Amazing! Probably a huge segment of the population does not know of the book by George Orwell titled, “1984” as it was likely dropped from the high school curriculum reading list in, oh probably, in 1985. We read it in high school as part of our English class. It was scary then and the original movie was also scary. I’m actually going to obtain a copy of the book to read again after all these way too many years. It’s still scary when you think that a lot of what Orwell wrote about when it was published in 1949 isso similar to our world today. Even though Wikipedia is not considered by some to be a source in a “scholarly discussion” it nonetheless provides glimpses towards the facts. Here is what Wikipedia presents about the book, “1984” on their web site. Nineteen Eighty-Four From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel by George Orwell published in 1949. The Oceanian province of Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain) is a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as thoughtcrimes. Their tyranny is headed by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist. Big Brother and the Party justify their rule in the name of a supposed greater good. The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to re-write past newspaper articles so that the historical record always supports the current party line. Smith is a diligent and skillful worker, but he secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother. As literary political fiction and dystopian science-fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel in content, plot, and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, Telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5, and memory hole, have entered everyday use since its publication in 1949. Moreover, Nineteen Eighty-Four popularised the adjective Orwellian, which describes official deception, secret surveillance, and manipulation of the past by a totalitarian or authoritarian state. In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. It was awarded a place on both lists of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 13 on the editors list, and 6 on the readers list. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 8 on the BBCs survey The Big Read.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 05:30:56 +0000
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