1984

Moving along on my list of 100 greatest novels, I read 1984. Unlike most high schoolers, I was nerding out in honors English reading The Odyssey and Jane Eyre while everyone else was reading this, so I never got around to it until now.

Whether or not you ever read this book, I guarantee that you know about it. I'm not sure there is an American over the age of 15 that hasn't. It's a dystopian novel written in 1949 by George Orwell depicting a future world in which the lives and minds of it's inhabitants are entirely controlled by the government. And although the year 1984 has come and gone, the message that the book sends is always relevant. 

I was really excited to read this book. Like I said, although I never read it in high school, everyone knows the importance of Orwell's book. Everyone has heard references to Big Brother, newspeak, and doubtlethink. I was really anxious to be able to form my opinions of the book, and see how I perceived it. 

What I got from 1984 is that it was incredibly scary. What makes it so scary is how realistic it is. It's not frightening in a horror story, murder mystery kind of way, but it's frightening to imagine our comfortable and free world turning into something so rigid and controlled without our knowledge. In a lot of ways it reminded me of stories like The Handmaids Tale, or The Trial. 

I also liked that it didn't change the pre-Oceania history. It references the World Wars and The Great Depression. It was interesting to put myself in George Orwell's position. He wrote this book fresh off the second World War after witnessing the immense mind control of Hitler and saw a world of communism, socialism, and fascism, and saw the possible damage that such intense government rule could create. 

I think that 1984 is a book that everyone should read. It really makes you think how important it is to form your own opinions and to stand up for what you believe. Our country is always at risk of the government slowly gaining too much control when it is in the wrong hands. The telescreens of 1984 were a product of Orwell's imagination, but it is not hard to imagine a world in which we are watched, monitored, and tracked through our TVs, our computers, our cellphones. If for no other reason, it is important for people to read this book in order to stop and think.