1984 is a dystopian novella by George Orwell published in 1949, which follows the life of Winston Smith, a low ranking member of ‘the Party’, who is frustrated by the omnipresent eyes of the party, and its ominous ruler Big Brother. ‘Big Brother’ controls every aspect of people’s lives. It has invented the language ‘Newspeak’ […]

WE ARE not very good at celebrations in this country. Back in 1967, no one thought of organising public celebrations for the Reform Bill of 1867, despite the fact that this (not the more famous Bill 1832, which simply rationalised a property franchise and was praised by Hegel) was the beginning of a movement towards […]

Download a PDF of the book for free here > George Orwell – 1984 (1949) (pdf document)  1984 – Book Summary The novel, published in 1949, takes place in 1984 and presents an imaginary future where a totalitarian state controls every aspect of life, even people’s thoughts. The state is called Oceania and is ruled by […]

George Orwell wrote the book *1984*, after the immense slaughter across the world in WWII and its’ aftermath of more murder and killing via the cold grip of Stalin on personal freedoms across many of the European nations which had been handed him by his Allies, the USA and England. Orwell’s book was published in […]

George Orwell died at age 47, awfully young to know so much about subterfuge– the overuse of over and over and over again messages, similar to the incessant and hellish tv commercials by Obama or Mitt that interfere with music, with game shows, with family shows, with mystery shows… We MUST see over and over […]

The reason Nineteen Eighty-Four remains so popular, and the reason society has adopted vocabulary from the book, is because it serves as more than merely a fictional novel for the reader’s entertainment. The novel served (and continues to serve) as a stark warning of what the future may hold if we don’t resist invasive technology […]

In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.” On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com. In a move that angered customers and […]

As I write, the Mail is reporting that ‘town halls are routinely using controversial Big Brother surveillance laws to spy on their own employees’; the Los Angeles Times is describing a Republican Party consultant as ‘a master of the black art of political newspeak’; The Village Voice is citing ‘a ripe example of doublethink’; and […]

Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police….A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. Wherever he may be, asleep or awake, working or resting, in his bath or in bed, he can […]

1984 is Orwell’s most famous book. The heart of the debates on Orwell from both right and left revolve around this work. Whereas the right has grasped hold of it as a convenient tool to hammer the left about socialism, some on the left have held it up as a piece of Trotskyist, anti-Stalinist fiction. […]