1984 by George Orwell

"The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side?"

Let me start by saying that a portion of my readers are not going to like my review as I plan to compare it to certain current events. Some Democrats (mostly online) have dramatically compared the current Administration to the government that exists inside this book. After reading the book, I think the comparison is a bit extreme, but they're not completely wrong about there being similarities.

Winston Smith starts this dystopian classic by writing a diary, an act that is punishable by death. He lives in the totalitarian state of Oceania, where free-thinking is forbidden.

As stated above I can't help but draw parallels between our current day world, and the world depicted in 1984. Everyone in Oceania is under surveillance; their movements and conversations constantly videoed and recorded by telescreens and monitored by the Thought Police. This gross invasion of privacy is the norm for this society, and why should they worry? If they're not doing or thinking anything wrong, then there isn't anything to hide from Big Brother. This is not so different from modern times; except our government didn't need to place telescreens in our homes when we use Facebook and X and Instagram to broadcast our every thought and movement to the general public. We don't need to be surveilled by the Thought Police when every house now has a Blink or Ring camera that transmits wirelessly to the cloud. We're essentially violating our own privacy, and currently there is no law against it. It's kind of scary to think how easy it is for rights to be taken when we're so eager to give them away.

In Oceania, the population must be kept under control and Big Brother is using the lack of a 1st Amendment to do it. Winston plays his part in keeping society in line: his job is to alter facts in newspapers and magazines, so the public only reads what the government wants them to read. If you are looking for a real-world comparison, take our current government into account. We have a president who feels so threatened by media that criticizes or disagrees with him, he's fining, threatening, and pulling funding from any media outlet, reporter, or even colleges that don't agree with him 100%. Not to mention the little contract he cooked up to stop journalists from researching unclassified stories they hear at the Pentagon.

Other nefarious methods used to keep the population in line in Oceania include the brainwashing of kids through education and after school programs so they can detect thought-crime in their own parents (and everyone else they meet). There's both fear and hate mongering; frightening the people so they behave and keeping them angry enough to believe whatever poison the government spits out. Isolation is encouraged; no emotional connections are needed for marriage and friendships are not usually made. To be fair to Trump he hasn't forbidden anyone from falling in love, so he's got that going for him. But he has created a society of fear and hate with people of different ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations at each other's throats, not to mention widening the divide between Republican and Democrat.

Winston's diary is his first act of rebellion against the rules set forth by Big Brother. It isn't just thought-crime he's committing; he's creating physical evidence that the crime has occurred. His rebellion doesn't stop there. He defies society's expectation of isolation by having an affair with a woman from work and he designs a secret hideout for them where they can talk and read and make love unsupervised. Together they work up the courage to join 'The Brotherhood'. The Brotherhood is a rumored secret organization dedicated to toppling the regime of Big Brother.

When Winston and Julia join the Brotherhood they get handed a book, written by famed enemy of the state Emmanual Goldstein, that details how the current regime works. It's an oligarchy (only the wealthy have power) dependent on keeping the public ignorant and faithful to function. Winston is disappointed that he doesn't learn anything from the book that he didn't already know... I was delighted by the story-within-a-story formatting. The writing of Emmanual Goldstein's text read like a real and functioning manual for how the government in 1984 operates. It was thorough and believable. Orwell just about convinced me this society was real.

There's a passage in the Emmanual Goldstein text that held my attention: it was about machinery, I assumed in the literal sense. It touched upon the idea that advanced machines could solve problems like famine and disease, but were instead only used to improve wealth... Which brought me back from the story of Winston to the story of today. Last time I went to Wendy's I spoke to a machine. The kid on the speaker was gone, replaced with a computer voice smart enough to take my order. I was a bit put out, because one: I didn't want to talk to a machine, and two: That was a job. They took someone's job away to make room for that machine and now that person might not be able to afford food or healthcare.

I didn't really understand why the book blurb on GoodReads classifies this as a horror until I actually read the book. The conditions underwhich these people live is horrifying. What happens to Winston at the end of the book is terrible. And while I don't believe the US is a totalitarian state (yet) I can see the present danger in this cautionary tale of what happens when we cease to question the government.

Overall, I believe this book has, and will continue to, stood the test of time. It was engaging, entertaining, and thought provoking.