1984 - The end.

George Orwell had many true and sad things to say about American society. He managed to write the most unsettling book I have read in a long time. Reading this novel reminds me why I trust so few people. There are people like O'Brien who collect information about you and then use it against you later. He baited Julia and Winston into telling him the depth of their loyalty to one another. With this information he was able to see what he would have to break to completely destroy them. He knew that if he got them to betray one another that then they would love big brother. But what kind of love is it that is motivated by such fear?

1984 is highly predictive of where we are now. The veneration that big brother receives is created and on page 208 it explains why they use that cover. "His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt toward an individual than toward an organization." This is the same pretense through which America votes. They vote for the person and not the party. It amazes me that a book written this many years ago can still have this level of relevance in modern day society.

The hardest part of this book to swallow was the many chapters of torture. I cannot imagine the level of heinous pain you have to reach in order to denounce all truth in favor of lies. The worst part about this was when he was describing the rats that were going to be released to eat Winston. There are not many people I would not sacrifice to avoid this. What is more strange is that once the party got Winston to betray Julia they let them both free. Their entire motivation was to obtain absolute control and power. They were not going to kill them, they just wanted to be in complete control. This is Orwell's warning. When you give up the control of your life to someone or something else, you cease to be conscious and one loses their humanity.

1984

I have to admit that the first 20 pages of this novel are severely wordy and dry. I feel like his sentences just go on and on and on. I didn't begin to get interested until there was that ominous knock at the door after Winston had wrote "Down with Big Brother." I thought for sure something bad was going to happen to him them.

This book so far is really scary. It concerns me that it was written in 1949 and that he saw this dreary life coming then. On page 37 the idea of "memory holes" are introduced. It amazes me how they just rewrite history in an effort for the party to never be wrong. They destroy all proof and reissue the original copy to reflect that. This is beyond any government that I ever want to see.

It makes you wonder. Are we headed to this extreme socialist existence? This existence equalizes society but makes it so everyone has nothing except the elites. Hopefully I can make it through the rest of this dreary novel. I am sure along the way I will commit a few "facecrimes." (62).