1984-48 to go

This book was surprisingly well known, two teachers on two separate days commented on me reading it. One of them said I need to understand the Russian Revolution in order to truly understand the book.

I don't know the first thing about the Russian Revolution, (or about almost anything involving Russia for that matter, though I know about the cold war because it involved the USA and was briefly covered in my World History class, but I digress...) so I am guessing I won't get as comprehensive of an understanding of this particular book as I did the other books so far.

The book was about this "negative utopia" (term used in book synopsis, and i can't think of a better term for it) that wasn't a utopia in the classical sense (no war, high quality of life, freedom, etc...), in fact it was the exact opposite of a standard utopia. It is hard to describe the lack of intellectual freedom the characters posses. The "thought police" arrest the citizens of the negative utopia if they even begin to think of things that go against "the party" that rules it.

Also the concept of "big brother" is used throughout the book in a very literal sense. The concept that the government is always watching everything we do is made literal. Every house has what is called a "telescreen," which is like a television, only it goes both ways in order to monitor people. Also the icon of big brother is used in posters that are designed so that the eyes of the poster look like they are following and watching you (and judging by the theme of the book I guessed that they might actually be watching you, even though the book never says it).

This society uses propaganda in the extreme, It is currently allied with one of the other two societies and is at war with the other, four years ago they were at war with their current ally and allied with their current ally, but    propaganda is used to the point where most people, if asked, will say that the situation has always been as it is now and that it never could be otherwise, even if they were alive four years ago when this was not the case.

Another defining factor is the new language that people use called "Newspeak," English is refered to as "Oldspeak." Usually new languages are designed to have multiple words for as many things as possible, "newspeak" is designed to have as few words as possible (e.x. there is no horrible or terrible, or even bad, they simply call a bad thing "ungood" and say "doubleungood" to say something is really bad)

Finally the purpose of all the war and propaganda is to keep the population mindlessly living (with the thought police arresting anyone who thinks) and to keep the quality of life as close to barely surviving as possible. The book has a section that explains the system very completely, but it still seems somewhat ridiculous even in that context.

Overall the whole governmental system seems like it should collapse, but amazingly the citizens are kept so ignorant that the system works. The fact that the thought police arrest people for even thinking anti-government things helps, but it all seems very unreal to me.

All in all this book was very strange, and I am almost in agreement that I can't understand it without something to compare it with, it is just that foreign to me. Though I was getting a communism vibe from the book due to everyone calling each other "comrade" and the structure of the governments seeming similar. Perhaps the Russian Revolution my teacher mentioned is when Russia became the communist Soviet Union? That would explain why I was getting the communist feel from the book.

I'm typing up a lot of "maybes" and "I don't knows" so I think I will stop speculating, perhaps I will re-read the book after learning about that Russian Revolution in history class and then come back to this post and revise it with my new understanding, but right now the whole book seems far-fetched and ridiculous, and for someone like me who reads a dozen fantasy books a week that's saying something. I could go on and give you a book report on this book and tell you exactly what happened, why it happened, and all the positive and negative connotations of each event, but I can not understand how such a government could ever come to be and continue to work.