"Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) is a dystopian novel by English writer George Orwell published in June 1949. The novel is set in the year 1984 when most of the world population have become victims of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and propaganda.

Covers from the physical edition of "1984"

In the novel, Great Britain (Airstrip One) has become a part of a superstate named Oceania. Oceania is ruled by "The Party", who employ the "Thought Police" to persecute individualism and independent thinking. The Party's leader is Big Brother, who enjoys an intense cult of personality but may not even exist. Winston Smith, the main character of the novel, is a rank-and-file Party member, but he secretly hates it and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother. Smith rebels by entering a forbidden relationship with fellow employee Julia.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel in content, plot, and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Room 101, telescreen and memory hole have entered into common usage since its publication in 1949. 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 BBC's survey The Big Read.

What makes a good book? Some people may say choosing the right words, some others may say the last pages of it because it´s the last impression you get, but for me, what makes a good book, is logevity.

When you can relate to what the books narrating, when you can see a little bit of yourself in a character from a book that was written  70 years ago, that´s what makes a good book, a this novel does exactly that for me. The intention of the author was to depict a future without freedom of speech, or freedom in general, for that matter. Even though it falls in the more dramatic and negative side of reality, I´m able to see today´s world and society in this Oceania, sureal state that Orwell writes about.

I wanted to talk about this book in this blog entry because elections are coming up soon and I want to use 1984 as a wake up call to everyone that think their opinion don´t matter, that their opinion it´s not gonna be heard. If everyone thought like that, there would be no one fighting for our rights. We have to stand together and fight for what we believe in, just like Winston Smith does in Oceania.

Winston doesn´t adapt to the corupted system he lives in and he believes in teaming up to end that system he considers it´s not right. We are in the same position Winston is, we can change the system if we want to, if we fight for it.