1984

I finished George Orwell's 1984 about a week and a half ago, so I figured it would be appropriate to write a short review of my opinions on the book. In short, it's one of the better books I've read in a while. Despire the fact that 1984 was 19 years ago, the story hasn't lost a bit of relevance. A dystopia in which totalitarianism uses the total destruction of privacy and the goal of the destruction of human thought as means for control, the novel shows the extremes of government control.

The novel bleeds with connections to the USSR and Nazi Germany, but has relevance most notably in the US Patriot Act. Obviously the Patriot Act isn't 1984, but it makes one question how far is too far in terms of the preservation of privacy.

In reading 1984 I was compelled to compare it to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, because the two books are so similar. Both being dystopias, most of the primary themes are the same, but one crucial difference and remarkable difference in the author's perspectives is on the theme of sexuality. Both author's agree in their idea of sexuality's purpose in a dystopian society: it will of course be another means of control by the ruling party. In Huxley's novel sexuality is encouraged heavily by the state to the degree that the 5-year old "alphas" spend part of their education engaging in what we might call "outrageously questionable behavior" for their age. The idea is that people will become so obsessed with sex that they won't think about the ills of society. In Orwell's novel, sexuality is oppressed brutally, except for in the scenario where it is necessary for the propagation of Party members. Party members fittingly call it their "duty to the Party".

Aside from that and the nature of power in both societies, both novels are strikingly similar, even in the sequence of their plot. Both main characters find out the inner workings of society after having a sequence of epiphanies. In the final pages they die.

Anyway, this has turned into a kind of lame and poorly contrived comparitive analysis, rather than a review of 1984. But it's a good book worth a read or re-read for those who read it in high school and haven't thought about it since, except for in the cliche use of the phrase "Big Brother is watching". It's especially fun after looking at the Soviet socio-economic system over the summer. It's strange to think it, but we really are all just cogs in a machine.