This book was one of the worst books I have ever read

[Contradict]

This book was one of the worst books I have ever read and I am 64 years old. The theme was very boring and not captivating at all. The story took along time to pick up and then it went back down as soon as you started to understand it!!! Never Again!!

...did you read the entire book? When i started reading this i thought it was horrid nonsense, but if you keep dealing with the rather dull story and get to the theory such as Goldstein's book near the end, this book delivers. The problem is that it's really boring; even the climax isnt all that great or at all unpredictable. That isn't the idea or the point of the book anyway, though. Read it for the theories-understand each party slogan, understand Newspeak, the figureheads, etc. Orwell makes some really good point's that not only make most readers compare it to today, but most of it is concrete reasoning you can apply to any study of government or social science.

[TBtheG]

I enjoyed 1984, it was thought provoking time passer, and I've ingested my fair share of psychedelics so maybe thats why I liked it, i dunno.

[Chinaski]

First read it when I was 13 and read it three or four times since. With respect, I think to say it is a bad book goes beyond having no taste and into the realms of completely lacking any sort of awareness. That isn't meant to be offensive, just the truth!

[optimisticnad]

1984 isn't so bad. I guess everyone will have mixed feelings towards, for example is it a warning or prediction? Orwell himself admitted that the book would have been more...optimistic (?) if he wasn't so ill. But i like the rhyme or is it song: Under the chestnut tree, I betrayed you and you betrayed me...
is that how it goes?

I like his view of love, it isn't enough to just say it, we all love someone, but how many of us would stay loyal to the one we love in Room 101??? Raises some very deep and meaningful questions about nature of love.

[PadreMellyrn]

The reason that the "book" seems so dull, is it reflects the world in which it takes place; look hard at the settings, post war - everything is dull and grey, no one has any hope, the life is slowly being crushed out of the world. It is not meant to be "Uplifting and Interesting", it is meant to frighten and depress.

If nothing else, read the appendix about the newspeak - many people totally miss that the "newspeak" and the "Doublethink" are what is happening now. In particular look at the "B Vocabulary".

"For the purposes of everyday life it was no doubt necessary, or sometimes necessary, to reflect before speaking, but a Party member called upon to make a political or ethical judgement should be able to spray forth the correct opinions as automatically as a machine gun spraying forth bullets."

This is what we see now, in the Media - a pol spits out words, which everyone knows what they are supposed to mean, but no one thinks of what was said - thus we have the Six Second Sound bite, and fantastical named iniatives which mean nothing but sound wonderful. Many people fail to realise that 1984 was not the year it all started in; even in the book, he makes it clear that this has been happening for a number of years now - the date is merely to show what year it is in Winstons life.

[uhehee]

i couldn't agree more, still in a different way, it was quite disappointing that the author value the human spirit as nothingness.

for your reason, you haven't been reading it carefully or focused on finishing the book rather than taste every words of it. it was quite plausible the way Orwell drew the totalitarian society. i could not have any word, or obejections and the mistakes on the system of the party, it was too perfect? i guess.

[PadreMellyrn]

The party is in fact not perfect, but the people like O'Brian believe it so, and thus they work to further the cause. The enventual end will be the collapse of the world back to the savagery of the cave man, as soon or later the proles will collapse, and one thing the party can not survive without, is the people to do the manual laber for them.

But the idea was not to show the party was 'perfect' and would rule for a thousand years (the basic Reich) but that people can and do believe in such things - power for powers sake, torture for tortures sake, and they do what they think they must to keep it.

[tendayi]

Though when I first picked up 1984 I did find it quite trying to keep interest, once I had read in2 it I really could not put it down. It was written in a time when had England and her allies not won ww2 and the way in which Russian communism began, 1984 could have been a reality. It also gives the reader a sense of their own freedom by entering a world where there is none.
-Tendayi

[Chinaski]

Changed my first message; I was 13 not 23 - just to clarify.

[Mojophonious]

This book was one of the worst books I have ever read and I am 64 years old. The theme was very boring and not captivating at all. The story took along time to pick up and then it went back down as soon as you started to understand it!!! Never Again!!

so ... "Hit the Road, Jack!" It's not the best book in the world; along with Brave New World, these two can be quite gloomy, but it's still damn good writing. Have you read anything about the shape Orwell (real name was Eric Blair) was in when he wrote it? During the torture sequences, he was actually looking in the mirror at his own decaying form as he was dying from tuberculosis and other complications ... he was actually holding up a mirror and showing the world what was happening to him. you dig that, right?

[gilthas]

1984 was one of the best books i've ever read, other than "The Hitler Virus" by the late Peter Wyden, and "Ghetto in Flames, the destruction of Vilna Jewry".
It is a masterwork of our time, and shame on all of you who said that it was an awful book!!!

[oak_jam]

When 1984 was written, the ideas were fresh and to some, a shock - people could see the vision could be true and looked at the world in a different way.

Today, the term '1984' has become widespread and books, films and general thinking dealing with the issues are common. So, it is easy to look at this book as a just another in the genre, but of course it was ground breaking in its time, and the now-called 'boring parts' were themsleves a revelation.

[F.Emerald]

What nonsense! 1984 is an amazing piece of literature, in so many ways and on so many levels. Orwell tackles a major issue (the dangers of a totalitarian state), and does so wonderfully, especially considering that this was written in the 1940s, and yet, is still a new and frightening concept that we can relate to even now.

[Turk]

People's opinion can change depend on their personality and ages. I personally think 1984 is a good novel too. But on the other hand, like almost all Orwell novels it's completely depressive and hopeless. If someone doesn't like this kind of themes, he won't likes Orwell novels.

[MissDay7000]

I have to say that I agree with many of the others: I don't understand any dislike of this book, mainly because I see it coming on the horizon for this world, believe it or not, the Earth's an evil place and Orwell's books shows us a bit of forshadowing in his time can also be forshadowing in our time as well.

MissDay