Book Review: 1984 by George Orwell

I’ve gotten out of the habit of posting my book reviews here and not just at GoodReads. But perhaps that has been a mistake. So, I’m going to attempt to bring back that, er, feature. At least it’ll add content to the blog 😉

1984: New Classic Edition by George Orwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So engaging. So many thoughts. So appalling. So powerful. I listened through all of Book 3 yesterday because I simply had to finish.

I had certainly heard of the book 1984 for years and years; since high school at least (and I graduated in 1991). I avoided dystopia for years because they made me read The Lord of the Flies and Brave New World which I loathed. 30 years later, I find myself in a place where I may re-read Brave New World in conjunction with 1984

Orwell shows power as the end goal and the changing of language, history, math, reality as the means to accomplish and control power. When nominalism means definitions can change, when statistics are purely imaginary (or even when they’re simply lies), when math is racist … it’s a power play. Orwell shows the mind and even the emotions as malleable. That selfishness is the final “cure.”

Read old books. Read old editions of old books. Be cautious with digital media (the irony is not lost on me that I listened to an audiobook recording of this book). Go back and try to understand math and Euclid and Bacon and Descartes and Plato and The Bible, read people you agree with and people you don’t … don’t allow your inheritance to be stolen by the power mad. Read Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe and Greek Myths (and Norse, Roman, etc.) read Gilgamesh and The Odyssey and the Grimms and Hugh of Saint Victor. Read Calvin and Luther. Go for a hike.

When everything is expedient to the moment, when everything is “what you want to hear,” wonder why. When war is constant, when war means peace (cold war anyone?) … return to the old paths.

Be an individual. In scripture, we’re called to conform to Christ – but that conformity is actually individualizing. We are sanctified as persons with gifts differing. Peter wasn’t Paul wasn’t John wasn’t Apollos … but all were becoming Christ-like. Not cookie-cutters of one another. Orwell’s uniformity of persons of thought of understanding is very different from this, the exact opposite in fact. The uniformity is terrifying and controlling. “Tolerance” is only for those who have been molded exactly so. Find real community where iron sharpens iron.

To myself: don’t be afraid to speak instead of simply observe … I have a strong tendency to be quiet in the face of opposition and go my own way; I’m told I’m “shockingly conflict averse.” Perhaps I ought to speak in disagreement more often than I do.

I guess … that’s what I want to talk of – reality, gravity, nature, love, truth, goodness, beauty. Fear not, there is a God in heaven. But be aware.

Orwell was a leftist, for sure, and was warning (like in Animal Farm) of some things, but I don’t think that means that those of us on the right can’t also take warnings from this book. It wasn’t meant to be a playbook, but a warning to real, living human beings.



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