1984

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Since debuting in 1949, George Orwell’s authoritarian dystopia, a staple among top 100 lists of all time, has been banned repeatedly for political and sexual content. In what may be literature’s most knee-jerk reaction, one Florida jurisdiction even challenged it as recently as 1981 for being pro-communist. Clearly, Orwell was not on the side of Big Brother, who controls society, history, and the future through such institutions as Thought Police and Newspeak. Social commentators over the past four years have drawn on the news to illustrate Orwell’s prescience, citing revisionist history on both ends of the political spectrum. But regardless of one’s politics, this suspenseful tale of hope defeated deserves a second look.

I first read 1984 in college, when the romance essential to the plot might reasonably have made the biggest impact. Yet the image that remained forty years later was neither that nor the uneasiness of a world where survival requires mastery of Double Think in order to keep abreast of the lies. The thing I could not forget was the sheer terror of Room 101, where nightmares are manifest through virtual reality. In the case of Wynston Smith (played by John Hurt in the most recent film version), that is the threat of rats being released onto his face, which forces his betrayal of the girlfriend I had forgotten.

Trigger Warning: if you are prone to depression, loneliness, disillusion, or ennui, this is not the book for you.