Ever Relevant, 18 Dec 2008
1984 is one of those brilliant books that forces you to continually reassess your life and everything in it. This is the second time I have read it and I am noticing different things this time round. It seems to gain relevance at a startling speed, giving the narrative a sort of spooky prophetic feel.

Everyone should read 1984 at least one in their life. Its vital literature for anyone who has any interest at all in the human condition or current affairs...

Yes its a bit depressing but at the same time it offers hope. mad I know but true. read it and you'll understand what I mean!

A dystopian classic, 12 Dec 2008
When Orwell wrote 1984, he was near the end of his life, suffering from tuberculosis and, for most of the time, living in isolation on the remote Scottish island of Jura. What perfect preparation for him to create one of the bleakest and most accurate accounts of the abuse of power by modern totalitarian states. The simple, direct prose style hits you square in the face and leaves you reeling. The world in 1984 is divided into three totalitarian power blocks, which are constantly in conflict. The novel's main character, Winston Smith, lives in one these powers, Oceania. He is an intellectual and a Party member who works in the Ministry of Truth. His job is to re-write political history to accord with the current approved views of the Party on all aspects of society. Winston has become disillusioned with the Party and commits a terrible crime by falling in love with a woman called Julia. This relationship is forbidden, because it serves no utilitarian purpose. In 1984, personal life has been abolished and subjugated to the will of the Party. Winston - under torture - is forced to denounce Julia and reaffirm his love for the Party, as represented by the personality cult of Big Brother.

Orwell hits so many targets with such unerring accuracy that it would be tedious to list them...but here goes: communism and fascism sharing the same totalitarian ambitions; censorship and manipulation of the media to serve political ends; the use of personality cults to induce party loyalty; the creation of external enemies to distract from the shortcomings of the regime; romantic love as an act of defiance in the face of an inhuman society; the use of brainwashing and torture to bring `deviationists' back into line; the loss of the right to a private life and personal privacy; ubiquitous and routine surveillance of ordinary citizens, ostensibly to protect their security. OK, I'll stop now, but you get the picture: this is a hugely ambitious book about profound issues that are still relevant for every person alive today. It is also that rare jewel among ambitious books in that it succeeds in saying something meaningful and convincing about every one of its themes.

This book will still be a best-seller when our grandchildren become politically active. It falls firmly into the category of `books that everyone should read at least once'.

Review by Tony Judge, author of Sirocco Express (ISBN: 978-1409204466 )


Amazing!, 10 Dec 2008
This book is a fantastic classic, and Orwell's writing style is so good, I couldn't put it down.
It's amazing, and I think everyone should read it once in their lifetime.

Modern literature at it's finest! (Minor spoilers), 30 Oct 2008
Let's get the gracious comments out of the way... This is, without a doubt, the most ideologically-brilliant book I've ever read; so much so it's hard to believe this was written over 60 years ago. I just finished reading it on the bus this morning and, much to the oddity my friends, a cheeky grin was here all morning.

It has to be said though that the grin was built more on admiration for Orwells writing standards than the sad final sentence of the novel, for beneath the futuristic subject matter you may believe this entails lies a world of deception, propaganda, and violence - the harsh realities of a world that ceases to re-write history.

I'm sure from the other reviewers you've got the jist of the plot. In a 3rd person narrative, we see life around the protagonist Winston; a worker for the Ministry of Truth in the year 1984. Though Winston is a 'Party-Hater' (he secretly rebels against the way society is run) his job is to endlessly take documents from the past and present, and to simply re-write them to suit the needs of the party. And those needs can change at any time; whether it be who fought who in a battle, or why the sky is blue.

The roots of this diabolical society lead to 'Big Brother', who throughout the novel, remains a mysterious leader; a "face" on posters and TV, as its to anyone's guess whether he is indeed real or manifested by The Party (the name of the centralised government). All The Party want is Political power - and with millions of people in 'love' with Big Brother, they have total control on what they hear, see, and should do.

The novel is split into 3 main chapters; Part I, Part II and Part III, each separating important moments in the story, while sub-chapters allow you to bookmark the book easily. Orwell's division of these Parts is particularly clever; Part 1 can be seen as a more progressive, atmosphere builder, while Part 2 engages excitement and romance, leaving the thrilling Part 3 as a brutal and, sometimes, cringing section that you never want to end.

What I love about the novel is that while Orwell has superbly boxed most questions, the story also creates questions that have no answer. Is Big Brother made up? Was Julia a member of The Party? Was Mr Charringtons shop a means of exposing party-haters? Without wanting to expose the spoilers the story, their are so many themes which can be analysed; the sign of a clever writer, particularly as Orwell was ill for most parts of the writing.

The accuracy to which this book is written is also astounding; the fact such modern ideals are highlighted is incredible. Orwell uses one of his Party character's (O'Brien) near the end of the novel to highlight the collapse of the Nazi party, and the beginning of the Cold War, though of course in the story, Winston is forced to believe that the Big Brother society is perfect in every way; surpassing any previous controversial party in the past, which of course O'Brien highlights. As far as I could read, their were only two sections I scratched my head at... Firstly, Winston in Part 2 with Julia explains how a particular field they were laying near had an Atomic Bomb dropped on it "30 years ago". Of course, we all know that it would take over 50 years just for it decontaminate, with the ozone not clearing for over 100 years... The second was quite simple; O'Brien explains how The Party will go as far as to destroy the humans orgasm in an attempt to rid of feeling/love for others. Yet in the same chapter, he explains that babies will be taken from their mothers at birth... How would the babies be conceived then? I'm sure theirs some explanations.

Though the novel sets out to highlight the strong hold of the party, it is the affect it has on poor Winston, who is described as "the last 'real' man alive". He is broken down from an sane, healthy man who remembered his past and despised the party, to a baby like state as he is forced to believe in the ideals of The Party through brutal means. I believe "the mirror" scene to be turning point in the book; such emotional narrative that breaks Winston into little pieces.

It would be easy to ramble on further, but I'd only spoil the story. Cut long story short this is one of the best novels I've ever read - Orwells language is so straight to the point, while his ideology, particularly his chapter on Goldsteins vision of the party, is stunning. If the Labour Party of now want to stay in power, then feed this to the Secondary Schools - not books that are 100 years out of date!

Universally relevant, 12 Sep 2008
It is tempting with the `wisdom' of the twentieth century to dismiss as irrelevant a book guilty of false prophecy. However the achievement of George Orwell's masterpiece is not to be found in the accuracies of his predictions, but in its warning about the danger of power unchecked and the lengths to which those in power will go in order to remain there.

We are presented with a vision of the future (now our past) in which the world is divided amongst the totalitarian superpowers of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Our story is set in a London controlled by `The Party' - who presence is felt by the ubiquitous Big Brother and its enforcement arm the Thought Police; told through the figure of Winston Smith: a lonely and silently dissident low-level member of the regime, who embarks on a prohibited sexual affair with a fellow party member, plots to work against `The Party' for an underground revolutionary movement called `The Brotherhood', only to discover he has been set up by Thought Police and is subsequently subjected to imprisonment, torture and eventually the destruction of his individuality.

The structure of the plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four is basically a series of pieced together clichés and most of the characters descend into caricature, but it is never intended as a character study or a work of great literary merit or storytelling; the merit of the work is found in Orwell's handling of the mechanics of totalitarian control. At no point does Orwell try to assess the character of such a state and how it develops, but his genius is found in the way he handles methods of political control and taking these to a fantastical extreme in order to present the terror of uninhibited state control. In fact the real ingenuity of Nineteen Eighty-Four lies in the political weapons Orwell attributes to `The Party': newspeak, Big Brother, thoughtcrime, doublethink and many others.

Moreover, Orwell is particularly adept at exposing the political lie and how governments use this to enslave its citizens. The concept of the mutability of the past, whereby the past is continually falsified through physical record and the practice of doublethink (which involves the power to hold in one's mind simultaneously two contradictory beliefs, and accepting both of them) in order to demonstrate the omnipotence of Big Brother and `the Party', executed with horrifying perfection by the regime is the highlight of Orwell's achievement. Here Orwell demonstrates to us the fragility of objective knowledge and the process by which governments could (and in some cases do) distort reality. The servitude the citizens of Oceania find themselves in is not physical in its nature (since very few things are physically prohibited), but a mental imprisonment (thought crime being the only culpable act, as one of Smith's fellow prisoners bluntly puts it in Part 3). Through the process of falsifying what is considered objective fact in conjunction with doublethink, the means of intellectual liberty are denied since the concepts we take as given and infallible such as truth, reason and justification can no longer be relied upon. During Winston's interrogation, O'Brien (`the Party' incarnate) says to him `it is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it should be.' This appears to be the key point of Orwell's message, that freedom is attached to thought and absolute freedom is the freedom to be incorrect.

Orwell rams this point home even further in the concept of Newspeak. This is a language devised by `the Party' that reduces all speech to simple monosyllabic words or short combinations of these. Whereas in the language we use a particular concept may be covered by any number of words (e.g. the concept of good is covered in English by seemingly limitless adjectives), the aim of the creators of Newspeak is to reduce concepts to single words that contain both its affirmative and negative and therefore removing the need for antonyms for one (e.g. the word good, an affirmative, becomes an negative with the affix `un', so the opposite of `good' becomes `ungood' therefore removing the need for `bad' and its various synonyms). The mechanics of the new language are too complicated to discuss at length here (and the novel has as an appendix a short essay on Newspeak) but the idea Orwell entertains in this concept is that if thought is in some sense dependent on language (certainly the two coexist, although the relationship is unlikely to be one of dependence), then by reducing the capacity of language then the capacity of thought, or free thought, itself is curtailed. If language is simplified according to ideology and the means to express certain concepts such as freedom, justice, truth and love are removed, then, Orwell reasons, these concepts disappear altogether. Newspeak, then, is the ultimate weapon against human intellectualism and the liberty of the individual.

Orwell's message is a dramatic one, a warning against all kinds of power: it provides us with reasons to be suspicious of any regime and politician that seeks power and disguises its real aspirations behind propaganda and claims to be serving the greater good. As O'Brien tells us `The Party' seeks power not as a means, but as an end: `One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship...The object of power is power.' The danger and future as Orwell saw it as summed up by O'Brien is: `If you want to imagine a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever.'

It is this resonant and rallying cry in favour of maximal personal liberty and the curbing of political power, in spite of it lacking the subtlety of Kafka's The Trial or the penetrating wit of Huxley's Brave New World, which will make Nineteen Eighty-Four a book of universal appeal and significance for many generations still to come.

Ever Relevant, 18 Dec 2008
1984 is one of those brilliant books that forces you to continually reassess your life and everything in it. This is the second time I have read it and I am noticing different things this time round. It seems to gain relevance at a startling speed, giving the narrative a sort of spooky prophetic feel.

Everyone should read 1984 at least one in their life. Its vital literature for anyone who has any interest at all in the human condition or current affairs...

Yes its a bit depressing but at the same time it offers hope. mad I know but true. read it and you'll understand what I mean!

A dystopian classic, 12 Dec 2008
When Orwell wrote 1984, he was near the end of his life, suffering from tuberculosis and, for most of the time, living in isolation on the remote Scottish island of Jura. What perfect preparation for him to create one of the bleakest and most accurate accounts of the abuse of power by modern totalitarian states. The simple, direct prose style hits you square in the face and leaves you reeling. The world in 1984 is divided into three totalitarian power blocks, which are constantly in conflict. The novel's main character, Winston Smith, lives in one these powers, Oceania. He is an intellectual and a Party member who works in the Ministry of Truth. His job is to re-write political history to accord with the current approved views of the Party on all aspects of society. Winston has become disillusioned with the Party and commits a terrible crime by falling in love with a woman called Julia. This relationship is forbidden, because it serves no utilitarian purpose. In 1984, personal life has been abolished and subjugated to the will of the Party. Winston - under torture - is forced to denounce Julia and reaffirm his love for the Party, as represented by the personality cult of Big Brother.

Orwell hits so many targets with such unerring accuracy that it would be tedious to list them...but here goes: communism and fascism sharing the same totalitarian ambitions; censorship and manipulation of the media to serve political ends; the use of personality cults to induce party loyalty; the creation of external enemies to distract from the shortcomings of the regime; romantic love as an act of defiance in the face of an inhuman society; the use of brainwashing and torture to bring `deviationists' back into line; the loss of the right to a private life and personal privacy; ubiquitous and routine surveillance of ordinary citizens, ostensibly to protect their security. OK, I'll stop now, but you get the picture: this is a hugely ambitious book about profound issues that are still relevant for every person alive today. It is also that rare jewel among ambitious books in that it succeeds in saying something meaningful and convincing about every one of its themes.

This book will still be a best-seller when our grandchildren become politically active. It falls firmly into the category of `books that everyone should read at least once'.

Review by Tony Judge, author of Sirocco Express (ISBN: 978-1409204466 )


Amazing!, 10 Dec 2008
This book is a fantastic classic, and Orwell's writing style is so good, I couldn't put it down.
It's amazing, and I think everyone should read it once in their lifetime.

Modern literature at it's finest! (Minor spoilers), 30 Oct 2008
Let's get the gracious comments out of the way... This is, without a doubt, the most ideologically-brilliant book I've ever read; so much so it's hard to believe this was written over 60 years ago. I just finished reading it on the bus this morning and, much to the oddity my friends, a cheeky grin was here all morning.

It has to be said though that the grin was built more on admiration for Orwells writing standards than the sad final sentence of the novel, for beneath the futuristic subject matter you may believe this entails lies a world of deception, propaganda, and violence - the harsh realities of a world that ceases to re-write history.

I'm sure from the other reviewers you've got the jist of the plot. In a 3rd person narrative, we see life around the protagonist Winston; a worker for the Ministry of Truth in the year 1984. Though Winston is a 'Party-Hater' (he secretly rebels against the way society is run) his job is to endlessly take documents from the past and present, and to simply re-write them to suit the needs of the party. And those needs can change at any time; whether it be who fought who in a battle, or why the sky is blue.

The roots of this diabolical society lead to 'Big Brother', who throughout the novel, remains a mysterious leader; a "face" on posters and TV, as its to anyone's guess whether he is indeed real or manifested by The Party (the name of the centralised government). All The Party want is Political power - and with millions of people in 'love' with Big Brother, they have total control on what they hear, see, and should do.

The novel is split into 3 main chapters; Part I, Part II and Part III, each separating important moments in the story, while sub-chapters allow you to bookmark the book easily. Orwell's division of these Parts is particularly clever; Part 1 can be seen as a more progressive, atmosphere builder, while Part 2 engages excitement and romance, leaving the thrilling Part 3 as a brutal and, sometimes, cringing section that you never want to end.

What I love about the novel is that while Orwell has superbly boxed most questions, the story also creates questions that have no answer. Is Big Brother made up? Was Julia a member of The Party? Was Mr Charringtons shop a means of exposing party-haters? Without wanting to expose the spoilers the story, their are so many themes which can be analysed; the sign of a clever writer, particularly as Orwell was ill for most parts of the writing.

The accuracy to which this book is written is also astounding; the fact such modern ideals are highlighted is incredible. Orwell uses one of his Party character's (O'Brien) near the end of the novel to highlight the collapse of the Nazi party, and the beginning of the Cold War, though of course in the story, Winston is forced to believe that the Big Brother society is perfect in every way; surpassing any previous controversial party in the past, which of course O'Brien highlights. As far as I could read, their were only two sections I scratched my head at... Firstly, Winston in Part 2 with Julia explains how a particular field they were laying near had an Atomic Bomb dropped on it "30 years ago". Of course, we all know that it would take over 50 years just for it decontaminate, with the ozone not clearing for over 100 years... The second was quite simple; O'Brien explains how The Party will go as far as to destroy the humans orgasm in an attempt to rid of feeling/love for others. Yet in the same chapter, he explains that babies will be taken from their mothers at birth... How would the babies be conceived then? I'm sure theirs some explanations.

Though the novel sets out to highlight the strong hold of the party, it is the affect it has on poor Winston, who is described as "the last 'real' man alive". He is broken down from an sane, healthy man who remembered his past and despised the party, to a baby like state as he is forced to believe in the ideals of The Party through brutal means. I believe "the mirror" scene to be turning point in the book; such emotional narrative that breaks Winston into little pieces.

It would be easy to ramble on further, but I'd only spoil the story. Cut long story short this is one of the best novels I've ever read - Orwells language is so straight to the point, while his ideology, particularly his chapter on Goldsteins vision of the party, is stunning. If the Labour Party of now want to stay in power, then feed this to the Secondary Schools - not books that are 100 years out of date!

Universally relevant, 12 Sep 2008
It is tempting with the `wisdom' of the twentieth century to dismiss as irrelevant a book guilty of false prophecy. However the achievement of George Orwell's masterpiece is not to be found in the accuracies of his predictions, but in its warning about the danger of power unchecked and the lengths to which those in power will go in order to remain there.

We are presented with a vision of the future (now our past) in which the world is divided amongst the totalitarian superpowers of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Our story is set in a London controlled by `The Party' - who presence is felt by the ubiquitous Big Brother and its enforcement arm the Thought Police; told through the figure of Winston Smith: a lonely and silently dissident low-level member of the regime, who embarks on a prohibited sexual affair with a fellow party member, plots to work against `The Party' for an underground revolutionary movement called `The Brotherhood', only to discover he has been set up by Thought Police and is subsequently subjected to imprisonment, torture and eventually the destruction of his individuality.

The structure of the plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four is basically a series of pieced together clichés and most of the characters descend into caricature, but it is never intended as a character study or a work of great literary merit or storytelling; the merit of the work is found in Orwell's handling of the mechanics of totalitarian control. At no point does Orwell try to assess the character of such a state and how it develops, but his genius is found in the way he handles methods of political control and taking these to a fantastical extreme in order to present the terror of uninhibited state control. In fact the real ingenuity of Nineteen Eighty-Four lies in the political weapons Orwell attributes to `The Party': newspeak, Big Brother, thoughtcrime, doublethink and many others.

Moreover, Orwell is particularly adept at exposing the political lie and how governments use this to enslave its citizens. The concept of the mutability of the past, whereby the past is continually falsified through physical record and the practice of doublethink (which involves the power to hold in one's mind simultaneously two contradictory beliefs, and accepting both of them) in order to demonstrate the omnipotence of Big Brother and `the Party', executed with horrifying perfection by the regime is the highlight of Orwell's achievement. Here Orwell demonstrates to us the fragility of objective knowledge and the process by which governments could (and in some cases do) distort reality. The servitude the citizens of Oceania find themselves in is not physical in its nature (since very few things are physically prohibited), but a mental imprisonment (thought crime being the only culpable act, as one of Smith's fellow prisoners bluntly puts it in Part 3). Through the process of falsifying what is considered objective fact in conjunction with doublethink, the means of intellectual liberty are denied since the concepts we take as given and infallible such as truth, reason and justification can no longer be relied upon. During Winston's interrogation, O'Brien (`the Party' incarnate) says to him `it is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it should be.' This appears to be the key point of Orwell's message, that freedom is attached to thought and absolute freedom is the freedom to be incorrect.

Orwell rams this point home even further in the concept of Newspeak. This is a language devised by `the Party' that reduces all speech to simple monosyllabic words or short combinations of these. Whereas in the language we use a particular concept may be covered by any number of words (e.g. the concept of good is covered in English by seemingly limitless adjectives), the aim of the creators of Newspeak is to reduce concepts to single words that contain both its affirmative and negative and therefore removing the need for antonyms for one (e.g. the word good, an affirmative, becomes an negative with the affix `un', so the opposite of `good' becomes `ungood' therefore removing the need for `bad' and its various synonyms). The mechanics of the new language are too complicated to discuss at length here (and the novel has as an appendix a short essay on Newspeak) but the idea Orwell entertains in this concept is that if thought is in some sense dependent on language (certainly the two coexist, although the relationship is unlikely to be one of dependence), then by reducing the capacity of language then the capacity of thought, or free thought, itself is curtailed. If language is simplified according to ideology and the means to express certain concepts such as freedom, justice, truth and love are removed, then, Orwell reasons, these concepts disappear altogether. Newspeak, then, is the ultimate weapon against human intellectualism and the liberty of the individual.

Orwell's message is a dramatic one, a warning against all kinds of power: it provides us with reasons to be suspicious of any regime and politician that seeks power and disguises its real aspirations behind propaganda and claims to be serving the greater good. As O'Brien tells us `The Party' seeks power not as a means, but as an end: `One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship...The object of power is power.' The danger and future as Orwell saw it as summed up by O'Brien is: `If you want to imagine a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever.'

It is this resonant and rallying cry in favour of maximal personal liberty and the curbing of political power, in spite of it lacking the subtlety of Kafka's The Trial or the penetrating wit of Huxley's Brave New World, which will make Nineteen Eighty-Four a book of universal appeal and significance for many generations still to come.


The collected fiction of a great writer - horrible edition, though, 20 Aug 2008
I have huge admiration for Orwell's work as a writer and I am a strong admirer of his fiction, although apart from his last two novels I don't think it was the field he was best at. I urge any reader interested in his stuff to seek out his novels and read them. However, this is definitely not the best edition to read them in. Orwell's work was only subjected to proper editorial scrutiny in the late 1980s, with the release of Peter Davison's magisterial Complete Works. This book is a modern reprint of much earlier collection of uncorrected texts of his novels. The type is so tiny that the book is hard on the eyes, plus the texts of the novels are in most cases very corrupt.

If you want to read these books, the only reason you should get this edition is that you are very young, new to Orwell, have really good eyesight, and are too broke to afford buying each novel in the current individual Penguin editions, which are corrected texts. Otherwise, get them all individually; this book is both unreliable and almost unreadable.

The greatest writer?, 05 Feb 2008
Orwell has always been my favorite writer. Animal Farm and 1984 are his best known works but my own personal favorite is Coming Up For Air. By the way you will notice if you read that story carfeully that it has no semi-colons! Now isn't that comment worth a 'helpful' on your voting buttons?!! Anyway this is an excellent collection and well worth the money. An excellent way to savour Orwell.

Real Ability, 10 Jan 2008
It is always a pleasure when you discover someone who can actually write.

Many authors today try to write, but sadly they do not flow, they have no ease, they are not natural.
Many writers can of course write very well, but really good writers are not that common.
P.G.Wodehouse would be another really good example.

You can live in Orwells writing. It may not be all nice and pretty, but it is for real.
I get laughed at when I say this, but here goes, George Orwell may turn out to be the most prophetic author that ever lived.

One other thing..A true sign of greatness, may be the ability to re-read someones books, after a short gap, and still be entranced by them.
You can do that here.

Genius George, 29 Dec 2007
Prior to picking up this book i had only read snipets of george orwels work. This collection is a must read!!! Animal farm is pure genius and one of the few novels it is difficult to put down. while 1984 is thought provoking and simultaneously captures the imagination and shows what good writing is all about. This is the collection that all others aspire to be. A MUST BUY!!!

One of the finest writers of the Twentieth Century, 05 Jul 2007
George Orwell and Graham Greene are, for me, the two finest British writers of the twentieth century. Here Orwell's five novels are collected, and are well worth reading (get his non-fiction too). 1984 and Animal Farm are possibly the two finest pieces of fiction of the last century. The other novels are a mixed bag but still worth a look. BURMESE DAYS is a superb exposition of the reality of colonial rule in the early 1930s. A small group of English ex-pats forced together in a remote station in Burma. Gin soaked and bitter they lead miserable lonely lives. Local political machinations and the arrival of a young woman from England combine to shatter the fragile framework that holds them together. THE CLERGYMAN'S DAUGHTER is altogether a different piece and not quite sure what it is. It starts in the style of a D H Lawrence novel - the spinsterish daughter of the vicar; then it takes a comic turn as she loses her memory and ends up picking hops; then we have a Dickensian description of a grim private girls school; finally we return where we started. The tone is downbeat and the fact that nothing really happens is disappointing, though it is fun and interesting in parts. COMING UP FOR AIR is a nostalgic piece - an enjoyable description of life at the turn of the twentieth century, and the pointlessness of living in the past. KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING I find tedious. It is a long rant against the "money god" featuring a dull and self-obsessed young man. I am not sure what the purpose of it is, except to warn us against becoming too self-absorbed that we ignore reality.

Ever Relevant, 18 Dec 2008
1984 is one of those brilliant books that forces you to continually reassess your life and everything in it. This is the second time I have read it and I am noticing different things this time round. It seems to gain relevance at a startling speed, giving the narrative a sort of spooky prophetic feel.

Everyone should read 1984 at least one in their life. Its vital literature for anyone who has any interest at all in the human condition or current affairs...

Yes its a bit depressing but at the same time it offers hope. mad I know but true. read it and you'll understand what I mean!

A dystopian classic, 12 Dec 2008
When Orwell wrote 1984, he was near the end of his life, suffering from tuberculosis and, for most of the time, living in isolation on the remote Scottish island of Jura. What perfect preparation for him to create one of the bleakest and most accurate accounts of the abuse of power by modern totalitarian states. The simple, direct prose style hits you square in the face and leaves you reeling. The world in 1984 is divided into three totalitarian power blocks, which are constantly in conflict. The novel's main character, Winston Smith, lives in one these powers, Oceania. He is an intellectual and a Party member who works in the Ministry of Truth. His job is to re-write political history to accord with the current approved views of the Party on all aspects of society. Winston has become disillusioned with the Party and commits a terrible crime by falling in love with a woman called Julia. This relationship is forbidden, because it serves no utilitarian purpose. In 1984, personal life has been abolished and subjugated to the will of the Party. Winston - under torture - is forced to denounce Julia and reaffirm his love for the Party, as represented by the personality cult of Big Brother.

Orwell hits so many targets with such unerring accuracy that it would be tedious to list them...but here goes: communism and fascism sharing the same totalitarian ambitions; censorship and manipulation of the media to serve political ends; the use of personality cults to induce party loyalty; the creation of external enemies to distract from the shortcomings of the regime; romantic love as an act of defiance in the face of an inhuman society; the use of brainwashing and torture to bring `deviationists' back into line; the loss of the right to a private life and personal privacy; ubiquitous and routine surveillance of ordinary citizens, ostensibly to protect their security. OK, I'll stop now, but you get the picture: this is a hugely ambitious book about profound issues that are still relevant for every person alive today. It is also that rare jewel among ambitious books in that it succeeds in saying something meaningful and convincing about every one of its themes.

This book will still be a best-seller when our grandchildren become politically active. It falls firmly into the category of `books that everyone should read at least once'.

Review by Tony Judge, author of Sirocco Express (ISBN: 978-1409204466 )


Amazing!, 10 Dec 2008
This book is a fantastic classic, and Orwell's writing style is so good, I couldn't put it down.
It's amazing, and I think everyone should read it once in their lifetime.

Modern literature at it's finest! (Minor spoilers), 30 Oct 2008
Let's get the gracious comments out of the way... This is, without a doubt, the most ideologically-brilliant book I've ever read; so much so it's hard to believe this was written over 60 years ago. I just finished reading it on the bus this morning and, much to the oddity my friends, a cheeky grin was here all morning.

It has to be said though that the grin was built more on admiration for Orwells writing standards than the sad final sentence of the novel, for beneath the futuristic subject matter you may believe this entails lies a world of deception, propaganda, and violence - the harsh realities of a world that ceases to re-write history.

I'm sure from the other reviewers you've got the jist of the plot. In a 3rd person narrative, we see life around the protagonist Winston; a worker for the Ministry of Truth in the year 1984. Though Winston is a 'Party-Hater' (he secretly rebels against the way society is run) his job is to endlessly take documents from the past and present, and to simply re-write them to suit the needs of the party. And those needs can change at any time; whether it be who fought who in a battle, or why the sky is blue.

The roots of this diabolical society lead to 'Big Brother', who throughout the novel, remains a mysterious leader; a "face" on posters and TV, as its to anyone's guess whether he is indeed real or manifested by The Party (the name of the centralised government). All The Party want is Political power - and with millions of people in 'love' with Big Brother, they have total control on what they hear, see, and should do.

The novel is split into 3 main chapters; Part I, Part II and Part III, each separating important moments in the story, while sub-chapters allow you to bookmark the book easily. Orwell's division of these Parts is particularly clever; Part 1 can be seen as a more progressive, atmosphere builder, while Part 2 engages excitement and romance, leaving the thrilling Part 3 as a brutal and, sometimes, cringing section that you never want to end.

What I love about the novel is that while Orwell has superbly boxed most questions, the story also creates questions that have no answer. Is Big Brother made up? Was Julia a member of The Party? Was Mr Charringtons shop a means of exposing party-haters? Without wanting to expose the spoilers the story, their are so many themes which can be analysed; the sign of a clever writer, particularly as Orwell was ill for most parts of the writing.

The accuracy to which this book is written is also astounding; the fact such modern ideals are highlighted is incredible. Orwell uses one of his Party character's (O'Brien) near the end of the novel to highlight the collapse of the Nazi party, and the beginning of the Cold War, though of course in the story, Winston is forced to believe that the Big Brother society is perfect in every way; surpassing any previous controversial party in the past, which of course O'Brien highlights. As far as I could read, their were only two sections I scratched my head at... Firstly, Winston in Part 2 with Julia explains how a particular field they were laying near had an Atomic Bomb dropped on it "30 years ago". Of course, we all know that it would take over 50 years just for it decontaminate, with the ozone not clearing for over 100 years... The second was quite simple; O'Brien explains how The Party will go as far as to destroy the humans orgasm in an attempt to rid of feeling/love for others. Yet in the same chapter, he explains that babies will be taken from their mothers at birth... How would the babies be conceived then? I'm sure theirs some explanations.

Though the novel sets out to highlight the strong hold of the party, it is the affect it has on poor Winston, who is described as "the last 'real' man alive". He is broken down from an sane, healthy man who remembered his past and despised the party, to a baby like state as he is forced to believe in the ideals of The Party through brutal means. I believe "the mirror" scene to be turning point in the book; such emotional narrative that breaks Winston into little pieces.

It would be easy to ramble on further, but I'd only spoil the story. Cut long story short this is one of the best novels I've ever read - Orwells language is so straight to the point, while his ideology, particularly his chapter on Goldsteins vision of the party, is stunning. If the Labour Party of now want to stay in power, then feed this to the Secondary Schools - not books that are 100 years out of date!

Universally relevant, 12 Sep 2008
It is tempting with the `wisdom' of the twentieth century to dismiss as irrelevant a book guilty of false prophecy. However the achievement of George Orwell's masterpiece is not to be found in the accuracies of his predictions, but in its warning about the danger of power unchecked and the lengths to which those in power will go in order to remain there.

We are presented with a vision of the future (now our past) in which the world is divided amongst the totalitarian superpowers of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Our story is set in a London controlled by `The Party' - who presence is felt by the ubiquitous Big Brother and its enforcement arm the Thought Police; told through the figure of Winston Smith: a lonely and silently dissident low-level member of the regime, who embarks on a prohibited sexual affair with a fellow party member, plots to work against `The Party' for an underground revolutionary movement called `The Brotherhood', only to discover he has been set up by Thought Police and is subsequently subjected to imprisonment, torture and eventually the destruction of his individuality.

The structure of the plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four is basically a series of pieced together clichés and most of the characters descend into caricature, but it is never intended as a character study or a work of great literary merit or storytelling; the merit of the work is found in Orwell's handling of the mechanics of totalitarian control. At no point does Orwell try to assess the character of such a state and how it develops, but his genius is found in the way he handles methods of political control and taking these to a fantastical extreme in order to present the terror of uninhibited state control. In fact the real ingenuity of Nineteen Eighty-Four lies in the political weapons Orwell attributes to `The Party': newspeak, Big Brother, thoughtcrime, doublethink and many others.

Moreover, Orwell is particularly adept at exposing the political lie and how governments use this to enslave its citizens. The concept of the mutability of the past, whereby the past is continually falsified through physical record and the practice of doublethink (which involves the power to hold in one's mind simultaneously two contradictory beliefs, and accepting both of them) in order to demonstrate the omnipotence of Big Brother and `the Party', executed with horrifying perfection by the regime is the highlight of Orwell's achievement. Here Orwell demonstrates to us the fragility of objective knowledge and the process by which governments could (and in some cases do) distort reality. The servitude the citizens of Oceania find themselves in is not physical in its nature (since very few things are physically prohibited), but a mental imprisonment (thought crime being the only culpable act, as one of Smith's fellow prisoners bluntly puts it in Part 3). Through the process of falsifying what is considered objective fact in conjunction with doublethink, the means of intellectual liberty are denied since the concepts we take as given and infallible such as truth, reason and justification can no longer be relied upon. During Winston's interrogation, O'Brien (`the Party' incarnate) says to him `it is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it should be.' This appears to be the key point of Orwell's message, that freedom is attached to thought and absolute freedom is the freedom to be incorrect.

Orwell rams this point home even further in the concept of Newspeak. This is a language devised by `the Party' that reduces all speech to simple monosyllabic words or short combinations of these. Whereas in the language we use a particular concept may be covered by any number of words (e.g. the concept of good is covered in English by seemingly limitless adjectives), the aim of the creators of Newspeak is to reduce concepts to single words that contain both its affirmative and negative and therefore removing the need for antonyms for one (e.g. the word good, an affirmative, becomes an negative with the affix `un', so the opposite of `good' becomes `ungood' therefore removing the need for `bad' and its various synonyms). The mechanics of the new language are too complicated to discuss at length here (and the novel has as an appendix a short essay on Newspeak) but the idea Orwell entertains in this concept is that if thought is in some sense dependent on language (certainly the two coexist, although the relationship is unlikely to be one of dependence), then by reducing the capacity of language then the capacity of thought, or free thought, itself is curtailed. If language is simplified according to ideology and the means to express certain concepts such as freedom, justice, truth and love are removed, then, Orwell reasons, these concepts disappear altogether. Newspeak, then, is the ultimate weapon against human intellectualism and the liberty of the individual.

Orwell's message is a dramatic one, a warning against all kinds of power: it provides us with reasons to be suspicious of any regime and politician that seeks power and disguises its real aspirations behind propaganda and claims to be serving the greater good. As O'Brien tells us `The Party' seeks power not as a means, but as an end: `One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship...The object of power is power.' The danger and future as Orwell saw it as summed up by O'Brien is: `If you want to imagine a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever.'

It is this resonant and rallying cry in favour of maximal personal liberty and the curbing of political power, in spite of it lacking the subtlety of Kafka's The Trial or the penetrating wit of Huxley's Brave New World, which will make Nineteen Eighty-Four a book of universal appeal and significance for many generations still to come.


The collected fiction of a great writer - horrible edition, though, 20 Aug 2008
I have huge admiration for Orwell's work as a writer and I am a strong admirer of his fiction, although apart from his last two novels I don't think it was the field he was best at. I urge any reader interested in his stuff to seek out his novels and read them. However, this is definitely not the best edition to read them in. Orwell's work was only subjected to proper editorial scrutiny in the late 1980s, with the release of Peter Davison's magisterial Complete Works. This book is a modern reprint of much earlier collection of uncorrected texts of his novels. The type is so tiny that the book is hard on the eyes, plus the texts of the novels are in most cases very corrupt.

If you want to read these books, the only reason you should get this edition is that you are very young, new to Orwell, have really good eyesight, and are too broke to afford buying each novel in the current individual Penguin editions, which are corrected texts. Otherwise, get them all individually; this book is both unreliable and almost unreadable.

The greatest writer?, 05 Feb 2008
Orwell has always been my favorite writer. Animal Farm and 1984 are his best known works but my own personal favorite is Coming Up For Air. By the way you will notice if you read that story carfeully that it has no semi-colons! Now isn't that comment worth a 'helpful' on your voting buttons?!! Anyway this is an excellent collection and well worth the money. An excellent way to savour Orwell.

Real Ability, 10 Jan 2008
It is always a pleasure when you discover someone who can actually write.

Many authors today try to write, but sadly they do not flow, they have no ease, they are not natural.
Many writers can of course write very well, but really good writers are not that common.
P.G.Wodehouse would be another really good example.

You can live in Orwells writing. It may not be all nice and pretty, but it is for real.
I get laughed at when I say this, but here goes, George Orwell may turn out to be the most prophetic author that ever lived.

One other thing..A true sign of greatness, may be the ability to re-read someones books, after a short gap, and still be entranced by them.
You can do that here.

Genius George, 29 Dec 2007
Prior to picking up this book i had only read snipets of george orwels work. This collection is a must read!!! Animal farm is pure genius and one of the few novels it is difficult to put down. while 1984 is thought provoking and simultaneously captures the imagination and shows what good writing is all about. This is the collection that all others aspire to be. A MUST BUY!!!

One of the finest writers of the Twentieth Century, 05 Jul 2007
George Orwell and Graham Greene are, for me, the two finest British writers of the twentieth century. Here Orwell's five novels are collected, and are well worth reading (get his non-fiction too). 1984 and Animal Farm are possibly the two finest pieces of fiction of the last century. The other novels are a mixed bag but still worth a look. BURMESE DAYS is a superb exposition of the reality of colonial rule in the early 1930s. A small group of English ex-pats forced together in a remote station in Burma. Gin soaked and bitter they lead miserable lonely lives. Local political machinations and the arrival of a young woman from England combine to shatter the fragile framework that holds them together. THE CLERGYMAN'S DAUGHTER is altogether a different piece and not quite sure what it is. It starts in the style of a D H Lawrence novel - the spinsterish daughter of the vicar; then it takes a comic turn as she loses her memory and ends up picking hops; then we have a Dickensian description of a grim private girls school; finally we return where we started. The tone is downbeat and the fact that nothing really happens is disappointing, though it is fun and interesting in parts. COMING UP FOR AIR is a nostalgic piece - an enjoyable description of life at the turn of the twentieth century, and the pointlessness of living in the past. KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING I find tedious. It is a long rant against the "money god" featuring a dull and self-obsessed young man. I am not sure what the purpose of it is, except to warn us against becoming too self-absorbed that we ignore reality.

Nothing Has Changed, 05 Jun 2008
Born and bred in Wigan.I had read 1984 and Animal Farm but had put off reading TRTWP until I was 50.
Orwell writes of the hopelessness of the masses and concludes that they accept their lot because of the "palliatives" of modern technology i.e.cheap clothing (dream of being Greta Garbo or Clark Gable) , alcohol,the movies, radio, the football pools etc.
The government massage and manipulate statistics to show unemployment levels and poverty to be a fraction as bad as they really are.
The middle-class believed that the poor should be instructed to spend their means tested allowance wisely eating tasteless but healthy food,wholemeal bread,oranges,raw carrots etc and to shun alcohol and tobacco etc.
Tell me as anything really changed or have we come full circle under New Labour.

Notes on 'The Road to Wigan Pier'., 01 Apr 2006
'The Road to Wigan Pier' is split into two parts. Part one is George Orwell's recording of his experiences in the North of England, meeting miner's families and reporting at first hand what he saw and heard. Orwell records with sincerity the working class condition. There is no blame or embellishment of what Orwell saw. Orwell's descriptions of the people in the boarding houses he was staying in, are wonderful. You really get a sense of the filth and depravation, and yet the people make you feel at home, to the point of marking your bread and butter with "a black thumb-print on it". I appreciate Orwell's candid writing. The stark reality of poverty is brought to life by Orwell, from his description of the conditions of working in the mines, to the weekly shopping bill and food consumption.
Part two is Orwell's polemic on what he saw and experienced. I found this part of the book filled with passion, anger and justifications. Orwell always makes sure to explain the reasoning behind his arguements and even apologises for his background. Part two consists of political theories, language, class distinction and the personal journey Orwell experienced whilst researching part one.
In my opinion, 'The Road to Wigan Pier' is a wonderful snapshot of a time and a place. It still has a place in literature today as a reminder to us all that there are still destitute people in the world and that things haven't changed as much as we hoped.

The Picture Speaks for Itself, 14 Nov 2002
This book is divided into two sections. The first is a devastating account of the lives of coal miners in the north of England. While this account may be exaggerated it is completely conceivable that life in this time under such social and political conditions might have been like this. He goes to considerable length to explore the personal reactions and methods of endurance of the people he met. Orwell's dedication to exploring what life was really like for the coal miners was made at considerable personal discomfort and were as heroic as Jonathan Kozol's efforts in our present time.

The second half of the book is a long argument by Orwell of the negative aspects of socialism. He does this in order to provoke a serious discussion over how socialism can be implemented in our society. He understood well, as demonstrated in 1984, that many political parties use propaganda as a means of convincing the public that theirs is the right way. But, by taking the opposing view and criticising his own beliefs, he is able to bring the issues of the party into an open forum to consider implementations of change rather than party rhetoric. He does this most sincerely and in no way tries to hide the faults of the socialist political system of thought. In doing so he proves himself to be quite dignified in his system of beliefs. The juxtaposition of these two sections provides a striking idea of the immediate need for political reformation. He did not need to defend socialism because the need for a political change that could effect the lives of the lower class he investigated was obvious. This showed that Orwell's political ideas didn't exist on some ideological utopian plain, but were firmly rooted in the immense danger a political system could inflict upon a large population. It would be wise to remember this in reading the more popular 1984 and Animal Farm as well.

This book is compelling not just for people interested in politics, but also for anyone interested in history and the human condition. It is something you will be able to learn much from and provide you with inspiration.

unflinching look at social conditions and Orwells politics, 02 Jul 2002
George Orwell, commissioned by the Left Book Club, tours the recession hit mining areas of Lancashire and Yorkshire in 1936 and his report on the harsh social conditions he found there (the first part of this book) pulls no punches. No-one before or since has done reporterage like George Orwell and the vividness and directness of his prose with its underlying blazing committment to social justice strikes the reader, even at this remove of time. Orwell's descriptions, couched in his superb prose, will remain in your mind for ever and should be re-read by everyone as a reminder of just how harsh life was for many people, within living memory. Orwell is particularly good about the desperation, the struggle with respectability and the terrible psychological and social toll of unemployment and poverty.

The second part of the book charts Orwell's personal odyssey from public schoolboy and officer of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma to crusading Left-wing author and journalist. Along the way Orwell expounds his personal strategy for Socialism. Although dated, his insights are fascinating, describing as they do the origins of the class struggle ideas that infested and inflamed British politics right up to the 1990s. Orwell is bitingly caustic about many of his fellow Socialists, castigating the obsession with mechanical progress, the worship of Russia and the crank tendencies (still evident in the British Labour Party) - "...the dreary tribe of high-minded women...and the bearded fruit-juice drinkers that flock to the idea of 'progress' like bluebottles do to a dead cat". With incredible prescience Orwell identifies the factors that would eventually kill the traditional "Old" Labour Party - firstly - the dichotomy between the Labour voter in the street (who, by and large, wanted/wants a better standard of living from better working and living conditions), and the "orthodox" hierarchy and activists of the Labour Party (who, by and large, at least in theory wanted a complete change in society), secondly - the accretion on to socialist politics of a huge amount of crank ideas (Orwell's acerbic and caustic put-downs of crank thought forms some of the book's most memorable, and funniest, passages).

What Orwell cannot have forseen was that the second war, the moderate 1945 Labour government, the end of the British Empire, Baroness Thatcher and the rise of a knowledge, finance and service based economy would change the face of England permanently. But however dated the social and political conditions under which he wrote, George Orwell is always worth reading, always hard-hitting, always vivid and detailed, always committed and honest, often hilariously funny.

Read this book, read everything that George Orwell wrote.

Its Grim up North!, 13 Apr 2002
Quite how Orwell can manage to make the price of groceries in pre-war England compulsive reading is a little puzzling, but this essay compiled on a protracted journey around this country's northern industrial towns is once again a shining example of Orwell's uncomplicated and conversational style. Though the reportage is characteristically charged with Orwell's socialist dogma, it should have appeal far beyond the socialist reader for its vivid renderings of these towns and their inhabitants. The passages describing the work and living conditions of these people are particularly enlightening and Orwell really colours the north of the past for those who - like Orwell at the time - rarely stray beyond the Watford Gap. The essay, while only really a record of the past, still manages somehow to be an eye-opener, and is tinted with that irresistible darkness, present in so much of Orwell's pre-war work of a world and a society teetering on the brink of a disastrous but necessary changing of the order.

Perhaps predictably, Orwell never arrives at the symbol of escape from the difficult lives of his characters, Wigan Pier.

Ever Relevant, 18 Dec 2008
1984 is one of those brilliant books that forces you to continually reassess your life and everything in it. This is the second time I have read it and I am noticing different things this time round. It seems to gain relevance at a startling speed, giving the narrative a sort of spooky prophetic feel.

Everyone should read 1984 at least one in their life. Its vital literature for anyone who has any interest at all in the human condition or current affairs...

Yes its a bit depressing but at the same time it offers hope. mad I know but true. read it and you'll understand what I mean!

A dystopian classic, 12 Dec 2008
When Orwell wrote 1984, he was near the end of his life, suffering from tuberculosis and, for most of the time, living in isolation on the remote Scottish island of Jura. What perfect preparation for him to create one of the bleakest and most accurate accounts of the abuse of power by modern totalitarian states. The simple, direct prose style hits you square in the face and leaves you reeling. The world in 1984 is divided into three totalitarian power blocks, which are constantly in conflict. The novel's main character, Winston Smith, lives in one these powers, Oceania. He is an intellectual and a Party member who works in the Ministry of Truth. His job is to re-write political history to accord with the current approved views of the Party on all aspects of society. Winston has become disillusioned with the Party and commits a terrible crime by falling in love with a woman called Julia. This relationship is forbidden, because it serves no utilitarian purpose. In 1984, personal life has been abolished and subjugated to the will of the Party. Winston - under torture - is forced to denounce Julia and reaffirm his love for the Party, as represented by the personality cult of Big Brother.

Orwell hits so many targets with such unerring accuracy that it would be tedious to list them...but here goes: communism and fascism sharing the same totalitarian ambitions; censorship and manipulation of the media to serve political ends; the use of personality cults to induce party loyalty; the creation of external enemies to distract from the shortcomings of the regime; romantic love as an act of defiance in the face of an inhuman society; the use of brainwashing and torture to bring `deviationists' back into line; the loss of the right to a private life and personal privacy; ubiquitous and routine surveillance of ordinary citizens, ostensibly to protect their security. OK, I'll stop now, but you get the picture: this is a hugely ambitious book about profound issues that are still relevant for every person alive today. It is also that rare jewel among ambitious books in that it succeeds in saying something meaningful and convincing about every one of its themes.

This book will still be a best-seller when our grandchildren become politically active. It falls firmly into the category of `books that everyone should read at least once'.

Review by Tony Judge, author of Sirocco Express (ISBN: 978-1409204466 )


Amazing!, 10 Dec 2008
This book is a fantastic classic, and Orwell's writing style is so good, I couldn't put it down.
It's amazing, and I think everyone should read it once in their lifetime.

Modern literature at it's finest! (Minor spoilers), 30 Oct 2008
Let's get the gracious comments out of the way... This is, without a doubt, the most ideologically-brilliant book I've ever read; so much so it's hard to believe this was written over 60 years ago. I just finished reading it on the bus this morning and, much to the oddity my friends, a cheeky grin was here all morning.

It has to be said though that the grin was built more on admiration for Orwells writing standards than the sad final sentence of the novel, for beneath the futuristic subject matter you may believe this entails lies a world of deception, propaganda, and violence - the harsh realities of a world that ceases to re-write history.

I'm sure from the other reviewers you've got the jist of the plot. In a 3rd person narrative, we see life around the protagonist Winston; a worker for the Ministry of Truth in the year 1984. Though Winston is a 'Party-Hater' (he secretly rebels against the way society is run) his job is to endlessly take documents from the past and present, and to simply re-write them to suit the needs of the party. And those needs can change at any time; whether it be who fought who in a battle, or why the sky is blue.

The roots of this diabolical society lead to 'Big Brother', who throughout the novel, remains a mysterious leader; a "face" on posters and TV, as its to anyone's guess whether he is indeed real or manifested by The Party (the name of the centralised government). All The Party want is Political power - and with millions of people in 'love' with Big Brother, they have total control on what they hear, see, and should do.

The novel is split into 3 main chapters; Part I, Part II and Part III, each separating important moments in the story, while sub-chapters allow you to bookmark the book easily. Orwell's division of these Parts is particularly clever; Part 1 can be seen as a more progressive, atmosphere builder, while Part 2 engages excitement and romance, leaving the thrilling Part 3 as a brutal and, sometimes, cringing section that you never want to end.

What I love about the novel is that while Orwell has superbly boxed most questions, the story also creates questions that have no answer. Is Big Brother made up? Was Julia a member of The Party? Was Mr Charringtons shop a means of exposing party-haters? Without wanting to expose the spoilers the story, their are so many themes which can be analysed; the sign of a clever writer, particularly as Orwell was ill for most parts of the writing.

The accuracy to which this book is written is also astounding; the fact such modern ideals are highlighted is incredible. Orwell uses one of his Party character's (O'Brien) near the end of the novel to highlight the collapse of the Nazi party, and the beginning of the Cold War, though of course in the story, Winston is forced to believe that the Big Brother society is perfect in every way; surpassing any previous controversial party in the past, which of course O'Brien highlights. As far as I could read, their were only two sections I scratched my head at... Firstly, Winston in Part 2 with Julia explains how a particular field they were laying near had an Atomic Bomb dropped on it "30 years ago". Of course, we all know that it would take over 50 years just for it decontaminate, with the ozone not clearing for over 100 years... The second was quite simple; O'Brien explains how The Party will go as far as to destroy the humans orgasm in an attempt to rid of feeling/love for others. Yet in the same chapter, he explains that babies will be taken from their mothers at birth... How would the babies be conceived then? I'm sure theirs some explanations.

Though the novel sets out to highlight the strong hold of the party, it is the affect it has on poor Winston, who is described as "the last 'real' man alive". He is broken down from an sane, healthy man who remembered his past and despised the party, to a baby like state as he is forced to believe in the ideals of The Party through brutal means. I believe "the mirror" scene to be turning point in the book; such emotional narrative that breaks Winston into little pieces.

It would be easy to ramble on further, but I'd only spoil the story. Cut long story short this is one of the best novels I've ever read - Orwells language is so straight to the point, while his ideology, particularly his chapter on Goldsteins vision of the party, is stunning. If the Labour Party of now want to stay in power, then feed this to the Secondary Schools - not books that are 100 years out of date!

Universally relevant, 12 Sep 2008
It is tempting with the `wisdom' of the twentieth century to dismiss as irrelevant a book guilty of false prophecy. However the achievement of George Orwell's masterpiece is not to be found in the accuracies of his predictions, but in its warning about the danger of power unchecked and the lengths to which those in power will go in order to remain there.

We are presented with a vision of the future (now our past) in which the world is divided amongst the totalitarian superpowers of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Our story is set in a London controlled by `The Party' - who presence is felt by the ubiquitous Big Brother and its enforcement arm the Thought Police; told through the figure of Winston Smith: a lonely and silently dissident low-level member of the regime, who embarks on a prohibited sexual affair with a fellow party member, plots to work against `The Party' for an underground revolutionary movement called `The Brotherhood', only to discover he has been set up by Thought Police and is subsequently subjected to imprisonment, torture and eventually the destruction of his individuality.

The structure of the plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four is basically a series of pieced together clichés and most of the characters descend into caricature, but it is never intended as a character study or a work of great literary merit or storytelling; the merit of the work is found in Orwell's handling of the mechanics of totalitarian control. At no point does Orwell try to assess the character of such a state and how it develops, but his genius is found in the way he handles methods of political control and taking these to a fantastical extreme in order to present the terror of uninhibited state control. In fact the real ingenuity of Nineteen Eighty-Four lies in the political weapons Orwell attributes to `The Party': newspeak, Big Brother, thoughtcrime, doublethink and many others.

Moreover, Orwell is particularly adept at exposing the political lie and how governments use this to enslave its citizens. The concept of the mutability of the past, whereby the past is continually falsified through physical record and the practice of doublethink (which involves the power to hold in one's mind simultaneously two contradictory beliefs, and accepting both of them) in order to demonstrate the omnipotence of Big Brother and `the Party', executed with horrifying perfection by the regime is the highlight of Orwell's achievement. Here Orwell demonstrates to us the fragility of objective knowledge and the process by which governments could (and in some cases do) distort reality. The servitude the citizens of Oceania find themselves in is not physical in its nature (since very few things are physically prohibited), but a mental imprisonment (thought crime being the only culpable act, as one of Smith's fellow prisoners bluntly puts it in Part 3). Through the process of falsifying what is considered objective fact in conjunction with doublethink, the means of intellectual liberty are denied since the concepts we take as given and infallible such as truth, reason and justification can no longer be relied upon. During Winston's interrogation, O'Brien (`the Party' incarnate) says to him `it is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it should be.' This appears to be the key point of Orwell's message, that freedom is attached to thought and absolute freedom is the freedom to be incorrect.

Orwell rams this point home even further in the concept of Newspeak. This is a language devised by `the Party' that reduces all speech to simple monosyllabic words or short combinations of these. Whereas in the language we use a particular concept may be covered by any number of words (e.g. the concept of good is covered in English by seemingly limitless adjectives), the aim of the creators of Newspeak is to reduce concepts to single words that contain both its affirmative and negative and therefore removing the need for antonyms for one (e.g. the word good, an affirmative, becomes an negative with the affix `un', so the opposite of `good' becomes `ungood' therefore removing the need for `bad' and its various synonyms). The mechanics of the new language are too complicated to discuss at length here (and the novel has as an appendix a short essay on Newspeak) but the idea Orwell entertains in this concept is that if thought is in some sense dependent on language (certainly the two coexist, although the relationship is unlikely to be one of dependence), then by reducing the capacity of language then the capacity of thought, or free thought, itself is curtailed. If language is simplified according to ideology and the means to express certain concepts such as freedom, justice, truth and love are removed, then, Orwell reasons, these concepts disappear altogether. Newspeak, then, is the ultimate weapon against human intellectualism and the liberty of the individual.

Orwell's message is a dramatic one, a warning against all kinds of power: it provides us with reasons to be suspicious of any regime and politician that seeks power and disguises its real aspirations behind propaganda and claims to be serving the greater good. As O'Brien tells us `The Party' seeks power not as a means, but as an end: `One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship...The object of power is power.' The danger and future as Orwell saw it as summed up by O'Brien is: `If you want to imagine a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever.'

It is this resonant and rallying cry in favour of maximal personal liberty and the curbing of political power, in spite of it lacking the subtlety of Kafka's The Trial or the penetrating wit of Huxley's Brave New World, which will make Nineteen Eighty-Four a book of universal appeal and significance for many generations still to come.


The collected fiction of a great writer - horrible edition, though, 20 Aug 2008
I have huge admiration for Orwell's work as a writer and I am a strong admirer of his fiction, although apart from his last two novels I don't think it was the field he was best at. I urge any reader interested in his stuff to seek out his novels and read them. However, this is definitely not the best edition to read them in. Orwell's work was only subjected to proper editorial scrutiny in the late 1980s, with the release of Peter Davison's magisterial Complete Works. This book is a modern reprint of much earlier collection of uncorrected texts of his novels. The type is so tiny that the book is hard on the eyes, plus the texts of the novels are in most cases very corrupt.

If you want to read these books, the only reason you should get this edition is that you are very young, new to Orwell, have really good eyesight, and are too broke to afford buying each novel in the current individual Penguin editions, which are corrected texts. Otherwise, get them all individually; this book is both unreliable and almost unreadable.

The greatest writer?, 05 Feb 2008
Orwell has always been my favorite writer. Animal Farm and 1984 are his best known works but my own personal favorite is Coming Up For Air. By the way you will notice if you read that story carfeully that it has no semi-colons! Now isn't that comment worth a 'helpful' on your voting buttons?!! Anyway this is an excellent collection and well worth the money. An excellent way to savour Orwell.

Real Ability, 10 Jan 2008
It is always a pleasure when you discover someone who can actually write.

Many authors today try to write, but sadly they do not flow, they have no ease, they are not natural.
Many writers can of course write very well, but really good writers are not that common.
P.G.Wodehouse would be another really good example.

You can live in Orwells writing. It may not be all nice and pretty, but it is for real.
I get laughed at when I say this, but here goes, George Orwell may turn out to be the most prophetic author that ever lived.

One other thing..A true sign of greatness, may be the ability to re-read someones books, after a short gap, and still be entranced by them.
You can do that here.

Genius George, 29 Dec 2007
Prior to picking up this book i had only read snipets of george orwels work. This collection is a must read!!! Animal farm is pure genius and one of the few novels it is difficult to put down. while 1984 is thought provoking and simultaneously captures the imagination and shows what good writing is all about. This is the collection that all others aspire to be. A MUST BUY!!!

One of the finest writers of the Twentieth Century, 05 Jul 2007
George Orwell and Graham Greene are, for me, the two finest British writers of the twentieth century. Here Orwell's five novels are collected, and are well worth reading (get his non-fiction too). 1984 and Animal Farm are possibly the two finest pieces of fiction of the last century. The other novels are a mixed bag but still worth a look. BURMESE DAYS is a superb exposition of the reality of colonial rule in the early 1930s. A small group of English ex-pats forced together in a remote station in Burma. Gin soaked and bitter they lead miserable lonely lives. Local political machinations and the arrival of a young woman from England combine to shatter the fragile framework that holds them together. THE CLERGYMAN'S DAUGHTER is altogether a different piece and not quite sure what it is. It starts in the style of a D H Lawrence novel - the spinsterish daughter of the vicar; then it takes a comic turn as she loses her memory and ends up picking hops; then we have a Dickensian description of a grim private girls school; finally we return where we started. The tone is downbeat and the fact that nothing really happens is disappointing, though it is fun and interesting in parts. COMING UP FOR AIR is a nostalgic piece - an enjoyable description of life at the turn of the twentieth century, and the pointlessness of living in the past. KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING I find tedious. It is a long rant against the "money god" featuring a dull and self-obsessed young man. I am not sure what the purpose of it is, except to warn us against becoming too self-absorbed that we ignore reality.

Nothing Has Changed, 05 Jun 2008
Born and bred in Wigan.I had read 1984 and Animal Farm but had put off reading TRTWP until I was 50.
Orwell writes of the hopelessness of the masses and concludes that they accept their lot because of the "palliatives" of modern technology i.e.cheap clothing (dream of being Greta Garbo or Clark Gable) , alcohol,the movies, radio, the football pools etc.
The government massage and manipulate statistics to show unemployment levels and poverty to be a fraction as bad as they really are.
The middle-class believed that the poor should be instructed to spend their means tested allowance wisely eating tasteless but healthy food,wholemeal bread,oranges,raw carrots etc and to shun alcohol and tobacco etc.
Tell me as anything really changed or have we come full circle under New Labour.

Notes on 'The Road to Wigan Pier'., 01 Apr 2006
'The Road to Wigan Pier' is split into two parts. Part one is George Orwell's recording of his experiences in the North of England, meeting miner's families and reporting at first hand what he saw and heard. Orwell records with sincerity the working class condition. There is no blame or embellishment of what Orwell saw. Orwell's descriptions of the people in the boarding houses he was staying in, are wonderful. You really get a sense of the filth and depravation, and yet the people make you feel at home, to the point of marking your bread and butter with "a black thumb-print on it". I appreciate Orwell's candid writing. The stark reality of poverty is brought to life by Orwell, from his description of the conditions of working in the mines, to the weekly shopping bill and food consumption.
Part two is Orwell's polemic on what he saw and experienced. I found this part of the book filled with passion, anger and justifications. Orwell always makes sure to explain the reasoning behind his arguements and even apologises for his background. Part two consists of political theories, language, class distinction and the personal journey Orwell experienced whilst researching part one.
In my opinion, 'The Road to Wigan Pier' is a wonderful snapshot of a time and a place. It still has a place in literature today as a reminder to us all that there are still destitute people in the world and that things haven't changed as much as we hoped.

The Picture Speaks for Itself, 14 Nov 2002
This book is divided into two sections. The first is a devastating account of the lives of coal miners in the north of England. While this account may be exaggerated it is completely conceivable that life in this time under such social and political conditions might have been like this. He goes to considerable length to explore the personal reactions and methods of endurance of the people he met. Orwell's dedication to exploring what life was really like for the coal miners was made at considerable personal discomfort and were as heroic as Jonathan Kozol's efforts in our present time.

The second half of the book is a long argument by Orwell of the negative aspects of socialism. He does this in order to provoke a serious discussion over how socialism can be implemented in our society. He understood well, as demonstrated in 1984, that many political parties use propaganda as a means of convincing the public that theirs is the right way. But, by taking the opposing view and criticising his own beliefs, he is able to bring the issues of the party into an open forum to consider implementations of change rather than party rhetoric. He does this most sincerely and in no way tries to hide the faults of the socialist political system of thought. In doing so he proves himself to be quite dignified in his system of beliefs. The juxtaposition of these two sections provides a striking idea of the immediate need for political reformation. He did not need to defend socialism because the need for a political change that could effect the lives of the lower class he investigated was obvious. This showed that Orwell's political ideas didn't exist on some ideological utopian plain, but were firmly rooted in the immense danger a political system could inflict upon a large population. It would be wise to remember this in reading the more popular 1984 and Animal Farm as well.

This book is compelling not just for people interested in politics, but also for anyone interested in history and the human condition. It is something you will be able to learn much from and provide you with inspiration.

unflinching look at social conditions and Orwells politics, 02 Jul 2002
George Orwell, commissioned by the Left Book Club, tours the recession hit mining areas of Lancashire and Yorkshire in 1936 and his report on the harsh social conditions he found there (the first part of this book) pulls no punches. No-one before or since has done reporterage like George Orwell and the vividness and directness of his prose with its underlying blazing committment to social justice strikes the reader, even at this remove of time. Orwell's descriptions, couched in his superb prose, will remain in your mind for ever and should be re-read by everyone as a reminder of just how harsh life was for many people, within living memory. Orwell is particularly good about the desperation, the struggle with respectability and the terrible psychological and social toll of unemployment and poverty.

The second part of the book charts Orwell's personal odyssey from public schoolboy and officer of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma to crusading Left-wing author and journalist. Along the way Orwell expounds his personal strategy for Socialism. Although dated, his insights are fascinating, describing as they do the origins of the class struggle ideas that infested and inflamed British politics right up to the 1990s. Orwell is bitingly caustic about many of his fellow Socialists, castigating the obsession with mechanical progress, the worship of Russia and the crank tendencies (still evident in the British Labour Party) - "...the dreary tribe of high-minded women...and the bearded fruit-juice drinkers that flock to the idea of 'progress' like bluebottles do to a dead cat". With incredible prescience Orwell identifies the factors that would eventually kill the traditional "Old" Labour Party - firstly - the dichotomy between the Labour voter in the street (who, by and large, wanted/wants a better standard of living from better working and living conditions), and the "orthodox" hierarchy and activists of the Labour Party (who, by and large, at least in theory wanted a complete change in society), secondly - the accretion on to socialist politics of a huge amount of crank ideas (Orwell's acerbic and caustic put-downs of crank thought forms some of the book's most memorable, and funniest, passages).

What Orwell cannot have forseen was that the second war, the moderate 1945 Labour government, the end of the British Empire, Baroness Thatcher and the rise of a knowledge, finance and service based economy would change the face of England permanently. But however dated the social and political conditions under which he wrote, George Orwell is always worth reading, always hard-hitting, always vivid and detailed, always committed and honest, often hilariously funny.

Read this book, read everything that George Orwell wrote.

Its Grim up North!, 13 Apr 2002
Quite how Orwell can manage to make the price of groceries in pre-war England compulsive reading is a little puzzling, but this essay compiled on a protracted journey around this country's northern industrial towns is once again a shining example of Orwell's uncomplicated and conversational style. Though the reportage is characteristically charged with Orwell's socialist dogma, it should have appeal far beyond the socialist reader for its vivid renderings of these towns and their inhabitants. The passages describing the work and living conditions of these people are particularly enlightening and Orwell really colours the north of the past for those who - like Orwell at the time - rarely stray beyond the Watford Gap. The essay, while only really a record of the past, still manages somehow to be an eye-opener, and is tinted with that irresistible darkness, present in so much of Orwell's pre-war work of a world and a society teetering on the brink of a disastrous but necessary changing of the order.

Perhaps predictably, Orwell never arrives at the symbol of escape from the difficult lives of his characters, Wigan Pier.

Still frightening, 27 Dec 2008
First published in 1948, this is still relevant, rivetting and utterly terrifying. Orwell's assessment of how power always corrupts may not be subtle but still feels very real. Despite his use of Ingsoc ("English Socialism") this isn't about party politics, and focuses instead on extremity whether right- or left-wing.

But despite the didactic and polemic purpose of the novel, Orwell never falls into the trap of other political commentators: the message doesn't replace the fiction, but is the fiction. Winston Smith, a kind of everyman, is someone we sympathise and empathise with not only because of his rebellion against the system, but because he retains a sense of humanity that has been overwhelmingly lost. Even his slightly feeble bumbling, and satisfaction in his job is spot on: there are no heroes in 1984.

My only slight quibble is that the love affair between Winston and Julia is so conveniently Mills & Boon: she declares her love and that's it, boom, they're in love... However that isn't of course what Orwell is interested in and so we just have to accept it. Given the time in which it was written there is a kind of subversive sensuality about Julia that was perhaps more shocking than it is now. But the betrayal at the end only has its true impact if we believe they really did love (or at least believe they loved).

But small quibble apart, this is a shockingly relevant book. Worth reading alongside very modern writing such as Standard Operating Procedure: A War Story and (more frivolously, but still importantly) Little Brother for a contemporary discussion of the erosion of civil liberties in the name of anti-terrorism.

Ever Relevant, 18 Dec 2008
1984 is one of those brilliant books that forces you to continually reassess your life and everything in it. This is the second time I have read it and I am noticing different things this time round. It seems to gain relevance at a startling speed, giving the narrative a sort of spooky prophetic feel.

Everyone should read 1984 at least one in their life. Its vital literature for anyone who has any interest at all in the human condition or current affairs...

Yes its a bit depressing but at the same time it offers hope. mad I know but true. read it and you'll understand what I mean!

A dystopian classic, 12 Dec 2008
When Orwell wrote 1984, he was near the end of his life, suffering from tuberculosis and, for most of the time, living in isolation on the remote Scottish island of Jura. What perfect preparation for him to create one of the bleakest and most accurate accounts of the abuse of power by modern totalitarian states. The simple, direct prose style hits you square in the face and leaves you reeling. The world in 1984 is divided into three totalitarian power blocks, which are constantly in conflict. The novel's main character, Winston Smith, lives in one these powers, Oceania. He is an intellectual and a Party member who works in the Ministry of Truth. His job is to re-write political history to accord with the current approved views of the Party on all aspects of society. Winston has become disillusioned with the Party and commits a terrible crime by falling in love with a woman called Julia. This relationship is forbidden, because it serves no utilitarian purpose. In 1984, personal life has been abolished and subjugated to the will of the Party. Winston - under torture - is forced to denounce Julia and reaffirm his love for the Party, as represented by the personality cult of Big Brother.

Orwell hits so many targets with such unerring accuracy that it would be tedious to list them...but here goes: communism and fascism sharing the same totalitarian ambitions; censorship and manipulation of the media to serve political ends; the use of personality cults to induce party loyalty; the creation of external enemies to distract from the shortcomings of the regime; romantic love as an act of defiance in the face of an inhuman society; the use of brainwashing and torture to bring `deviationists' back into line; the loss of the right to a private life and personal privacy; ubiquitous and routine surveillance of ordinary citizens, ostensibly to protect their security. OK, I'll stop now, but you get the picture: this is a hugely ambitious book about profound issues that are still relevant for every person alive today. It is also that rare jewel among ambitious books in that it succeeds in saying something meaningful and convincing about every one of its themes.

This book will still be a best-seller when our grandchildren become politically active. It falls firmly into the category of `books that everyone should read at least once'.

Review by Tony Judge, author of Sirocco Express (ISBN: 978-1409204466 )


Amazing!, 10 Dec 2008
This book is a fantastic classic, and Orwell's writing style is so good, I couldn't put it down.
It's amazing, and I think everyone should read it once in their lifetime.

Modern literature at it's finest! (Minor spoilers), 30 Oct 2008
Let's get the gracious comments out of the way... This is, without a doubt, the most ideologically-brilliant book I've ever read; so much so it's hard to believe this was written over 60 years ago. I just finished reading it on the bus this morning and, much to the oddity my friends, a cheeky grin was here all morning.

It has to be said though that the grin was built more on admiration for Orwells writing standards than the sad final sentence of the novel, for beneath the futuristic subject matter you may believe this entails lies a world of deception, propaganda, and violence - the harsh realities of a world that ceases to re-write history.

I'm sure from the other reviewers you've got the jist of the plot. In a 3rd person narrative, we see life around the protagonist Winston; a worker for the Ministry of Truth in the year 1984. Though Winston is a 'Party-Hater' (he secretly rebels against the way society is run) his job is to endlessly take documents from the past and present, and to simply re-write them to suit the needs of the party. And those needs can change at any time; whether it be who fought who in a battle, or why the sky is blue.

The roots of this diabolical society lead to 'Big Brother', who throughout the novel, remains a mysterious leader; a "face" on posters and TV, as its to anyone's guess whether he is indeed real or manifested by The Party (the name of the centralised government). All The Party want is Political power - and with millions of people in 'love' with Big Brother, they have total control on what they hear, see, and should do.

The novel is split into 3 main chapters; Part I, Part II and Part III, each separating important moments in the story, while sub-chapters allow you to bookmark the book easily. Orwell's division of these Parts is particularly clever; Part 1 can be seen as a more progressive, atmosphere builder, while Part 2 engages excitement and romance, leaving the thrilling Part 3 as a brutal and, sometimes, cringing section that you never want to end.

What I love about the novel is that while Orwell has superbly boxed most questions, the story also creates questions that have no answer. Is Big Brother made up? Was Julia a member of The Party? Was Mr Charringtons shop a means of exposing party-haters? Without wanting to expose the spoilers the story, their are so many themes which can be analysed; the sign of a clever writer, particularly as Orwell was ill for most parts of the writing.

The accuracy to which this book is written is also astounding; the fact such modern ideals are highlighted is incredible. Orwell uses one of his Party character's (O'Brien) near the end of the novel to highlight the collapse of the Nazi party, and the beginning of the Cold War, though of course in the story, Winston is forced to believe that the Big Brother society is perfect in every way; surpassing any previous controversial party in the past, which of course O'Brien highlights. As far as I could read, their were only two sections I scratched my head at... Firstly, Winston in Part 2 with Julia explains how a particular field they were laying near had an Atomic Bomb dropped on it "30 years ago". Of course, we all know that it would take over 50 years just for it decontaminate, with the ozone not clearing for over 100 years... The second was quite simple; O'Brien explains how The Party will go as far as to destroy the humans orgasm in an attempt to rid of feeling/love for others. Yet in the same chapter, he explains that babies will be taken from their mothers at birth... How would the babies be conceived then? I'm sure theirs some explanations.

Though the novel sets out to highlight the strong hold of the party, it is the affect it has on poor Winston, who is described as "the last 'real' man alive". He is broken down from an sane, healthy man who remembered his past and despised the party, to a baby like state as he is forced to believe in the ideals of The Party through brutal means. I believe "the mirror" scene to be turning point in the book; such emotional narrative that breaks Winston into little pieces.

It would be easy to ramble on further, but I'd only spoil the story. Cut long story short this is one of the best novels I've ever read - Orwells language is so straight to the point, while his ideology, particularly his chapter on Goldsteins vision of the party, is stunning. If the Labour Party of now want to stay in power, then feed this to the Secondary Schools - not books that are 100 years out of date!

Universally relevant, 12 Sep 2008
It is tempting with the `wisdom' of the twentieth century to dismiss as irrelevant a book guilty of false prophecy. However the achievement of George Orwell's masterpiece is not to be found in the accuracies of his predictions, but in its warning about the danger of power unchecked and the lengths to which those in power will go in order to remain there.

We are presented with a vision of the future (now our past) in which the world is divided amongst the totalitarian superpowers of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Our story is set in a London controlled by `The Party' - who presence is felt by the ubiquitous Big Brother and its enforcement arm the Thought Police; told through the figure of Winston Smith: a lonely and silently dissident low-level member of the regime, who embarks on a prohibited sexual affair with a fellow party member, plots to work against `The Party' for an underground revolutionary movement called `The Brotherhood', only to discover he has been set up by Thought Police and is subsequently subjected to imprisonment, torture and eventually the destruction of his individuality.

The structure of the plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four is basically a series of pieced together clichés and most of the characters descend into caricature, but it is never intended as a character study or a work of great literary merit or storytelling; the merit of the work is found in Orwell's handling of the mechanics of totalitarian control. At no point does Orwell try to assess the character of such a state and how it develops, but his genius is found in the way he handles methods of political control and taking these to a fantastical extreme in order to present the terror of uninhibited state control. In fact the real ingenuity of Nineteen Eighty-Four lies in the political weapons Orwell attributes to `The Party': newspeak, Big Brother, thoughtcrime, doublethink and many others.

Moreover, Orwell is particularly adept at exposing the political lie and how governments use this to enslave its citizens. The concept of the mutability of the past, whereby the past is continually falsified through physical record and the practice of doublethink (which involves the power to hold in one's mind simultaneously two contradictory beliefs, and accepting both of them) in order to demonstrate the omnipotence of Big Brother and `the Party', executed with horrifying perfection by the regime is the highlight of Orwell's achievement. Here Orwell demonstrates to us the fragility of objective knowledge and the process by which governments could (and in some cases do) distort reality. The servitude the citizens of Oceania find themselves in is not physical in its nature (since very few things are physically prohibited), but a mental imprisonment (thought crime being the only culpable act, as one of Smith's fellow prisoners bluntly puts it in Part 3). Through the process of falsifying what is considered objective fact in conjunction with doublethink, the means of intellectual liberty are denied since the concepts we take as given and infallible such as truth, reason and justification can no longer be relied upon. During Winston's interrogation, O'Brien (`the Party' incarnate) says to him `it is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhe