George Orwell – 1984

George Orwell wrote his novel called 1984 in 1948. In that time it was something like science fiction. But unfortunately… some of the thoughts which we can find in this book came true later in totality system in USSR. And what is this book about? It describes the dark side of our mind, it shows us how bad things are people able to do, it steals our illusions. The directness which Orwell uses to explain the totality system scares us. The conditions for life in his writing are unbelievable. I – as a person that was brought up in democracy - can´t really imagine such interferences to peoples´ lives from the government. We are used to going wherever we want to, to doing whatever we want to and to thinking whatever we want to. All of these three “freedoms” vanished in Orwell´s book.

The people are controlled by their fear. They can´t even spend their spare time with the ones they love – instead of it they have to participate on stupid collective activities with the others. And they can never know who from their relatives, friends, co-workers etc. is an agent of Ideapolice. Their needs are never fully satisfied, they suffer for all of their lives. But these words refer only to one group of the inhabitants – about 13%. Of course there has to be the powerful group as well. These people are members of the “inner party”. They have nice houses, cars, good food and drinks…but that´s all. They don´t have any real competencies. The whole state is ruled by the Big Brother and maybe a very small group of people around him. The biggest group of population of the state is the “prolets” – people who are often illiterate, live in really bad conditions and are not very intelligent. Prolets listen to the songs which are made up by machinery, they love the state lottery and drink awful beer. On the other hand, they are free. They aren´t watched by the Big Brother in every second. They just try to live, I would say, like people before millions of years. They try to satisfy their basic needs like hunger, thirst, sexual urge etc. and to be happy.

The main character of this book belongs to the group of the outer party. Winston´s got a tiny flat in a block of flats on some of the big housing estates and lives alone. But he is never alone. There is a monitor in his flat. It can see him in every single minute he spends at home. And his job? He works on the ministry of truth and his task is to change the past. It sounds impossible but this novel tells us that it´s quite easy. You just take the information and change it. In all of the media, in the books, in textbooks. And people lose their memories if they can´t support them by the right facts. After couple of years you aren´t wholly sure if your country was in war with Eastasia ar Euroasia. Noone is sure. And you just believe to what you read or hear.

But the terror doesn´t end with this. We could talk about things like permanent war, secret listening device or propaganda. But the saddest thought of this book comes to my mind when I think of the institution of love. Love became only a word. As well as friendship, hope or help. And if someone tries not to conform – to love someone – the Party catches him and makes him love only one person - Big Brother. The most tragical moment of this book is this: everoyne betrays the one he loves if he is confronted with his worst nightmare.

I have read this book and I must say that it´s really very interesting. You just can´t stop reading because you are fascinated of the elaboracy of that disgusting system, you are trying to understand it, to understand why the people behave this way, why there are no protests against the system etc.
The most important thing related to this book for me is this: we can be happy that we can live in such a democratic state and be so much free. It´s not so apparent as it seems to be.