Extended Blog Entry

Seeing that my favorite novels are ones which include dark themes about society and convoluted plots, it was only natural for me to be drawn to George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. I had not heard of this novel before the end of my junior year. The topic in my American English class was revolving around the idea of non-conformity, which always catches my attention, at the time when my friend mentioned Orwell’s book to me. As the senior year reading list came along, and I noticed that Orwell’s novel was in the list, I decided to give the book a chance.

Now that I have read the complete novel, I judge Nineteen Eighty-Four as, overall, an outstanding piece of literature. To begin, the imagery from start to finish is arguably as well as it gets. Orwell’s settings and characters are described in such a fashion that the reader can see the emotions on a character’s face, hear the surrounding noise in the setting, and even see the current state of the objects in the surroundings. The story takes place in “future” London where a dictatorial leadership has induced systematic regulation, poverty, and brainwashing. As one can see in the following passage, “He walked on. The bomb had demolished a group of houses 200 metres up the street. A black plume of smoke hung in the sky, and below it a cloud of plaster dust in which a crowd was already forming around the ruins. There was a little pile of plaster lying on the pavement ahead of him, and in the middle of it he could see a bright red streak. When he got up to it he saw that it was a human hand severed at the wrist. Apart from the bloody stump, the hand was so completely whitened as to resemble a plaster cast,” Orwell’s surroundings, though part of any novel, also convey emotions which the story could not go without.

In addition to the setting, the emotional attachment that one feels towards Orwell’s main character is easy to grasp. Winston Smith is the protagonist struggling to survive in Airstrip One, once called London, where every citizen is under complete and utter watch. Winston has lost all family members due to “Big Brother”, the dictatorship installed in Airstrip One, and seems to be one of few individuals who can, in his mind, single out “the party’s” evil lies. Winston constantly has to restrain himself from showing any sign of opposition towards the party. Orwell expresses Winston’s thoughts and emotions superbly; “Winston was gelatinous with fatigue. Gelatinous was the right word. It had come into his head spontaneously. His body seemed to have not only the weakness of a jelly, but its translucency. He felt that if he held up his hand he would be able to see the light through it. All the blood and lymph had been drained out of him by an enormous debauch of work, leaving only a frail structure of nerves, bones, and skin. All sensations seemed to be magnified. His overalls fretted his shoulders, the pavement tickled his feet, even the opening and closing of a hand was an effort that made his joints creak.”

As for the plot, Orwell selects a topic which any individual should be able to relate to directly or indirectly. The year is 1984 and the world has split off into three main superpowers; Oceania, Eurasia, and East Asia. Winston Smith lives in what was once London in a society where everybody is watched and expected to never question the government, Big Brother. Life is harsh with little food, little clothes, and having to always seem like everything is okay is mandatory. The plot definitely picks at themes like government control and conformity which most people can relate to. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. “And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grammes.” The last passage certainly picks at how easily people can be forced to believe a lie not a day later. Of course if they say anything, they would be killed. Orwell’s plot is definitely one to pull a reader into a world of destruction and fear, yet one can easily relate to the plot and emotions of the characters.