1984

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Engraved on the white face of the enormous building of the Ministry of Truth, the three slogans of the Party stand out, prominent amidst the bleak scenery of the city of London. Those three sentences above, I believe, are the most prominent, and not to mention the most terrifying mantras found throughout 1984.

A dystopian vision of the future--1984 was written in 1948 and published a year later--1984 depicts an apocalyptic world ruled by totalitarian governments. For instance, imagine living in a world where there is no privacy, no individualism, and freedom and equality are merely archaic words. The inhabitants are all under constant surveillance with every habit, behavior, movement, utterance, facial expression, and even thought under continuous scrutiny. A world in which humanity hopelessly strives to exist against a totalitarian government run by the Party whose goal is power, and only power. Absolute, endless power is its aim, its desire, and its end.

A world where division in a society is interminable and the disparities it entails are unsolvable, where the High mercilessly oppress the others beneath and the Middle endlessly wish and pray to dethrone their rulers but sadly have no valour, let alone strength to do so whilst the Low (proletariats/proles), lacking in education and awareness, are simply too ignorant to recognize their poor living standard, much less their capability of overthrowing the incumbent rulers.

A world where the past is alterable, where truth is always bent for the sake of The Party, hence history and reality hold no significance whatsoever for they are always changing, always altering for the convenience of the Party. And speaking of reality, there is perhaps no reality after all. Reality exists only in one's mind. If there were no humans, there would also be no reality. It has been corrupted, it has been reduced to existing only as a product of one's mind and not as a physical fact. The return of solipsism.

A world in which thoughts are not well received and extra precautions have been taken to contain them. The Thought Police and the telescreen are among the set of safeguards ready to detect heretic ideas, but the most terrifying of all is probably the invention of Newspeak: a new language contrived to limit thoughts and ideas. But this statement is perhaps frowned upon since how can language limit the conceiving of thoughts after all? Is it not the sole purpose of language to express thoughts and furthermore to communicate them? Indeed, language does provide a way to convey thoughts and ideas but Newspeak is not merely a language. It is peculiar and designed specifically to avert the emergence of thought-crime. Newspeak is possibly the only language in the world whose range of vocabularies gets denser every year. The words which are ambiguous and thus possess a vague meaning are wiped out, leaving words which only have one definite definition behind. This way, it will be impossible for one to think heretically for how could one even conceive a nonconformist idea if the concept it is founded on doesn't exist? And since thoughts are dependent on words, it will be impracticable to convey one's heretic idea for there are simply no words to explain the idea itself.

And lastly, is it impertinent for me to insinuate an idea of a world where humanity has eventually ceased to exist, leaving humans as automatons, machines without other feelings but hatred, anger, fear, and apathy?

I may have not read many classics just yet, but 1984 is without a doubt, one brilliant piece of literature. I was literally captivated with the story eversince reading the first page. It is, to be frank, rather strange of me since I am an avid romance reader and usually a book with little romance within scarcely intrigue me. But 1984, with so little romance and action in it, has successfully made me endure--happily endure to be precise--the bleak, gloomy storylines. It is just fascinating how a book with so grim a story can be so enthralling at the same time. The style of writing is also astonishingly brilliant. It can convey the most convoluted idea in such clarity thus making you fully comprehend the meaning of each and every passage.

I don't know about you, but my definition of a great book is that it makes you think. It makes you aware of things. It opens your eyes and extends your range of thought. And if you ask me, 1984 fits all the criteria.