Orwell has simply created nothing short of a masterpiece
By Debbie
Standing far above of many contemporaries cluttering the book shelves with trite fantasies or glib endings, Orwell has simply created nothing short of a masterpiece. Here is novel flavoured intensely with daring philosophical discourses, the age old concerns of human nature and order, lust, the pleasures of secrecy, even paired with the thrill of the vanquished and most captivating, the catch 22 state of affairs.
As the reader breathes through the exploits of Winston Smith, finding hope in Orwell’s allusions of him usurping the role of superman for Oceania, we find pleasure in rebellious ways with the dissenter Julia, and his awareness of the ministries exploits. Didactically, Orwell allows us to find small pleasures in the novel as Winston does also, making 1984 an enthralling read. However, true to the novel sinuous mode, capture proves just as exciting as freedom for the protagonist and the reader, distinct from many other texts is left a fleeting participant in the Orwell’s work of fiction never attributing loyalty to one character (and of which some would say leaves us the villain in the book.) Winston, Julia and O’Brian development as characters leave them far from paper thin and give the novel a depth where the reader understands each plight.
Amidst the many notions of Ingsoc, Newspeak and even the feigned perennial war, the prized notion remains, Doublethink- imaginative brilliance-controlling the proles, the outer party and of course the reader also. Both in fear and awe as to whether truth lies behind such foreign, avant-garde concepts of intellectual blindness to contradictions in a belief system, the reader is eventually drawn fully into the world of Oceania. Orwell’s ending serves dutifully to such a well intertwined storyline, giving the reader just enough scope to imagine and wonder simultaneously, undoubtedly making this book Orwell’s true ‘Magnum Opus.’
Written in the bleak year of 1949, George Orwell has managed through the effervescence of his ideas, to carry such fervent concepts through to the modern age, indeed still postulating whether the book stands far from reality. The strength in number, the prime failure of the proles, alludes to the strength in knowledge, which Orwell offers to us in abundance here.