1984 by George Orwell

1984 by George Orwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

 Can you imagine a government so obsessed with control that they monitor your every word and movement? Can you imagine a government so intent upon keeping and growing their power that they devise ways to control the minds of their citizens? Can you imagine a government so convinced of their perfection that they alter or erase the past to support the current reality they project? In his dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell does just that.

This novel is magnificent for the way it draws you in by its believable characters and engrossing story. The pace of the novel is perfect. The more I read, the more I wanted to read. I could not put it down. What I like best was the author's description of how "doublethink" required a person to hold contradictory ideas within himself/herself while totally believing and defending the one idea espoused by the government, but then being able to seamlessly retrieve and believe the alternate idea when necessary.

As an aspiring writer, I wonder what Orwell's process was like writing this book. Did he have it all mapped out before he started? Did he unearth the fossil/plot (as King talks about in his book On Writing) as he went along? Did he feel pain and terror in his heart as he wrote it, the way I felt when I read it? My rating for this book is 5 out of 5.



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