There is a reason this book has become such a classic. Even if it has been read once there is still so much hiding in this book that it is well worth a second, or third, read through.
I won’t go into the huge impact this book has had on the way we think of government, but I will tell you a little about why I think this story is still so relevant today.
The massive advances in technology have more than made many facets of George Orwell’s nightmare of a government possible. What he called ‘telescreens’ are really not so different from what we call home computers. The capability is there. Writing this book George Orwell could not have dreamed of the technology we have at our fingertips, but with great power comes great responsibility.
Freedom of speech may be enshrined in our Bill of Rights in the United States, but just because this admittedly great document says we have this freedom does not make it some sort of automatically granted eternal truth. It is something that we must protect day-in and day-out. In 1984 we see how Winston has become a cog in a massive bureaucracy, where it is impossible to question orders, or even to think of questioning orders. He spends his days working in the Ministry of Truth assisting the very government that he begins to despise…Why? Because he doesn’t see an alternative. There is no way for him to question the current system. He sees no way that one man could alter the course of a country. The consequence of everyone thinking that one man can do nothing is that no man does anything…
Information and communication are power in a democracy. It is also very important that we consider the direction of our government from time to time and ask ourselves if the direction is really in the best interest of the majority of the people. In the end I believe a middle aged man we learned about in history class in elementary school said it best near a small, hilly town in Pennsylvania when he said that there was a “great task before us..that the government OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people, shall not perish from the earth” (Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address) . He was referring to a civil war that threatened to permanently tear the country apart. However, I think there is an important point he is making here about what exactly it is that is worth fighting, and sacrificing, for. You cannot maintain a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, if the people cannot speak freely, or are not listened to when they do.
If anyone else has any comments about this book feel free and let me, and everyone else, know what you thought of it. What was the most important takeaway for you from the book?
ConversationLife 