How to enjoy a clockwork orange

Sometimes I shy away from BIG books with BIG statements. Think dystopian classics like 1984, Brave New World and The Handmaiden's Tale.  How can I enjoy a book that isn't meant for pure entertainment?  

I've found dystopian novels daunting in the past because they aren't meant for pure entertainment like so many books.  I've had to learn to slow down my consumption of entertainment in order to unlock pleasure in expanding my perspective.  

I read A Clockwork Orange.  I would like to make one thing clear before I continue: It is written amazingly.  I did enjoy it immensely as a piece of great writing aside from its content.  

And then when you add the story and themes...  Well.  Even as an anti-hero, main character Alex was still someone I could empathise with.  Through his journey I experienced a journey of learning too.

Expanded consciousness

I'm unsure if this reading experience changed my mind or if what it prompted in me was rather the ability to hold onto several different ideas without having to settle for one "true" one.  My understanding of notions like free will and freedom was certainly challenged.  Through Alex I gained insight into a perspective that resonated with me.

What then remained was for me to engage in reflection, link and connect these ideas with things around me - things I saw on tv and read in other books - and thus employ this expanded consciousness in my life.  

Damaging self-doubt

When I started reading A Clockwork Orange, I worried that my "enjoyment" would be damaged by the pressure of having to gain something from the reading.  If it's provoked so much debate over the decades, there's surely some deep stuff in there I need to understand, I reasoned.  I was daunted by the thought that I wouldn't be able to glean anything from it, and therefore be less of a reader.  

As it turned out, learning was the part I enjoyed THE MOST 

I misplaced my fears as I fell into step with the great writing.  Because I was immersed in the reading of a story, the BIG ideas that I was so daunted by came naturally to me.  This taste of learning was invigorating.

When I finished reading, I felt a deep sense of achievement.  There is something fantastic about reading a book that teaches new ideas, as if it was more than a book.  My experience was like walking out of an optometrist with new glasses - what I saw was the same old, but my perception was clearer, more informed, more vibrant.  

This thrill is something I am becoming addicted to.


Reading A Clockwork Orange was an exercise in enjoying the process of learning.  The expanded consciousness I gained within its pages has made me excited to seek new ideas and perspectives.  

George Orwell the Invincible Man

I don't know why George Orwell was let alive after he wrote 1984.  I don't know why I haven't been arrested yet for reading it!  It is chucking dung in the faces of so many things, and without even that much class to make it inoffensive.  The words, the lines, the overall picture is so intense and poignant, so in-your-face, so incredible.  My heart rate goes crazy every now and again, and then all of a sudden, in the final chapter of Part 2, I realise that something awful and terrifying is happening, and I desperately don't want to be sitting alone in bed in semi darkness reading it anymore. 

You know, it's funny how fiction works, isn't it?  Because in the Grand Scheme of Things, many works of fiction spend their lifetimes hurling dung at people, nations etcetera...  and don't get in trouble.  While if somebody writes it down prosaically, plain as day, with no pretence other than sticking it to people, they have it in for them.  It's incredible that the World tolerates fiction saying just the same thing as the all-out fanatics.  In 1949 when 1984 was written, it was all happening.  Everyone understood what he was pointing out, but as he never actually said who it was doing what, he could not be accused - to accuse him of flinging dung in their faces, they would have to admit that his portrayal of them was accurate.  What he did was a very clever thing, presenting it in such a way that he couldn't get in trouble.  He made you understand without putting the words into your mouth.  George Orwell is the Invincible Man, who stood in the firing line and was never wounded.

Good luck, my dears!  It's got more plot twists to squeeze out of its entrails yet! 

Watch as I Get Driven Nuts

How are you?  My world at the moment is mostly nice, too, but there is just one aspect of it that is enjoying driving me nuts.  And what's worse, I've got a terrible conscience over it!  It is Chapter 9 of 1984.  In my copy it is 41 pages long, and it is Winston reading The Book.  I do not feel like reading it.  I fail at skim-reading.  So I'm skip-reading.  And I feel guilty.  Anyway, out of the gloomy depths of Chapter 9, I have succeeded to unearth a paragraph of relative sanity - a small snatch of writing that is not Winston reading but rather Winston thinking!  And I like very much what it is that he thinks, because there really is a lot of truth in it.  

The book fascinated him, or more exactly, it reassured him.  In a sense, it told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the attraction.  It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order.  It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden.  The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already. 

Part 2, Chapter 9, 1984 (published 1949).

Well, we near the end of Part 2.  Are you in for Part 3?  I'm actually very much looking forward to finishing the book and starting afresh on something else.  I think I'll be freer about reading next time.  I seriously feel that this reading plan is restrictive, and is even succeeding in stressing me out!  So next time, read along if you want, but I'll putting no boundaries on anything.  I'm going to be boundless.  I'm thinking of things that I can do to shake it all up a bit, and am open to suggestions for things that you would like to have me do - Mum suggested a weekly or fortnightly random book review...  Anyhow, it would be good to break out of convention and enjoy the process a bit more, like when we were reading My Life in France.  I enjoyed that so much, and all I can try is to make it as fun as before.  In the meantime, however, the list of 100 Books to Read Before You Die is sick of the silent treatment it's been receiving.  Would somebody like to humour it?

It Never Rains but it Pours

It was a vast, luminous dream in which his whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a landscape on a summer evening before rain. 

Part 2, Chapter 8, 1984, (published 1949).

I love the sound of this sentence, and the picture it paints for me.  It makes me think of a time when you could tell the rain was coming because you smelt it everywhere - very fresh and green but also very heavy and wet. 

Speaking of wet, I have been futilely attempting to get myself a job for nearly two years.  As Dad said, "it never rains but it pours", and I had two opportunities open up very rudely one on top of the other.  Here is how it happened.

There was an ad in the local paper for a swimming instructor at the pool just across the road from my house.  Oh how convenient! though I.  I had an interview, was practically hired, and that weekend was scheduled for the training.  That weekend didn't work out.  So I said the weekend after.  Now this was where it began to get sticky.

The video library, a store that I have always wanted to work in (the next best thing after a bookshop), was looking for someone too, when I went to return a couple of DVDs on the Tuesday.  They said that they were hoping to hold interviews the following week.  So feeling like a flustered goose, I waltzed home, printed my resume, and gallumphed on back, extremely excited. 

Well, I cancelled that weekend for the swimming training for two reasons.  First and foremost because I had a cold, but fringing those sneezes was the feeling that I needed to learn the outcome of the video library situation before I committed. 

Anyway, as it happened, the video library didn't talk to me that week.  So this morning I really had to do the training.  I got up at 5:50 am, for a 7:15 start.  So after five hours of non-stop, non-paid, non-fed, non-watered training, I ended up in a pretty bad place.  I would love to say 'near-death experience', but it was really more along the lines of wanting to vomit, having black outs and failing at walking straight - all the result of low blood-sugars and hydration.  I reallly did enjoy it though, until I got out of the pool.  It was freezing, but the girl that I was with was sweet and the kids themselves were very fun.  It was certainly an experience, albeit a weird one.

It is now present day.  I am almost completely recovered and I'm hoping tentatively for a call about my job interview for the video library.  It's a whole lot of drama, hey?

Home Sweet Home

Now that they had a secure hiding-place, almost a home, it did not even seem a hardship that they could only meet infrequently and for a couple of hours at a time.  What mattered was that the room over the junk-shop should exist.  To know that it was there, inviolate, was almost the same as being in it.  The room was a world, a pocket of the past where extinct animals could walk. 

Part 2, Chapter 5, 1984, (published 1949).

Don't you feel the truth of this excerpt?  Ha, well perhaps we're not living in a corrupt and terrible society, but I still know that I feel this way about my home, and my room particularly.  I can do anything during the day, but there are some things, I know, that would be too much if I could not eventually escape to my home and burrow my way into familiarity again.  The comfort of its existence makes the rest of life bearable.  Perhaps home sweet home is too cliched to ever mention, but that's just what it is.  And I adore that final line 'the room was a world, a pocket of the past where extinct animals could walk' .  Doesn't it just fill your head with pictures?  My room is absolutely a little world, and I love that it can be, so much.

Coffee Anyone?

But she did not neec to tell him why she had wrapped it up.  The smell was already filling the room, a rich hot smell which seemed like an emanation from his early childhood, but which one did occasionally meet with even now, blowing down a passage-way before a door slammed, or diffusing itself mysteriously in a crowded street, sniffed for an instant and then lost again. 

'It's coffee,' he murmured, 'real coffee.'

Part 2, Chapter 4, 1984, (published 1949). 

Sorry my dears for being silent yesterday, but circumstances rendered it nigh impossible for me to post anything.  This excerpt is to make up for it.  It isn't particularly exciting or anything, just very simple and fascinating.  Just think about something as taken for granted as coffee being lost in time like this, and then how incredible it would be to rediscover it.  Food for thought. 

Who Doesn't Have a Deathwish?

In a way she realised that she herself was doomed, that sooner or later the Thought Police would catch her and kill her, but with another part of her mind she believed that it was somehow possible to construct a secret world in which you could live as you chose.  All you needed was luck and cunning and boldness.  She did not understand that there was no such thing as happiness, that the only victory lay in the far future, long after you were dead, that from the moment of declaring war on the Party it was better to think of yourself as a corpse. 

Part 2, Chapter 3, 1984 (published 1949).

Well, as we have ten chapters to devour this week, I guess that it is necessary for me shove a couple of chapters down in one bite.  So today is Chapters 1-3 from Part 2.  Even if you are not up to where we are, post anyway and share your thoughts as you go along.  I don't care if you are behind - it doesn't matter. I'M RUNNING BEHIND FOR PETE'S SAKE!  Obviously not a very comfortable position to be in on my part!
I am currently enjoying the new twist of the story-line.  Sorry to those I roped into this who are suddenly discovering they've landed in alien territory, but I don't think that it's going to be like this for all that long.  I just can't help but think that something will suddenly happen and then we'll all be a mess, sitting around in inconsolable suspense!  Won't that be fun? 

My English teacher said this week that the corps (WWII) were just as good as corpses, (but undoubtedly in better phraseology!)  And here it comes up again.  Is there a single one among us who would not be doomed if crime consisted of as little as thinking unorthodoxly (differently to everyone else)?  I'm a goner.  Seriously, though.  Just allowing yourself to think about people or things and not agree with them, or even dislike them, and you've got a deathwish.  It's very disconcerting.

The Godsent eBook

Well, my dears, if we're all presently on track, we should be beginning Part 2 today, or tomorrow, or in some of your cases, even a week's time, in which case I would trying to avoid reading the excerpts, as your appetites might be spoiled!  I've come to understand, however horrified that I am, that for some of you, the principle issue is not in keeping up, but in finding a copy!  The dratted library!  Going out of their way to inconvienience us whenever possible!  It's very uncool, I know. 

Anyhow, to combat this problem, I have found a good, helpful, easy-to-use site from which you could download the ebook version for free, (and not get imprisoned for it which is undoubtedly a bonus.)

http://www.planetebook.com/1984.asp

This link will take you straight to where you can download 1984.  You will find that on the right hand (or on your other-left) side of the screen, there will be two download options: 1-Page Version and 2-Page Version. 

I would recommend you right click the 1-Page Version (smaller file and just as easy to read) and select a save option to download it.  Now this copy has the chapters and the page numbers etcetera etcetera that you would want, as I am very aware that some absolutely arrogant sites don't break up the chapters, so that you are constantly confused.  Completely out of spite.  Hopefully for those of you who would like to read but can't get your hands on a copy, this will be very useful.  If not, at least you've found a site that may come in handy in later life. 

Anyway, coming back onto topic of the book itself, I am very pleased, and yet surprised too, to inform you that there has been a sudden and unexpected plot twist.  So I am now in a state of renewed suspense!  I'm am more hooked now than ever.

In Real Life

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.  It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it.  Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.  The heresy of heresies was common sense.  And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right.  For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four?  Or that the force of gravity works?  Or that the past is unchangeable?  If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable - what then?

Part 1, Chapter 7, 1984, (published 1949)

In principle a Party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in bed.  It was assumed that taking part in some kind of communal recreation: to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous.  There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity. 

Part 1, Chapter 8, 1984, (published 1949)

Well, my dears, if you're all still alive, how are you all?  Today we complete Part 1, and tomorrow we commence Part 2! 

This last excerpt, as well as being savagely ironic, is also sort of hilarious.  I refer to my life in three separate parts, or threads, more like, that intertwine every now and again: school, internet, and home.  School and the internet are sort of like a semi-reality, while I refer to my home life as "real life" - where I am completely and unabashedly myself in every single way without having to try.  It's almost funny, how my brother and I will be talking and one of us will stop talking about school and return to a home-related subject by saying "and in real life"...  And this is my ownlife.  I live it completely in my own style, eccentrically I'm sure it would seem to many, and extremely individual.  So I feel the word works well.  But then to not be allowed it.  Well.  Imagine that.

To Shout Filthy Words!

Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous system.  At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom...  He had written it down at last, but it made no difference.  The therapy had not worked.  The urge to shout filthy words at the top of his voice was as strong as ever.

Part 1, Chapter 6, 1984, (published 1949).

Does anybody else feel the need to shout?  Maybe it's shouting for shouting's sake, but I could certainly do some shouting.  !@#$$%^&*()(*&^%$#@!  I don't even know what it was for. 

Narrowing Down the Range of Thought

'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?  In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.  Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly define and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.  ...  Every year fewer abd fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.  ...  The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.  ...  Has it ever occured to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, nit a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having nnow?  ...  Even the slogans will change.  How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished?  The whole climate of thought will be different.  In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now.  Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think.  Orthodoxy is unbconsciousness.' 

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized.  He is too intelligent.  He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly.  The Party does not like such people.  One day he will disappear.  It is written in his face. 

Part 1, Chapter 5, 1984 (pubished 1949).

This was for me a very disturbing concept.  Think about it - language, thought, vocabulary - all being governed and then slowly stripped away to leave nothing.  Unconsciousness.  I took in my breath sharp when I read it.  What effect did it have on you?  How about the bit just before this, about the word 'good' and its derivatives?  I didn't want to make you read such a enormous chunk of words, but if you are reading along, that part connects to this and renders it doubly terrifying.  My dears, time to catch up?

Survival of the Totalitarian

How are you all my dears?  Surviving?  Thriving?  Good.  I thought that you might be interested to know that I went to the State Library yesterday, and was shown, not into, but past, a room in which the books were so valuable and old that nobody is permitted to have skin contact with the paper. 
Well, anyway, I didn't really have a favourite part of Chapter 4, but I had an extreme revelation in my Modern History class, today.  Nazi Germany.  I don't doubt that for many of you, this will be no surprise.  But listen, just like in 1984, Hitler had all history books that were not congruent with his current views recalled and destroyed, and just like the children that made their parents terrified they would be dobbed in to the Thought Police, Hitler recruited a mass of indoctrined, "brain-washed" youth to act as his spies.  And the name of almost every Jew that was killed by the Nazis was erased from the past so that they 'never existed'.  It is Totalitarianism (Fascism), just as 1984 is an allegory of.  What we are reading, ladies and gentlemen, as you recline in your beds, sweat in your baths and curl on your sofas with the book before you, is massively meaningful.  Nearly scarily.  (Scarily is a word, ay.  If it isn't, at least I've spelt it right.)  This isn't a notice for you to take it all from an opinionated, political view, but rather an invitation to keep in mind that what you see as fiction has already, more than once, been fact.  I'm proud to be reading something so important, and of course, I adore Orwell.  That is innocent enough.   

Doublethink Got Me

He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasion as short a time as four years ago.  But where did that knowledge exist?  Only in his consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated.  And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same lie - then the lie passed into history and became the truth.  'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'  And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered.  Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting.  It was quite simple.  All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory.  'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak 'doublething'. 

Part 1, Chapter 3, 1984, (published 1949).

This excerpt really stepped straight off the page into my reality when I read it.  It really gets to me, this disturbing little idea - the past can be rewritten.  It's not impossible.  It's been done.  In history, 'reality control' has literally been pulled off, in Ancient China for one at the very least.  In Ancient China, emperor Shi Huang-Di ordered all books (save those which would contribute to the nation's economic growth, religion and physical health) were burnt and "Anyone referring to the past to criticise the present should, together with all members of his family, be put to death" - Shih chi, Memorial on the Burning of the Books, 87:6b-7a.  (I study Ancient history.) 

It just GOT me like a little pinch on the bum, and I realize now, just how awful it is.

What things have really 'got you' so far?  I am completely convinced that nobody could have made it so far into this book without being HIT by something like a ton of bricks.

Big Brother is Watching You

Oh the happiness of me!  Not only have I been smiled at by a nearly creepily cheerful menagerie of teddies and toys on the end of my sister's bed, laughed at a hanging plant that literally looked like an octopus and given Dalloway the Labrador puppet-hugs to some forty different grade oners today, I have also reached my first goal for followers!  I officially have ten real life followers, and I am absolutely delighted.  I seriously need to do something celebratory. 

Anyway, I thank you all extremely for coming and listening.  It certainly is a bubbly feeling! And thankyou Kayla from The Many Colours of Happiness, who said that she thought Orwell's writing was wonderful.  Well, dear, I am completely and utterly devoted to that very opinon.  Here is a quote from George Orwell that I have stuck up on my wall -

A scrupulous writer in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1.  What am I trying to say?  2.  What words will express it?  3.  What image or idiom will make it clearer?  4.  Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

He sticks absolutely true to his guidelines, and to such an effect that I feel engrossed in an entirely new way as I read his book, 1984. 

(I think that the only other person who writes like this is Virginia Woolf, whom I adore and consider one of my most beautiful friends.  I know I'm wandering from the topic, but she also, presents every line like it in itself is a tour de force!  The images and idioms she uses are completely new and astonish me every time that she whips them out - words that work perfectly, but we would never expect.  She's another person that I would happily introduce you to.)

Anyway, this was the my favourite thing that I read today.

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

He took a twenty-five cent piece out of his pocket.  There, too, in tiny clear lettering, the same slogans were inscribed, and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother.  Even from the coin the eyes pursued you.  On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters and on the wrapping of a cigarette packet - everywhere.  Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you.  Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed - no escape.  Nothing was you own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.

Part 1, Chapter 2, 1984, (published 1949).

Yes, this is where the phrase originated.  I know!  The world is a tangled web of textual references!

Well, I am blown away by Orwell so far.  I am excited by his book as few books have ever excited me.  I am literally buzzing inside, nearly frantically, for no real reason - just wanting to keep reading, but disturbed by the tragedy that is unfolding before me. It's ironic, really, but incredible.  Please, I bet that you will be the same.  Don't be afraid to start reading now.  We've only just begun! 



Ignorance is Strength - We Begin 1984!

Phew, well that was intense.  Alright, I now see that the book will be pretty intense, but I've only read the first chapter and a half and I'm already taken aback by the burst of just... I suppose... amazing and exhilarating concepts and thoughts that are flooding out.  It might be heavy reading, but it will be very thought-provoking as well.

The Ministry of Truth - Minitrue, in Newspeak - was startlingly different from any other object in sight.  It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred metres into the sky.  From where Winston stood, it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party.

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH



... The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education and fine arts.  The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war.  The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order.  And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs.  Their names in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.

The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one.  There were no windows in it at all.  Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometre of it.  It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only be penetrating through a maze of barbed wire entanglements, steel doors and hidden machine-gun nests.  Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.

Part 1, Chapter 1, 1984, (published 1949).

I really feel that this is a fantastic example of the sort of ironic and dark concepts that fill this book.  I am in agonising suspense over it, truthfully, because it's like a movie - a dark pre-apocalypse feeling movie that I must watch to the end!  No pulling the stops out now! 

Also, well done to the two wonderful people who told me (outside of Bouquets etc.) that they meant to read 1984.  So I thank you both EXTREMELY and please, if you have thoughts on it as we go, speak up and share it.  For those who are still seriously considering reading it and would like to hear another example of the style and intensity of Orwell's writing, I have included another excerpt from Chapter 1 that might just tantalize or intrigue you enough to convince you.  Here it is:

The horrible thing aboutthe Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to a act a part, but this it was impossible to avoid joining in.  Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary.  A hideous ecstacy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in which a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.  And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.  Thus, at one moment Wiston's hatred was not turned against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, and at such moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies.  And yet the very next instant he was at one with the people about him, and all that was said of Goldstein seemed to him to be true.  At those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed to tower up, and invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation, his helplessness and the doubt that hung over his very existence, seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of civilisation.

Hmmm?

The Home Reading Guide and Introduction to '1984'

Well today I cheated.  I got 1984 out of a different library so I could start it earlier.  So the date is set, dears.  Tomorrow we start. 

Now, for those of you who intend to follow I am making a casual reading plan so you can stick with me as we read together:

The book is divided into three parts:
Part 1 containing eight chapters.
Part 2 containing ten chapters.
Part 3 containing six chapters.

I think it would be sustainable for most of you to read one Part a week, and so finish the book in three weeks. 

I think that my intentions are to share my opinions and what I liked about the book with you, and then hear from you what your thoughts and favourite parts are.  Let's give it a go, hey?  It's casual and personal, so maybe you can enjoy it.  And of course, if you're not reading along, I'm sure you can still enjoy hearing about the book and responding to my opinions. 

For those who want to read along, (and those who are innocently interested), here is a brief and spiffy introduction to 1984 (which, by the way, I have not read before, and so am on a level playing field!):

The blurb on the back of the Penguin Books edition:
"Newspeak, Doublethink, Big Brother, the Thought Police - George Orwell's world-famous novel coined new and potent words of warning for us all.  Alive with Swiftian wit and passion, it is one of the most brilliant satires on totalitarianism and the power-hungry ever written." 

George Orwell, born 1903, was a classic English author whose famous works included Nineteen Eighty-Four (published 1949) and Animal Farm (published 1945), both of which are unique and powerful political satires.  As a child, he was inspired by H. G. Wells' Modern Utopia, and thought he would like to write a similar sort of book.  Now what excited me most about this is the web of textual references which intertwine authors!  H. G. Wells, authors of War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, inspired George Orwell, the great, to write books that inspired so many others!  I love stuff like that. 

Anyway, here are your introductions and the Home Reading Guide, so get ready to enjoy, or read too, if you're game.