A good book

Last year, for one of my English reading programme activities, I read the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (or 1984) by George Orwell. My opinion of the book, at the very least, is that it is very thought-provoking

I am not going to talk about the plot, but rather the underlying themes and concepts behind the book

In Oceania, every aspect of life is controlled by the Party, who is headed by the omnipresent Big Brother. There are cameras everywhere, watching your every move, even in your own home. They also control all forms of media, effectively turning it into propaganda, and constantly revising history to suit their own needs. Basically, they see all and know all, and the citzens of Oceania are constanly reminded of that fact by posters featuring Big Brother bearing the caption: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.

As said before, the Party controls everything, including the dates of each day, so even though the story begins with a statement saying that it is in April, the date may be wrong, as that is what the Party wants people to believe. Thus, the unseen but talked about characters in the book, like Big Brother, may not even exist; they could just be a fabrication of the Party's imagination to force people to submit to their will.

This concept of total media control can also be applied to the world, in countries such as North Korea. Another surprising fact is that it is set in an English country rather than a Soviet state, which just further goes to show that totalitarianism is a threat to every country in the world.

Big Brother personifies the Party, as his face is constantly depicted in posters and television, Thus Big Brother is constantly watching. Obviously, with such close scrutiny on people, there may be rebellion. This is where Ingsoc takes over. Ingsoc demands the total submission-mental, moral and physical-of the people, and will torture to achieve it. It is a complex system of psychological control that compels confession to imagined crimes and the forgetting of rebllious thought in order to love Big Brother and the Party over oneself.

To me, this political ideology is similar to what happened in George Orwell's other book, Animal Farm, which deals with Communism and the brutality of Stalin during his reign of the U.S.S.R.

What I am trying to say is that this kind of thinking, may happen to governments around the world, and is already happening in places like North Korea, and I strongly feel that leaders of more powerful nations should do all they can to prevent this from happening.