Boekverslag : George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-four / 1984
De taal ervan is Engels en het aantal woorden bedraagt 3063 woorden.
De taal ervan is Engels en het aantal woorden bedraagt 3063 woorden.
Title: 1984
Author: George Orwell
Date: 1983
Original in: 1949
Number of pages: 329 pages
Publisher: Elsnerdruck (originaly published by Secker and Warburg)
Motivation:
Last year we had Daniel Rouw as our history teacher, he taught us a lot about the second world war and the cold war between Russia and America. But besides these cruel facts he also told us about literature related to these periods. He often mentioned George Orwell as being a very interesting author and 1984 was of course the work of Orwell which he told most about. So when I saw his book on the list I didn’t doubt any longer and took it out of the library.
Summary:
The soceity of Ociania was ruled by one great leader called Big Brother. He set up a party which has just one target: to rule the world. But Ociania was not the only nation which was trying to get this goal acheived, there are 2 other supernations named Eurasia and Eastasia. There is constantly a war between these 3 going on, the one day it was Eastasia with Ociania against Eurasia and the next day that could change as quick as it came.
The leaders of the party used the system of keeping their followers stupid to make sure they will never fight against the ideals of the party. There was a constant way of following everybody and everything in the country, the “thought police” kept an eye on every single being. Nobody was allowed to do things which could in any way be negative to the party, therefore it was almost forbidden to have a normal conversation, the only thing they couldn’t control was the small space inside the heads of the party members. But if any of that content tried to escape the though police would have effective manners to get it undone.
The most horrible habit of the party was making/changing/creating their own history, people could vanish every single moment and if that happened the party would make sure nothing which could reveal this dissapearance would exist. For instance the newspapers of the past where constantly being changed to make sure they would not contradict with the thoughts of the party. If there is a war with Eurasia there had always been a war with them and everything which was negative would be Eurasian. The next day this could change just as easily to Eastasia.
The 3 main slogans of the party are:
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
The main character in this book is Winston Smith, he lives in the rotten society of Ociania and he is part of the last generation of people who still know there has been a time without party once. The new generations don’t have any evidence of a past which has been different from the party-history. Winston is one of the people who are simply unable to stop thinking, he is always looking for small clues which may prove there has been a better time without the party. That would be a good way to get more people against the party, especially the “proles” (people who are not member of the party and who are kept stupid since the party exists) are a very interesting group to convince and start a rebellion with. But even though Winston tries anything he doesn’t manage to get any strong evidence. Without risking his life to be VERY short due to an action of the though police..
One day he goes to his work (at the ministry of truth where he had to change history all day) and he manages to get a flash of the face of a girl. He doesn’t really pay attention to this and he goes on with his work. But after some days he find out that she is following him everywhere. After a long time of being followed she fell down right in front of him and when he helped her back on her feet she handed a small letter to him. He waited until he was in a safe position and read the letter: “I love you” was all it said.
He was very surprised by this because he actually thought she would be member of the Thought Police on order to arrest him. So he plans to meet her some day, they make a new “date” and go to a special location in the forrests she has found. There was no camera’s or microphones in those forrests so they think they can talk there about the party and what they have against it safely.
It turns out that the girl’s name is Julia and that she is also very resiting to the party, and she saw in the eyes of Winston that he was also against the party. Together they decide to meet more and more often and then one day they find a room in a prole house which they regard as a safe place to meet. One day they get informed by a very high party-member that there are more people who are resisting and that he (the partymember) is setting up organised resitance against the party.
They decide to join this guy, but after some days it turns out that he was just trying to catch them and they “vanish” into one of the cellars of the heavy guarded prison where they are tortured until their brains are blank again. And even that was not enough, in the end Winston had to be punished by his strongest fear (rats), only when he asked this punishment to be used against Julia (so even his love was killed) the toturing stopped, but as they all knew in the prison there would be one day when a bullet hits you in the back when you just walk through the corridors. In the end this happened and he died with a love for big brother..
First impression:
This book was really interesting because it contained a mix of futuristic ideas (even though it’s written in 1949) and it had a rather interesting view on history which is rather unique. I never though history was really of importance as it happened before and we are now working on a future, but when you really have NO history that would be very challenging and weird, this was the view you get from the book. Society would be empty and cold and you can never sense that things get better because they have never been worse.. Besides that I think the story of the book was rather straight forward, but that is a very good thing because as a reader you will have to get into a whole different society which makes reading a lot more complicated. I missed action in the book because the only thing which was going on where the thoughts of Winston, therefore you don’t really sense any excitements. Nevertheless it’s impossible to lay this book away again once you started reading, something in it keeps striking your need to read on…
In depth Analysis:
In this book it’s rather obvious what the main problem is: Winston wants to resist against the party and it’s ideas. During the whole story he is looking for clues which may be of any significance, but he never managed to find back any real proves of a better history. He has once found a pice of newspaper which revealed that there have been 3 men who are the last big heroes against the party, in the changed newspaper he read that these men have confessed they commited all kinds of crimes and they where killed. But in this old piece of newspaper he read that they have never commited these crimes. He hoped that Julia would be interested in finding out all about their history, but she turns out to be uninterested in history, all she wants is avoiding the party to control the future as well.. Winston never managed to succeed in finding relevant pieces which link to the history. And in the end he has been vanished himself, so in fact he never found out anything about the past but he also has never been part of this past!
Assignment 12:
I think for a science-fiction story it’s always interesting to look wheter the story could actually have happened. And in this story it’s all about a society which is really unusual, which makes it interesting to reflect this view on the actual society as it is now. Luckily we passed the year of 1984 without ever experiencing this horrible form of society but if we reflect to the times of communism we find a society with a lot of systems which looks quite a lot like the society of Ociania. If we look how it came that the communism has fallen down we see reasons like outside influence and inside opposition. These 2 factors did not exist in the world of Orwell as the power of all 3 big forces was about equal and the wars and alliances constantly changed, inside opposition was impossible because the history has been whiped out and because the people who joined the party actually chose to join this party. But if they didn’t chose to participate in the party they became proles who lived an even less interesting life…
Scientificly it will be easily possible to launch the society Orwell talks about. The “telescreens” which are the main medium to watch everything which happened around the world was not much more than a camera which looks like a TV and which displays radio/TV every now and then.
Right now there have been moments when people claim it would be good to let the police have the right to search you any time and to follow people even if there’s no reason to do so. This is the essence of the Thought police in fact, they control everybody by misusing the fear of the party members. If it would be possible to constantly watch people they would not commit any crimes because they know they will get cought anyways, but in 1984 we also see that this has a negative side-effect which causes people to stop conversating with other people and which results in a cold society. It looks like Orwell is trying to warn us for these horrible effects of those rules!
Assignment 21:
I took the song ‘Mad World’ of Gary Jules. This is the songtext:
All around me are familiar faces
worn out places
worn out faces
bright and early for the daily races
going no where
going no where
their tears are filling up their glasses
no expression
no expression
hide my head i wanna drown my sorrow
no tomorrow
no tomorrow
and i find i kind of funny
i find it kind of sad
the dreams in which i`m dying are the best i`ve ever had
i find it hard to tell you
i find it hard to take
when people run in circles its a very very
mad world
mad world
children waiting for the day they feel good
happy birthday
happy birthday
and i feel the way that every child should
sit and listen
sit and listen
went to school and i was very nervous
no one knew me
no one new me
hello teacher tell me what`s my lesson
look right through me
look right through me
and i find i kind of funny
i find it kind of sad
the dreams in which i`m dying are the best i`ve ever had
i find it hard to tell you
i find it hard to take
when people run in circles its a very very
mad world
mad world
enlarging your world
mad world
This song definately fits well to the theme of the book, the plae look on the face Gary Jules mentions is exactly the impression you get when you are reading this book. And for instance the part ‘going nowhere’ of the song is something which also happens in the book, people walk by so quickly simply going on, they don’t have a real target in life but they simply follow orders. The following quote reveals what I mean:
"a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting - three hundred million people all with the same face." Part 1, Chapter 7, pg. 77
If you know the song you will definately agree with me, hearing this song brings a feeling in your heart which is exactly the feeling you get while reading 1984.
Title:
In the first few pages of the book there’s some extra information on the book and the author, here it says the following: ‘This is misleading: the outline of Nineteen Eighty-Four (which was originally to be called The last Man in Europe) had been planned five years earlier in 1943, before he wrote Animal farm , the book for which he s probably best known.’ (page IX of the introduction). With this information we know that the title originaly should be called the last man in Europe, this sounds like a good title because Winston seems to be the last person with real human feelings and a human hearth. 1984 probably is just a futuristic date like 2000 was for us when it was almost 2000…
Genre:
It is clearly a science-fiction story, George Orwell has created a whole world which doesn’t exist and everything in the book is made up, although they very often represent something which is related to the world war II or some other important event/person.
Theme:
The theme is a world without history, the pale look on people’s faces and the look in a society where everything which could be wrong is wrong. If I would look for 1 theme it will be fear, everything in the party seems to be about this and if we look to the book in general you see that the author is trying to show some kind of fear for the future. He wrote this book close for his death and a lot of people see it as a warning for the future.
Point of view:
The whole story is written from the mind of Winston, all you read and see in the story is through his eyes. But in the story Winston is a third-person so its not like you read that Winston says I go to my work but you read Winston goes to his work… This may sound a little contradictional to the fact that you see the world through his eyes but as most events require a lot of explanation the point of view changes between a cameraview and the mind of Winston…
Subject:
The subject of the text is to find a way to find love or history in a world where people are nothing but a feelingless body and where everything you do or think can be controlled. This sounds like an impossible task but after a long time Winston managed to find Julia as his love. But after all the thought police managed to even break up this small bit of love he managed to find after a lifelong search.
Events:
The most important event has never really happened in the story but that would be the moment when the party managed to take control over the society in the way it used to be. In the story itself there have been a few important moments: the moment when Julia hands Winston the note with the I love you text, the moment when they find out about the Brotherhood which is an underground movement against the party , the moment when Julia and Winston are arrested and finally the death of Winston which is also the end of the book.
Characters:
Because it is not possible to show much expressin or emotion it is rather hard to figure out what the characteristics of Winston are, you do know of course that he is a man who dares to take big risks (he keeps on trying to look after his history although he knows he could and will die for that). And he is also a smart person as he’s got a good job in the party and his mind is strong enough to keep together although everybody around him is mindless. From this you can conclude that he has very strong ideals and that he is extremely headstrong.
Here’s some quotes which reveal that he’s a really smart man and that he’s very aware of the way the party works, this means he has to be somewhere in the good classes of the party:
"the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty." Part 2, Chapter 9, pg. 215
"We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull." Part 3, Chapter 3, pg. 268
"For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself." Part 3, Chapter 4, pg. 283
"If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles." Part 1, Chapter 7, pg. 72
The last quote reveals he is even that smart that he knows how to get rid of the party, unfortunately for him he can never celebrate the moment when this thought comes true..
Structure:
Everything in the story happens exactly chronologically, of course there are sometimes quotes back to the future and events which Winston recalls but in general the events follow eachother exactly the way they happen in reality. As reader this is very important because if the events would take place in a non-chronolical order it would be very hard to understand how the events relate to eachother. It’s hard enough the way it is!
Assignments:
The assignments where not too hard and I did not face any big problems. During the reading I sometimes had a hard time to get the events ordered right so I could understand what exactly happened and what it ment to the world of Winston but at the end of a chapter this generaly is solved so I did not miss any essential parts for my book report.
Better understanding?
Making this report has not significantly improved my understanding of the book, I managed to understand most things straight away and because there was a very interesting introduction in front of the book which cleared up a lot of questions I had during the reading (I read the introduction afterwards)
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