I Finally Read 1984

A Review of "1984" by George Orwell

Since this book has been so widely analyzed and pretty much everyone and their mother have read it, this review will be brief and take a different tone.

In my sophomore year of high school, we were tasked with choosing a dystopia to read and write an essay on. 1984 was an option, but my eyes went to The Long Walk by Stephen King (which is now being adapted into a movie). I graduated high school. I got my B.A. in English. I was accepted into grad school, and still, I hadn’t read 1984. What kind of English student was I to have not read fucking 1984?

So I picked it up from my local library and cracked it open.

What initially surprised me about the book was the lack of subtlety I expect from most classics. It read like a true speculative science fiction with the exposition dumps and layered worldbuilding that I struggle to find in most literary fiction, though I went in completely blind (somehow, I’d managed to avoid everything about the book’s actual content) and expected the highly metaphorical purple prose of a standard mandatory school read.

I can easily see my teenage self not enjoying this book. I didn’t know enough about the world at sixteen to have appreciated it like I do now at twenty-four, and would have written it off as another ‘old book for old people.’ Ah, youth. But I finished 1984 with interest and ease.

What I found most interesting was the book’s exploration of truth and reality. The Party’s manipulation of information and history, their fabrication of ‘the enemy’ (fake wars, fake manifestos), and the subsequent gaslighting all create a kind of new ‘reality.’ When reading the final act, where Winston is physically and mentally tortured to ‘cure’ him of refusing this fabricated reality, the book poses the question: Who controls the truth? In modern America, the answer to that question is disheartening.

I’m happy I waited to read 1984. The book’s pacing, characters, and explorations of sexual repression and identity kept me turning the pages. As a protagonist, Winston was flawed and generally dislikeable, and I think that was the point. He’s sexually and psychologically repressed, exhausted from maintaining a public persona, and has no meaningful relationships. That’s what the Party wants from its citizens. I’d be pretty unlikeable, too.

There are quite a few other classics I avoided with a ten-foot pole as a teenager: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wuthering Heights, and Pride and Prejudice. Stay tuned for more “I Finally Read…” by subscribing below!