There are certain books that, as an English major and an avid reader, are embarrassing to admit that I haven't read. These include classics like Dracula, Othello, The Handmaid's Tale, and Great Expectations. But perhaps the most egregious omission for the longest time was 1984 by George Orwell. Everyone and their cousin seems to have read it in high school, but I didn't. It was never assigned in any of my classes, and based on what I did know, I had little to no interest in picking it up myself, despite my enjoyment of classic literature.
That changed, though, this past August. My dad finished 1984, and he asked me if I'd ever read it. When I said I hadn't, he said that I should so that we could talk about it. So, I did.
Spoilers are full steam ahead, so beware.
It's hard to know what to say about this book... It's not like I went into it expecting a cheery, feel-good story with glorious characters and a magical ending. I knew full well that I was getting into a deep, dark dystopia with characters simply trying to survive, and I was reasonably confident that, if the ending were a "good" one, it would be very ambiguous, but it was more likely going to be a hopeless ending.
And yet, even knowing and accepting all of that...I was still taken aback.
There is something just unrelenting about the suffocation this book's society enforces. Winston never catches a break, and neither do you as the reader. There's just never any moment of respite, even when Winston feels that there is a moment of respite, because there's a constant fear of what will happen next. Every time he and Julia got together, I was just waiting for this to be the time they got caught.
Obviously, that's the point. Orwell didn't set out to write a soaring love story that burns even in the midst of oppression; from the beginning, he establishes that there's no way to win. And as much as Winston and Julia try to fight against it, they're doomed from the beginning. (Also, a note on their romance: not sure how I feel about it. It didn't feel particularly solid for either individual, but the emotional impact of the ending kind of relies on you being really invested in their love for each other. But, again, I guess that's probably part of the point—they don't really know what true love is in this world.)
I will admit that I did get lulled into a false sense of security. They went seemingly undetected for so long that I started to think, "Maybe they actually do win in the end." And then that was pretty much shattered instantly.
Part Three of the book is very effective—and it was awful to read. Again, that's the point. I know it is. But it was rough to get through it. Torture is something I always feel really icky reading about, so...yeah. Part Three was not a good time. And when Winston finally breaks and tells them to do the rats to Julia instead of to him... I've never felt such a gut-punch from a book before. My jaw dropped, and I just stared at it for a moment. Heck, I felt betrayed.
The ending was somehow even more hopeless than I'd thought. I really would have rather Winston died than become what he became—just another voice in the air, another mind broken, another person under control. Like I keep saying, I know that that's the point; you are not supposed to feel good things while reading this book. I just feel like I have to keep qualifying my feelings because, almost six months later, I still can't think about this book without desperately wishing it had ended almost any other way.
So...how to rate this one? It's hard because, to lay out all the cards, I didn't enjoy myself. If we're looking at this solely on how much I liked the book, this is probably a two out of five. But that being said, I acknowledge that a lot of the reason I didn't like the book is because hopeless stories do not jive with me. They have merit, and they often say important things, and they are certainly not inherently bad stories—but I just don't like them. I don't like finishing a book and feeling worse than I already do about the state of the world. That goes against one of my biggest reasons for loving books in the first place.
So, I have to look at this, then, from a more objective perspective—insomuch as one can be objective about ratings, right? I think 1984 is very well-written; it is so easy to see this world and to feel the plights of the characters: the push and pull Winston has between wanting to fight and wanting to just keep living. The very lengthy manifesto partway through detracts from that great writing, I think; it effectively halts the entire story just to rehash ideas that have already been explored and then introduce a couple new ones that don't really go anywhere. Which, of course, makes sense, because I would guess that that manifesto was a major building block for Orwell writing this book in the first place; but it doesn't change the fact that I think it could have been incorporated in a more natural way than "Winston reads this whole thing out loud to a half-asleep Julia while they're both lying naked in bed."
Overall, I have settled on a 3.5 for this book. It gets credit for being effective and for commenting on themes and ideas that are somehow even more timely today than they were in the 1940s; yet, that doesn't change the fact that I just didn't like reading it, so it gets docked a half point for that (I would probably give this a four based purely on merit). There's nothing really wrong with the book, besides the manifesto; it's just not my thing, and really, that's the only major mark against it. (Julia's character is also a little bit so-so in a lot of ways, but I kind of don't care enough to get into that.)
There are other dystopias I find more compelling, Fahrenheit 451 probably being my favorite. I'll gladly recommend 1984, though, and I am very happy that I can now say I've finished it. It definitely was not as difficult to get through as I was expecting; it only took me two days to read the whole thing. Not a bad book by any means; just not the type of book that Odessa Taylor prefers to spend her time reading.
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