such a powerful social critique, satirical in some respects, but so hard hitting on world politics
I find it very relevant to today, (after reading many John Pilger articles)
but it's so interesting in my opinion

 

[Shoubadoo]

I don't know if I really liked this book...I wanted to, but at times it just didn't seem realistic enough to have an impact? Maybe it would have been better reading it prior to 1984 I read it ages ago and I liked it at the time, but now...

I think for me, 1984 (like most of those dystopia-type novels) was really interesting on that political level, but kind of failed on the English-writing level, if you know what I mean? And that distracted me... But I really did find the whole "controlling your thoughts" thing really spooky, because for me my thoughts are intensely private and it would terrify me to have people/organisations/whatever controlling them...

Haha, my sister is watching Big Brother in the next room

Not realistic enough? Sure, they had television when the book was published (1949 I believe it was) but not situated everywhere so that people could watch us through it. Orwell saw how technology would be used for negative power purposes.
I find the novel relates so much to the present. E.g. Propaganda (Ministry of Truth) is a dominant power player in todays society.

George Orwell did not just come close to what we are like today, he went further.
That's why it's still scary, because sometimes it seems such extreme despotic, totalitarian control is yet to befall us. It has, in many areas (Think Gestapo [Geheime Staats Polizei = Secret State Police], Stalin [Great Purge], Gov. spies), but not as extreme as depicted in 1984.

Argh see this is what English is doing to me. Rant over. :]

 

[Aerath]

I love this book
It's such a powerful social critique, satirical in some respects, but so hard hitting on world politics
I find it very relevant to today, (after reading many John Pilger articles)
but it's so interesting in my opinion

Agreed. So much more interesting than Utopia. :\