As a teacher and 1984 fan, I'm interested in your take on the novel and its relevence in a modern day high school classroom.
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As a teacher and 1984 fan, I'm interested in your take on the novel and its relevence in a modern day high school classroom.
Well, I'm no student, and I doubt you'll get many who answer the question. Most of the students here are "hit & run" posters who come in to discuss an aspect then leave, never to return.Quote:
Originally Posted by Teacher
Orwell is still relevant on many fronts, but chief among them, I'd say:
Pure English. Orwell was one the most accurate users of the language from the past 100 years. His style and usage is still a great example of writing without waste.
The premise of 1984. This is pretty self-explanatory, with surveillance cameras being installed worldwide, the internet and companies which are tracking our usage right now and that totalitarian states still exist.
The message that power corrupts.
As a high school student, I feel as though the book should be throughly understood by all high school students. Orwell's novel is thought to be a warning to the citizens that our future could turn into Oceania and its citizens. If we keep behaving like the way we do now, Oceania could be us. I would recommend this book to any high school and college student. I personally enjoyed this book, and the meaning is very well thought out once you grasp the concept of it. The theme of the book is extremely powerful in my opinion.
I am not a student either, but I love this book, and see it as still relevant.
The theme that is really important for me is the use of language to narrow the mind; deprive the people of language and you deprive them of the ability to frame their thoughts, and then to think them.
I think his noting of the way people think in cliches and can be brainwashed by soundbites (e.g. Parsons) to act against their own self-interest, but in the interests of the agenda pushed by the media and their owners should still be of interest to us.
I think that another aspect of the novel that is still relevant is the importance placed on material goods - in 1984 because the people were deliberately deprived of even the basics in order to break their spirits and channel their energies in getting them, and in Western society because we have a huge amount of goods, but are convinced by marketing and our own acqusitiveness and competitiveness to believe ourselves deprived if we can't have "must-have" luxuries.
Also agree with The Atheist that Orwell's clean, crisp style is wonderful, and I think he should be taught as a model of prose composition, as well as a writer of fiction.
I love the completeness of the world of 1984 - it is so convincingly drawn, from the Party's macro-economic policy to the tiniest detail, like the tobacco always falling out of the cigarettes; with every aspect of the Party's doctrine working with another to create the whole - the propaganda, the war, the sexual repression, the deprivation working together to creating fear, hatred, frustration, and despair, all feeding into one another and ensuring the absolute power of the Party.
Another aspect of the novel that I rarely see discussed is the love between Julia and Winston, although there was a couple of threads on it fairly recently, and the consensus seemed to be that Julia and Winston's relationship is just a kick against the Party's power. I see it as a lovely and fragile thing, as all love is, and find their companionship and slightly clumsy efforts to please one another highly moving. I believe that Orwell wished us to see that love is what makes life liveable, and the destruction, represented by Room 101, of this natural instinct and thereby the humanity of their victims, as the Party's greatest sin.
that's a great work, but a bit more serious
Being a high school student, i believe that students across the world should read this book. It is a real eye opener and helps you understand the world and what it could become. I think it shows people what to do to help and helps you realize the corruption of the past. I recommend this book!
I AM a Student (9th grader)
It was shockingly relevant...
I was checking my phone to see if I could hear something strange that might indicate that someone was listening before I dialed for weeks (read this when Bush was still in office). Wire taps---- internet surveillance, employers cyber-spying on job applicants, and government restrictions on the public's access to information on the internet, radio, etc. All these very current issues smell of totalitarianism! Torture in Gitmo, that is frightening too. References to Torture actually were the most sickening in my opinion. Big brother can read all my emails if he wants, but he's not going to learn any state secrets. I don't know, the book made me paranoid beyond belief after I read it (two years ago, after 'Brave New World'). I was just stunned by how much more frightening the world is in reality. Terror fills the internet, it fills the radio, it fills the television. No wonder people arm themselves with nukes and such. Power is corruption. I think it is appropriate to read in a Government class, but I didn't really find any "poetic" thrill in it. But, that's just my opinion. (I read it in 7th grade, so I am uncertain of where I would stand now).
As a highschool student, I believe that this book can symbolize many different things. I think that this book can be a warning to the people of our nation of what could happen if we as people didn't keep an eye on our government. Although some people stay out of politics, I think that it is important to vote and get involved in politics because it's when we don't keep an eye on our government, that they take over. I think that America is far from becoming like the goverment in 1984 because we have such open ideas and opinions. Overall, I think that this book was okay. It is not really my type, but certain parts of it did keep me interested. I would reccommend this book to readers who enjoy history. :)
I think 1984 is very important and all high schoolers should have an undertanding of what this novel means. It was very interesting and a definite eye opener to what the world is now and what it could become. I definetly recommened this book because it is very important to our past, present, and future.
I think in addition to the movie '1984' being discussed in relation to the book, students could watch the movie 'Equilibrium', which may be more exciting for them but which I think deals with many of the same themes. Bear in mind though, I haven't read the book for a while.
:As a high school student i thought that the book was okay.
Don't get me wrong because George Orwell is a great writer. He's is very discriptive but, there was a lot of writing in the book that i found to be boring and he could have left out a little of it.
I would have to say though that all high school kids should read this book. It is a great piece of literature.
:eek:
Being a high school student I thought 1984 was a good take on a future that we neglect to preserve our own rights. George Orwell's writing is also superb for prompting you to think deeper into what he is saying. I also enjoyed how Orwell layered his warnings about the future, giving us things to an eye out for. I would have enjoy seeing more of what Orwell thought would happen to the arts, since he did show them still being used. However he did show the danger of how literature might disappear entirely which is a warning that hopefully will never come true. Over all I enjoyed the book and think it is a wonderful piece of literature to study.
In my opinion, 1984 was a must-read book. I highly recomend it to high school students. The novel warns readers of the future based on what has happened in history which is a very important concept for our society to understand. It is crucial theory because as Orwell displays in the novel, the higher class has the power to get what they want and leave the middle and especially the lower, to suffer. If we don't talk about history and it isn't recorded, it will happen again, which is the point that I think Orwell is trying to get across to us. Our society can't be brainwashed and blinded by what is going on with our government. Personally, I thought this novel was an real eye opener and it made me realize the importance of knowing what is going on in our society.
Well, you're getting lots of answers, in fact, which is great!Quote:
Originally Posted by Teacher
Interesting comments too, loving seeing kids reading it and learning something about the way the world works.
I honestly think every highschool student should read 1984. Orwell actually predicted a lot right, which I find frightening. Such as the telescreens...look around our society. We have cameras everywhere. In Manhattan alone, there are around 2400 cameras! He obviously did not get every little things right, but he wrote a real "eye-opener" as to what our society can turn into. In my honest opinion, I liked 1984. When I first opened it, I thought it was awful. Eventually, it started to pick up and i didn't want to put it down. 1984 is a MUST READ! ;)
I remember first reading it at school and 1984 was still about a decade away so it was a truly chilling vision of the future.
Reread it again a few years ago and I was struck by the fact that I'd completely forgotten about the whole chapters of politics that are in there, they had been lost on me completely.
As a high school student, I did not love the book, but I think it is very important. Orwell makes many points as to what the future withheld, such as being watched. This book is important because it teaches us that if we don't know what our past was like how do we know if we are better off now. Another thing that is important, is you need to know the past so the bad things don't repeat. Overall I thought this was an important book, and that you shouldn't just read it, you need to grasp to concept as well. I would recommend this book for someone in high school, as long as you get the lesson at hand you will like it!
I think that the book was extremly slow in the begining. It was boring and hard to get threw but toward the middle it got alot more exciting and easy to read. I give the second half two thumbs up.
Meh, the book is a fantasy, and not a particularly good one. The truth is, the world does not look like that, and that is merely a Western fantasy used to scare people into line - in application Orwell is used as justification for different agendas - namely, anti-North Korean movements in application today, but previously anti-Communist, and Chinese, and anti-Cuban movements as a way of both instilling fear, and othering people in the name of "freedom" (ironically, perhaps).Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
Truth be told, autocracy is hardly as simple, limited, or phantasmological as the Orwellian model. The book has been given too much credit - notably because of its simple prose style, and its ease in quotation, which makes every half-literate moron able to quote big brother and shout "totalitarianism, police state!"
If you want the real way the world works, I would recommend merely reading your newspaper, to find out the simple fact that the Orwellian model has never been the case, and the Innis model as outlined in The Bias of Communications is far more apt - or perhaps reading Chomsky, notably The Manufacture of Consent.
Really, the book is a tedious joke used by arrogant people (mostly bigots, and almost always antagonistic in baring) to bully others.
It did: Stalinist Russia in the 1930s. "Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" and duck-speak--yes, fanaticism does look like that. Arendt and Orwell assumed that there would be oligarchies who could control information and North Korea fits the bill to Orwellian perfection.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
Did you grow up in Stalinist Russia in the 1930s? What about North Korea - I assume you not only have visited it, but have lived there and felt it first hand - how then can you know how everything fits so nicely?Quote:
Originally Posted by Eryk
I don't doubt that there were limitations on freedoms, and oppressive aspects in society, but does that really mean a fulfillment of an Orwellian diagram.
Western perspectives on power have always been a bit ambivalent - for instance, the First Emperor of China has always been looked favorably upon as a great achiever in Western historical scholarship - ironically though, he was the model for none other than Mao, a figure who sought to impose his practices on modern China, with similar success - how then is Mao viewed as a dictator, and Qing Shi Huang Di as a great ruler?
In the same sense, Western historiography has favored Chang Kai Chiek, despite him being a fascist dictator (he was a tyrant even before becoming a dictator of Taiwan, with the help of US handouts of course) and instilled crackdowns comparable to those committed on the mainland - the question of freedom of communications again was just as limited - which one then fits the Orwellian model better?
In that sense, the whole notion of freedom, notably in US policy, has made good use of Orwellian scare tactics as a means of imposing an Americanization - namely, you are free if you submit to us - policy. The real regimes though are hardly less free - are we to take, for instance, the US as the prime example of freedom, and North Korea as the opposite? Hell, the US handed over not only handouts, but supported the regime of Mobutu in Zaire (Congo) for the longest time, as a ward against communism, and its unfree policies. There's no problem taking down as oppressive a regime as Allende's in Chile, as it is clearly against freedom in all its forms, and sticking in a freedom loving Pinochet, no?
This is merely application, but the 1984 mythology is behind all of this - the goal of the presses in "democracy" as seen can easily be equated to a propaganda mill ripping on the "unfree" countries, ironically, tending in the case of American policy, to be the most free, or the ones most progressive. This fear of Orwellianism, and this zealous attempt at stopping Orwell's vision from being a reality has in truth warped into an almost farcical (however depressing) game of inverse practice - we justify creating Orwellian models on the grounds of destroying them (and ceasing oil and whatnot in the process).
But what is really working at hand here? It would seem that the communist states had been the ones with the largest underground movements and corruption - the so called Orwellian imaginations end up ironically being the places with the strongest sense of dissent - just reading Socialist Realism from Stalinist Russia paints a strange picture - ironically it would seem the most complacent and conquered viewpoints come from those places which we deem freest - think about it - people knew in those Soviet countries that the press was putting own propaganda - they knew not to trust it, and they knew the limitations of the truth, and therefore, we not as crushed into Orwellian complacency and acceptance as would seem - on the other hand, people in the US right now read the Times or the Post without much thought for its validity - or at least didn't until recently or in left-circles (dismissed of course as socialist propagandists) - which one then fits the totalitarian model more closely? The "free" country where people walk around without questioning and merely fall in line without any central control agency running things, or the "unfree" model, where people know the limitations of freedom, and question things, but merely realize that government centralization and control is a part of life.
In that sense, we use Orwell again in judging North Korea as a regime, but do we turn around and say, "with all our (meaning the US, and to a lesser extent other Western countries Canada in a minor sense included) freedom did we not hit them first, as in, when we pulled out of the Korean peninsula at the end of the Korean war, did we not target their crops starving millions of people because they were "communist" and therefore deserved to die? Who then is more complacent in that regard?
Perhaps if the Orwellian model worked, we would see these regimes countries being the most aggressive, or repressive - but, from my understanding of the world, it has been the free regimes - the US, England, France, the former British Empire, which have had countless aggressive actions, and have, historically, acted without questioning themselves. Which one is more Orwellian then? Just looking at the strength of the Polish underground presses from the Communist Era gives a sort of idea of the actual dialog that occurred there, questioning things.
I hate to say this, but Orwell merely was trying to explain a phenomenon of aggression, but simplified things as a means of constructing what was later interpreted as a "good and bad". The truth is, the world is far more complex, and there are a lot more things going on. It isn't a matter of a dictator repressing and suppressing - that isn't necessary - an Obama, or Reagan as a better example perhaps, is far craftier, and equally if not more effective in application. That is why I say it is a fantasy - because in application the book becomes a tool for people to justify the same policies that the book tries to explain as caused by this lack of freedom in the first place.
Actually, the situation in North Korea is worse than Orwellian. Winston could roam prole neighborhoods, visit a prostitute and rent a room there. This is not humanly possible in Pyongyang, where every minute of one's life is regimented and everyone has to be home before curfew, when the lights are turned off.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
Everything in the book is based on what Orwell read, his discussions with refugees, and aspects of his life (BBC censorship, Ministry of Information as the architectural inspiration for Minitrue, etc.). It's not a fantasy, as you say, it's a reality that "unpersons" were airbrushed out of photographs in the USSR. He wasn't writing a prophetic "diagram". He wrote about the recent past and present.
And no, I did not grow up in Stalinist Russia. It's a dumb question.
So you admit that everything you have said lacks direct experience, as is filtered through other mediums.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eryk
In other words, your projection of North Korea is limited to what you know from reading your news paper reports - it is filtered, and modified to suit the agenda of the paper. How then can you verify its validity? Have you ever been to Pyongyang? Have you lived there? Have you spoken to people there? Very few people have visited there, and all of them seem to have come with agendas.
In retrospect, Stalinist newspapers were full of claims of tens of millions of Americans dying from famine caused by the Great Depression - are those accurate?
Or better yet, take my example of Mobutu, a much loved figure in his time in America, and his regime in the Congo - a country which is now, after his death, in a state of utter chaos beyond anything imaginable in North Korea.
Look at how Vietnamese people were portrayed prior and during and even after the Vietnam war.
Hell, look how Chinese people are portrayed today, especially in American newspapers - with the single most important theme of "Hey, we better watch out, they aren't playing by our rules and refuse to bend over and grease."
At what point then do you become suspicious of what you have heard? Perhaps, or at least it can be thought, that perhaps some people in North Korea have pride in their country, and have a sense of identity outside of oppressed people under a totalitarian regime - perhaps they feel a connection, not unlike a connection felt by Americans or Germans - you merely use the diagram to dehumanize the country, and limit it to the perspective of oppressed, controlled, pitiful waste land.
I am not saying the human rights record there is perfect, and I am not suggesting that the country is an ideal state - that isn't my point. What I am suggesting though is how we limit our understanding, and instead apply a model, in this case borrowed from Orwell to suit our agenda.
This is a country with many people in it, with both shared and diversified experiences. How then can we limit our understanding to that found in a book written more than half a century ago. The reason? Quite simple. It suits an agenda, and therefore is propagated.
JBI, among experts and international human rights organizations there is the firmest and broadest consensus that life in North Korea is really bad. Amnesty International's criticism of North Korea is not nationalist propaganda, even if it's used as such by hawkish Presidents and Neo-Cons. We don't fully understand the situation, that's true, but this is because North Korea is a closed state with control of virtually all activities within the nation and therefore the people of that nation are in no sense free.
Human rights organizations didn't use 1984 as a template for their moral evaluation, which would have been same if that novel had never been written. The details are shocking to anyone with a conscience:
linkQuote:
Ahn Myong-chol, now a banker in Seoul, spent a decade working as a guard in various camps. He can still recall the shock – “like a hammer” – on first seeing dwarf-like creatures milling about in filthy rags.
“They were walking skeletons of skin and bone, with faces covered in cuts and scars where they had been beaten. Most had no ears; they had been torn off in beatings."
R e m i n d e r
This is the OP of the thread:Please do not hijack it to pursue your own personal agendas.Quote:
Originally Posted by Teacher
Off-topic posts will be removed without any further notice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
True. Orwell is one of the Fathers of the English Language. Not because he lived during a "Shakespearean age" when writers, most writers used the same styles and devices. Orwell, leaves behind the facility of creating a work that would be easy on his readers, to create a pool that both leaves people in a daze and increases a person's reflective nature: Lets be honest. You can't but stop to think of every line that book gives to us.
I'm not a native of the English Language. Therefore, the kind of English I'm used to is the modern, everyday English that most native speakers(and writes) of the language use.
I don't have the time to give to "1984" right now(too many other books to read) so, due to it's hard nature - the way the book is structured, mainly the language employed - I've set it apart for when I have time and the energy to read it.
:)
I think that 1984 is an exceptional novel, and it's written so sadly, that it's still a great read. I think it's a necessity for students to read in school. Though Orwell is not correct in all his predictions, I think we all realize in some ways, he is right, and that, strangely, brings fear to them reading it. To sum this up, 1984 is a great book, and was pretty enjoyable to read!
Given the references to Russia by JBI I thought it might be interesting to mention the Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin whose novel We is thought to have inspired Orwell's thinking when he was creating 1984.
A quick look at the blurb makes the similarities obvious:
We tells of persons known as numbers living in the One State. All numbers live by a rigid time-table, performing exactly the same motions in time with one another in their all-glass environment.
We is the story of D-503, who is aroused from acceptence of the system by a strange woman, E-330. His transformation from conformity to radical action, his revolt against the state, and his eventual defeat are vividly chronicled in his diary.
Sent into exile twice by the authorities before We was published in 1920, persecuted for his writing, he said "True literature can only exist when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics". This did not curry favour with the new Russian regime and he was eventually allowed to leave the country by Stalin in 1931.
Since the ideas of Orwell and Zamyatin are so similar maybe 1984 has more real life kudos than we realise.
I have to say 1984 turned out to be a better book than I first thought. I thought it started out a little slow but it soon picked up. By looking around at our world, especially in the US, many things that he predicted have come true. I think that we will see even more of his predictions coming true if we don't heed Orwell's warnings. I think that to be sure our world doesn't get to be like it is in 1984 we all need to be active citizens and remember that our opinion and vote will make a difference. If we all say that one vote doesn't matter then no one will be voting and we will end up with a government similar to the one Orwell created in 1984 with one person controlling everything and we will be stripped of our rights.
Overall I think the story is a good one. It gets the reader to think and compare the future Orwell saw to our own present and future.
Though it is a good story, I did find it hard to focus on due to how Orwell described certain things in detail -- especially The Book. For this reason I reccommend this to readers that enjoy older English writing as well as those who can focus well. But overall I liked the story and I'm beginning to see things differently.
NOT about the novel, but why are there so many responses from people that fit the following criteria:
a)High school student
b)Joined in November 09
c)have 4 posts...
It's a little strange.
And they write like they're writing a topic statement.
Weird.
How strange Becca. I just counted and there's nine different students on 4 posts and three on 5 posts all just posting once on this thread.;)
This set me pondering after I logged off last night so this morning I checked if there was a connection between the other posts the "students" had made and sure enough all of them have only posted on other 1984 related threads.
Another thing: they all ignore any attempt to broaden the debate [like my mention of Zamyatin's novel] and sound similar enough in style to have been written by the same person!
Looking over the previous comments, mine is not one that many of you will want to read. But as a high school student, I didn't like the book 1984. I thought Orwell went into detail on many aspects too deeply, especially in the beginning. I understand that good writers use good detail, but I feel that Orwell overdid it. Although I'm not a fan, I like how Orwell predicted surveillance everywhere. He was an intelligent man for knowing and expressing that the past and present equals the future. He showed that whoever controlled the present, controlled the past and the future. His ideals for this book were extremely impressive, but I didn't like the ending at all. He was told that he was going to be shot after he accepted and loved Big Brother, but they left free to be an alcoholic. We discussed this in my English class, and my teacher said that although he was set free, he would later be vaporized. I don't understand why they are going to do that. I thought the ending was completely stupid and boring. It was a struggle to stay awake while reading it. Either Winston should have been killed or served some sort of purpose, because continuing his life left no example for anyone else that was against Big Brother. His life was basically useless after, whereas before he at least helped Big Brother. Which his job at the Ministry of Truth was completely ironic, because he was against everything Big Brother stood for. Also, I didn't like how we never end up knowing what happened to Julia. Was she left to be vaporized too? Again, Orwell should have had both of them killed, possibly even in front of each other, to prove that you shall love no one other than Big Brother. As I said before, I give Orwell a lot of credit for his underlying message in this book, but I do not like the ending or the immense detail. And honestly, I wouldn't recommend 1984 to high school students. Most of them don't even read it, and the ones that do, don't really care.
p.s. You might see this posted under some other thread, I had some technical difficulties.
I thought that the first 50 pages (give or take a few) were very slow. It slowly picked up after that and I found myself starting to really enjoy this book at the end.
My favorite part about the book was room 101. Not only did it give the book a good twist, but it also made the reader start feeling about their worst fear. For me, it's snakes, and hearing about Winston's fears kept me intent into the book.
I also agree with many things the Orwell brought up. I feel that if we do not understand the past then we are going to repeat it. This book is completely needed for highschool students to read. 1984 shows what will happen if we let government run the people. The people are supposed to run government and since highschool students are the future people of America, students like me need to read 1984.
i know i will be criticized for saying this but i don't think 1984 is a "must read" book like every one is saying it is. yes, it did open my eyes a little to what is going on in our world and what the consequences might be, but in the aspect of entertainment i found it extremely lacking. i just kept waiting and waiting for something entertaining to happen but it just never came. this book probably should be read by young people, but i would never recommend it to anyone for any recreational reading. i suppose this book was written more to get a point across than to be entertaining but i think orwell could have made it a lot better. id only give it a 4/10
1984: Thumbs up, Thumbs down?
-You decide.
I thought that Orwell's 1984 was a very, um, different book. At first I wasn't sure how I felt about the book, but then I got into it more, and I realized many things; I realized how small my problems are, how small I am compared to everything else, how little I matter. But I this book wasn't just something that depressed me, even though it did most of the time, I did learn that there is hope in the world, no matter what problem you have, there IS an answer, a solution to your problem.
This book taught me many lessons, and I think that anyone who is looking to further their education, or just needs help answering some questions, that they should HAVE to read this book.
I give it a thumbs up, but go ahead, read it, then you decide. ;)
Thumbs up to 1984! This book is such an eye opener and it should be read by not only high school stundents but people every where. It relates to the world as though they were twins. I wonder myself if people every where were to read this book if we would all learn from it and create a better world! :) Kudos George Orwell! ;)
Oops! I forgot to add this to my last post :O Though I liked the book I agree with the others that the book was very slow and there were so many details the book laged on and on. But still the lesson stood out the most overall and that is why people should read this. :)
I found the book 1984 to be a very well written novel. I do give this book a thumbs up because of the actual relations from what Orwell predicted to how the world is today. There may not be the same methods and same names for the methods but they do exist today. I found the book to drag on in the beginning but as it progressed it seemed to be more percise and more ableing to read. Overall I had a great understanding of the book and I definately believe all high school students should have a percise understanding of this book.
I'd have to agree with Swimmer444d. In my opinion it isn't all that exciting of a book. Then again this is just my opinion. I would still recommend this to kids across the nation. It is fairly important to realize how close this book is to our lives today. We are always being watched wherever we go. Video cameras at the gas station, supermarket, school, etc. I would understand why a teacher would want their students to have a complete understanding of this book before they graduate. It opens our eyes to what can happen if we the people let things slip out of our hands. Just look back in the past and at this book. Knowledge without history is worthless.
I do think that 1984 has some interesting points throughout it. The beginning of it however i felt was extremely boring to read and almost made me lose interest in finishing it. I did however finish it and the book made me think a lot about our society today. Also, I stop and wonder what would happen if I was in Winston's shoes and what i would do in various situations. I personally was not a huge fan of this book but this could be because it isn't the type of literature I'm usually interested in. Hopefully students in years to come will take more interest in 1984 than I did.