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1984 - George Orwell

Winston Smith is a low-ranking government party official in the nation of Oceania. The Party now has total control over almost all aspects of the country and it's people. Wiston has subverted thoughts about the party, picks up an illegal diarya nd starts writing in to it.

One day, Winston receives a note from a girl that reads “I love you.”. The girl, Julia and him start covert affair. They rent a room above the secondhand store in the prole district where Winston bought the diary. Winston keeps up his affair, and he keeps growing in animosity towards the party.

Winston and Julia get invited to O’Brien’s apartment. O’Brien explaines he's a memeber of the brotherhod and also hates the party. He indoctrinates Winston and Julia into the Brotherhood, and gives Winston a copy of Emmanuel Goldstein’s book, the manifesto of the Brotherhood.

Eventually they're caight by soldiers. The Store owner was part of the thought police all along. Winston is taken to the Ministry of Love, where he is loved and carressed... At last, he is released to the outside world. He meets Julia but no longer feels anything for her. He learns to love big brother.

Quotes

'Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.'

'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.'

'War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.'

'The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.'

'If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.'

'But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.'

'If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.'

'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.'

'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.'

'Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.'

'Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.'

'In the face of pain there are no heroes.'

'Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.'

'If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.'

'Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.'

'Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.'

'Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.'

'Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.'

Some notes

  • It's difficult to make any unique commentary on this book because it's so widely read.
  • There are probably some nuggets that arent really being picked up on tho.
  • It's a dystopian of all seasons relly. I guess the best way to look at is through looking at all the tyranies that Blair would have been against. Organised religion, the soviets, war mungerers etc.
  • The prohibition on sex was always the most interesting to me. Stripped of most of the joy, it's mainly about utility or maybe control. Sex is something we enjoy but it's not in our control that we like it. We just do. So removing the pleasure from sex, having it only be about reproduction is trying again to force control over our nature.
  • Could be read as understanding of human nature, and the ways it is often subjugated.
  • Short so probably worth a re-read. I suspect most people are not reading it or reading it only once. Good value in a deeper look + looking at some of the other stuff Orwell/Blair wrote.