Review: 1984

1984 by George Orwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bleak! Have something else on the go to lighten the mood. My concurrent nonfiction is about American POWs being starved, tortured and generally dehumanized in Japanese prison camps (Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand), and the parallels in abuse are frightening.

I gave this book a go because it was a cultural touchstone I'd never read. It is infinitely more readable than Brave New World, which was the other big dystopia book I somehow skipped in high school. Orwell's characters actually live, feel, and struggle to retain a self. Beware, however, when someone starts to read a political manifesto, because you're going to get, like, the whole thing. (Let alone the interminable appendix on the grammatical construction of NewSpeak - this book does not require a Silmarillion!)

While our hero is constantly dreaming of being part of the Glorious Manly Rebellion, the more interesting character is his love interest, Julia. She sings the party rhetoric louder than anyone, but has been finding ways to flaunt the system her whole life.

Her unquestioning acceptance of totalitarian rule rings scarily true - does any young person today even flinch at giving over their name, address, GPS location, contact list, or photo albums so they can download an app? But she steals, cheats, lies and runs away to live a parallel, private life, and is utterly blase about it. Tyranny is normalized, but so is small, personal rebellion. She's bored by talk of revolution and escape and bringing down Big Brother, which Idealistic Hero Man must resent, but how many of us would actually be her?

Anyway, time for something optimistic. (On Tyranny, perhaps, Mom?)

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