It seems as though reading The Catcher in the Rye has stirred up an inner desire to read more books that are categorized as classics, and I am not upset about it. Did I love Catcher in the Rye? No. Do I regret reading it? Absolutely not.
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a text I have been yearning to read for a while now, especially in today’s social and political climate. I had some familiarity with the story and was aware it addressed the concept of Big Brother, or the idea that we are always being watched and listened to, but I was unaware of how unsettling reading this book in today’s world would be because of the similarities between our world and the one described in the book.
Nineteen Eighty-Four follows its protagonist, Winston, as he navigates his rather miserable life in a dystopian society. The rules and the structure of the society he lives within are completely controlled and influenced by the government, also known as Big Brother. Big Brother knows what you’re doing at work and at home; he knows what you’re listening to; he knows what you eat at every meal; he even knows your thoughts and can have you arrested for thinking anything that goes against Big Brother’s teachings.
Winston suspects there is a hell of a lot more to life than abiding by Big Brother’s beckoning call, and because he has caught wind of a resistance movement challenging Big Brother, he fantasizes over the notion of pushing back and rectifying the state of the world around him for the sake of its people. Upon meeting a young woman named Julia, he finds himself closer to unveiling the truth than ever before.
The book should be on everyone’s list, and it is absolutely a read and not a rid. Orwell’s brilliance was astoundingly ahead of its time, and the parallels between his dystopian world and our own are disturbingly similar.
Photo by Abdul Ahad Sheikh on Unsplash
ontheedgeofeverything 