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  • Haunting. Profound. Terrifyingly imminent. Orwell's words echo today louder than before.

    We hear them on propaganda news outlets.

    We hear them in the hawkish rhetoric of politicians as they enact The Patriot Act, NDAA and SOPA.

    We see words in printed documents: "Indefinite detention of US citizens, without trial or charge" "On suspicion only"

    We see the cameras of Big Brother, staring with soulless tireless eyes.

    We see the police state, Men in black armor suing weapons on us.

    It's 1984

  • The first version of Matrix was Paradise. But EVERYONE DISBELIEVED that fake reality.

  • In short, the hero lost.

  • He wrote a bible.

  • love the book, but the reader lacks something.. Voice?

  • Noooooooooooo

  • This book is so relevant today. Everyone should read it.

  • This book is so relevant today. Everyone should read it.

  • Do you realize what this means?

  • prophet

  • Do any of the kids reading 1984 for English Class connect the dots to what's hapening now? .......hope so......."War is Peace"......"Hope"...and .."Change".

  • I think Orwell got a MSN message @ 0:42

  • Probably the greatest visionary of all time, everything he said is slowly becoming a reality.

  • "He loved Big Brother" . . . sounds like bad news -- right?

    But maybe . . . Winston has learned that he has a CHOICE to love Big Brother . . . or not.

    What's truly bad news . . . is if you DON'T have a choice.  If you can only do what you're CONDITIONED to do by circumstances.

    Hate Big Brother today . . . but love him tomorrow (when he gives you a government job)?

    Love Julia today . . . but hate her tomorrow (when she's old or infirm)?

    Try it out yourself: love Big Brother (!)

  • whe all live in orwell's dreams.

  • @Iceyyyyyage or precisely in Orwell's nightmare.

  • @JustSum13lse Don't fear for the system too much. I'm 14 and I have read 1984 twice. People always generalise our generation as messed up, but they only look at a few of the worst examples of teenagers.

  • Genius

  • my little cousin had never heard of this book. It was required reading when i was in school. I am 28, he is 23. Shows how much the system changed within a 4-5 year period. Fucking crazy. He is intelligent and already saw the similarities but i could not believe he had never even heard of it.

  • @JustSum13lse

    ...? What are you talking about? I'm 16 and it's required reading.

  • who is the voice?

  • This book was definitely chilling, i had hoped against all doubt that he would remain unbroken, even if that only meant him able to die hating bog brother. He wasn't even allowed the freedom for that.

  • anyone catch that msn 'contact online' sound?

  • Such an amazing book. So many messages that let us know that it is up to the people to put the government in it's place. Books like these are so important in todays society, where the coruption and greed of our governments is masked by lies and propoganda. If you like this book you should also try reading Brave New World and Island by Aldous Huxley.

  • Sad thing that such a strong man could not hold out until the end. Some of these things are happening now.. We have dumbed down our communicative powers considerably.

  • profound

  • This is a modern classic...and it still kicks up political and existential questions that need to be looked at.

  • The end is so depressing. I wonder what Orwell wanted to say with it. That it is pointless to resist totaliterian terror? I can not really imagine that but it seems that way.

  • @ichmagkirschen1

    No, quite the contrary.

  • @ichmagkirschen1 i don't think the ending was saying anything, orwell was just ending his story.

  • @ichmagkirschen1

    His point is precisely for the lovers of free will & free,humane societies to always be vigilant,suspicious & active in combating those institutional elements which could support such a state.

    We're supposed to be absolutely horrified at the prospects that such a system of control could potentially exist,especially when living in a nominally 'free society.'

    For the book to end on some hollywood heroic note wouldn't have done it's vision justice in my view.

  • @thirdshift47 Sure, a hoolywood ending wouldnt have fit the book. It just seems to me like Orwell is saying that the totaliterian system always wins against the individual. But i think your right and maybe he wants to say that once things have gone as bad as in 1984, there is no way back to a free society.

  • @ichmagkirschen1

    For Orwell Totalitarianism does always defeat the individual when that individual is a 'minority of one.'

    But when the masses become conscious of the superiority of their collective solidarity against the state & their capacity for self-determination(instead of buying into the states false delimmas,e.g.,big vs small government,individualism vs collectivism,liberalism vs conservatism,black vs white,native vs immigrant,whatever)only then is real struggle possible.

  • Both Oceania, Eurasia and Lestasia are THE SAME REGIME. "They are as 3 rifles in a three-some arrangement. Each one support the others, and this support is the WAR as an excuse for Totalitarianism DICTATORSHIP. As Eternal Peace could support them, Eternal War does the same job. That's why WAR = PEACE." 

  • This reminds me of RATM's song, bullet in the head

  • This book gives you so much to think about.

  • @PubicMen

    Not really. The book has no real message behind it(except that totalitarian systems are eeeeeevil) and has low literate value. 

  • I am currently developing an indepentend video game based upon totalitarian and dystopian themes.

    1984 has definitely influenced this project.

  • @AnttiApinaPro A worthy project indeed. Make it smart, crafty, devious.....puzzle within a riddle wrapped up in an enigma.....scary real insights about people/power, etc.....then blow stuff up in the end.

    Good luck with it.

  • @AnttiApinaPro

    Tell me when you`ve finished it!

  • You have completely become yourself... It is now WindowsXX and

    you are as bionic as a tin of sardines. BOTS WIN, BOTS WIN !!!!!

    They cry out for more, more... and soon YOU WILL BE SOMEONE

    COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. -BIG BROTHER FINALLY BECOMES BIG SISTER..... "i always hated those people with glasses, so machine like,

    cold and uncaring" - winston

  • @warforoil you mean minitrue.

  • NPR just fired Jaun Williams for expressing an honest thought.............NPR will defend itself with words like "journalistic integrity"....(like they know what that means).

    Lots of strife, but hey, WAR IS PEACE

  • Watch out @peppilepiu Big Brother NPR is watching YOU!

  • @ssgduke56 GULP!!!

  • Their is only one Country that comes close to George Orwell book "1984" and that is North Korea! Kim Jon ill is "Big Brother"! And Big Brother is Watching You in North Korea!!!

  • @ssgduke56 The difference between Oceania and North Korea is that the Oceanian leaders know EXACTLY how to hang on to power, However, North Korean leaders are corrupt and inneficient. You're right though, they're pretty close.

  • @ssgduke56 Good comparison, but wrong. The country that resembles the world in the book 1984 more than any other country is the United States. Denial of this revelation is the ultimate proof.

  • Hey @Blink316E ! Your tin foil hat is showing! I guess that foil hat did not work for the nasty conspiracy I hate America is still broadcasting to you! You should take it off for it is really killing what few brain cells you have left moron!

  • @ssgduke56 Hey, at least the tin foil works. Keep eating the High Fructose Corn-syrup and sodium phosphate that none of us can escape. Yum, yum. Double-plus-good.

  • @Blink316E Well well! You have just proven that wearing those tin foil hats to tight do destroy brain cells?! And by your pathetic reply it shows that you have very little brains cells left! Nice try with that pathetic comeback foolish boy!

  • @ssgduke56 I guess the word "Sarcasm" sounds Korean to you.

  • @Blink316E

    I deny it.

  • This ending was just so perfect. I kind-of expected it, but at the same time I was blown away whenever I read it.

  • btw.....does anyone see the similarity between the pissed off rants on Youtube..and the "2 minutes hate"

  • Whats that Brit saying about "What is matter...never mind.....What is mind.....no matter.

  • So sad. Everytime I read the ending I cry.

    "He loved Big Brother". No freedom at all. Even one's mind and one's individuality belongs to the party. It's so depresing and well written. Orwell was really a genius.

  • @fisyr i must completely agree with you. It is so well written that by the end you are hyper aware of things. Its scary because it hits a chord on a very deep level for most intelligent beings.

  • Goldstein = Trotsky = Lucifer . Any Totalitarianism needs the ENEMY as an excuse for TERROR and DICTATORSHIP.

  • @fisyr in my mind while reading the end i imagined Baby your a Rich man playing in the background, tell you the truth i feel that synthetic happinese is still hapinese.

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  • come and get me

  • trillions of words written on the George Orwell,s masterpiece by better writers than me so ... WE THE PEOPLE!

  • After reading all of these comments, I think a totalitarianistic socialism is more comfortable. Send me, the ignorant refuse, to this world of wonder.

  • in the end big bro was victorious

  • Voice of Frank Muller. You're welcome.

  • statism is religion. Public Education is a twelve year process of indoctrinating youth into the memes of uncritical obedience to arbitrary power, and to believe that they are free, without ever really knowing what freedom is. The only cirriculum is "do as your told", so most people, having never had a days solititude grow up with the very shallow sense of self which characterizes those under the control of religious or political ideologies, which are social engineering mechanisms.

  • @Fathoms2004 yeah because it is better to let children go to private schools where they teach creationism instead of accepted science... Please.. I don't know how the public education work to the fullest in the USA. But I find abhorrent that people in the Texas school board can and try to rewrite history and try to get in bullshit like creationism. It does not work like that where I live.

  • @Eopyk apparently you don't live in Texas so move along.

  • @Eopyk dude... Where doe's matter come from? ...

  • @tmovboy What does that have to do with 1984 ? Well I can give an awsner anyway. Even if no real awsner can be given atm

    Well matter cannot be created nor destroyed.. just change shape... so ever thought the thought that it might have always existed in one form or another ? Think about it :)

  • @Fathoms2004 Public school, private school...the advocates argue on and on none of it means a thing. Know why? Because neither option lets THE STUDENTS have a say in their education. If you really want the new generation to think freely, give them some actual freedom for once.

  • I remember this was the first book that almost made me cry. Something about him finally being broken got to me.

  • @TheAssholearchist Same here, man. Same here. This is down to a T the best book I've read.

  • @TheAssholearchist

    I like the "almost" you've got in there (-;

  • "War is coming. 1941, they say...It's all going to happen. All the things you've got at the back of your mind, the things you're terrified of, the things that you tell yourself are just a nightmare or only happen in foreign countries. The bombs, the food-queues, the rubber truncheons, the barbed wire, the coloured shirts, the slogans, the enormous faces, the machine-guns squirting out of bedroom windows. It's all going to happen."

    — George Orwell: "Coming Up for Air," p. 274

  • I love Coming Up for Air...and A Clergyman's Daughter...but my fave book of all time is Keep The Aspidistra Fying, what do u think of it?

  • I've not read "Coming Up for Air" & "A Clergyman's Daughter" in their entirety, so I'll lay those aside. "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" (it's been 25 yrs. since I'd read it) contains the allusion to a young woman's ability to erase all thoughts of egalitarianism from a young man's mind...My favorite of Orwell's work (more so even than "1984") is "Burmese Days" specifically the interactions amongst the members of the English-only club.

  • What's your favourite part? Mine is...he throws London Pleasures down the drain...he examines the feeling it produces...it's RELIEF!!!

  • In "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" I like the scene in the restaurant & his description of the lifeless/colorless food. Orwell had a way of ruining any meal. Although I admire the man for his contribution to quashing empire by exposing the elitists' plans for creating a hell-on-Earth, one must come to conclusion that ol' Eric Blair was not the neighborly type. One can't imagine him with a "Save the Manatee" license plate nor buying cookies from Girl Scouts.

  • This is the George Orwell´s voice?

  • This isn't Orwell's voice.

  • "The answer to 1984 is 1776"

  • He loved Big Brother

    idk about others but that gave me the chills when i read it

  • omg...makes me shake

  • @whathappenedtojake yeah me too, i was like "shit..." also when they said "we are the dead" and Julia said "we are the dead" and the the telescreen outa fucking nowhere "you are the dead" even though a book it was spooky as shit!

  • @whathappenedtojake you should have a reward for all your comment thumbs up!

  • @whathappenedtojake That's the thing that gets me about reading dystopia! I'm yet to read a dystopian novel with a HAPPY ending! And that's what makes 1984 so awesome! and frustrating!!

  • @whathappenedtojake

    Such an eye-opening book! Made you think.

  • @whathappenedtojake It made me very, very pissed off. They won. I couldn't stand it.

  • Embrace your annihilation.

    Win the love of your killer.

    The coward's climax.

  • i love the way its red!!!

  • I have just read Orwells book 'Road to Wigan Pier' and its like it was written yesterday, not unlike 1984. A writer many years ahead of his time and in my opinion very underated. Try & get hold of a copy.

  • 1984 is good but it is sooo depressing . The appendix about taking away the language piece by piece is facinating. If you are a bit of an intellectual and bemoan the lack of intellectual comedy have a gander at Kerou(.)net Its funny and also a little bit thinky.

  • i read the book (in dutch) yesterday and the ending was very sad. But the part where he was held prisoner with O'Brien was heartbreaking. I needed to put the book down for a minute or 2 cause the line :" if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face...forever" was too much. The truth hurts. George Orwell was a clear case of : ' let's shoot the messenger' while many people saw him as a prophet.

  • The Complete Patriot's Guide to Oligarchical Collectivism: its Theory and Practice states there are four types of people in the world according to mentality; idiots, zealots, elitists and patriots.

  • He looks like Sean Penn to me

  • i always tend to find that authors have the best story-telling voices.

  • The cult of personality will always seem to us something mystical and terrible.The aura of mystery allows a party to be immortal.For example, in my country of 70 years trusted that Lenin alive and will live.

  • Orwell has followed traditions of the great pessimism peculiar for the literature of 20 centuries.The human can't struggle with party.Totalitarianism this is and strong because has frozen a history and deformed moral where people can't experience anything besides slavish adoration.

  • some many comments, so much misunderstanding.

    big brother is the "ideal" you hand your soul too. wether voluntarily or by force, during a short torture session or over 40 years of chipping away at the nature of who you are.

    big brother could be anything. communism and/or fascism? sure , but don't leave out liberalism or conservatism and of course the least obvious of all but the one i think Orwell was really talking about. RELIGION.

  • the ending is realistic. I mean think about it, even if you rebel, the government will always be able to break you and change the very way you think. to get an idea of this, if for some reason, hitler were tortured as an enemy of the state, they could turn him into jesus christ. the fact that they can do that is frightening. The people will never rebel, either because they do not know or do not care. In the end the dissident will die and life will move on. That's the reality of Orwell's ending.

  • 1984 is the ultimate swing at god. loved the book. read it. even if you have, its worth a reread.

  • EXACTLY, you'll never get the average social conservative fundy to believe that, they could read it a thousand time and still only see "commies"

  • You're an idiot. God has nothing to do with it.

    Don't you remember the conversation in the interrogation scene where O'Brien asks Winston, rather incredulously, if he is basing his defiance on a belief in God and Winston replies in the negative?

    The world of '1984' is a completely atheistic one, devoid of all hope in a higher power to appeal to for justice or goodness.

    There is just the State, and that's all there ever will be.

  • whether or not the setting is an atheistic world is irrelevant. there are a ton of parallels you can draw to the belief that there is a god, the ultimate big brother. in fact, its funny you brought up being devoid of all hope in a higher power. they were devoid of any real hope, period. all of their hopes were based on the fictional world they lived in that existed as big brother imagined it. its very similar to religious hope because it isnt real hope as it is based on a fictional worldview

  • You can interpret 1984 in a multitude of ways, that's one of its appeals to pseudo-intellectual idiots nowadays (like the leftist morons who parrot it's mantras, but continue to call for increasing government control of our lives).

    However, that doesn't change Orwell's original intent, not to issue some veiled discouragement of people from believing in God, but to warn of excessive governmental authority and the breakdown and remaking of societies for the sake of control.

  • And how can you possibly say Orwell's specific designation of his own literary world as atheistic is "irrelevant"? What a moronic thing to say.

    Of course it's "relevant", otherwise he wouldn't have bothered to mention it. He was obviously referencing the communist countries where atheism was mandated by the state, and which he probably saw as being the norm in the future (which it certainly looks like it's on its way to becoming).

  • i dont think so. I think religion is the best way to make people think anything to be true.

    dont you think that?

  • I agree, religious believers are the most gullible people alive.

  • Blind followers are. Atheist's in there own way are themselves.

  • Atheism isn't a religion though. It's the lack of religion. Religion is a great way to influence the masses though. That amount of blind faith would be easily shaped to one's liking.

  • TheSilhouette Orwells book was about totalitarianism be it from the right or the left. But Orwell himself discribed himself as Democratic socialist like Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Olof Palme, Celement Atlee ,Tommy Douglas , Golda Mier etc.

    Emm of where does it say atheism is becoming mandated by the state we have secular states in the west not the same as atheist state. In the USA we see a rise of Christian fundamentalism so I more worried about Christian theocracy taking over.

  • I always found it endearing how Orwell very humbly depicted the tyranny rising from his own political camp. Lot of people aren't willing to admit that's possible.

  • I fully agree ;)

  • Rise of Christian fundamentalism, my ass. The fundies in the US are just used by the powers that be as a dumb voting block for the support of Israel and other Neo-con endeavors. They have no real power in of themselves.

    And I know Orwell was a socialist. You don't need to tell me that.

    As for the atheist issue - while its never said that atheism is enforced, it's strongly implied that the society of 1984 is atheistic. It's a world where all that exists in the minds of the people is the State.

  • @TheSilhouette Im not so sure about that. I always found the people to worship big brother as a god. And he certainly sounded like God in the book.

  • Orwell never claimed to be prophetic but it was intended to be a warning. I think there is a tendency to think Orwell was just warning against Communism...He wasn't. He was warning against the totalitarian state. A warning that still rings true to this day

  • the warning is going to be set in next month mst likely with this new slime flu vaccine. we will see

  • orwell was a stalwart anti-fascist who fought in the spanish civil war. by 1948 when he wrote 1984 he realized that we had defeated nazism, the greater evil only to realize that stalin's red fascism the lesser evil was still massively evil. the extreme brutality of stalinism has yeilded to a kinder gentler globalism. the basic dehumanization though has not been affected. aside from this orwell was virtually prohetic. so was huxley's brave new world written in the early30s.
  • This is slowly happening now and we don't even realize it!

  • I wish he was reading this instead of you.

  • HE IS NOT COMPLETELY BRAINWASHED, think about it he was still having trouble with the 2+2=5, as he never put the answer down, not all hope was lost

  • youre missing the point of the book

  • hope was lost the second a bullet entered his temperal lobe.

  • 1984 is my bible!

  • so, is the bullet entering his brain a real bullet or a metaphor or both

  • he is sort of dreaming that they will probably kil him still but the story ends with he loved big brother

  • ooooh thanks

  • They WILL kill him....

  • I know they will but the book ends before that in winstons daydream (if that is the right term)

  • i got into the book so much i didnt watch tv or go on the computer until i was done. I got so into the book that when i finished i felt like a whole world had just been destroyed, i almost cried that book captiveted me like no other book

  • Yeah man i almost cry is like fuck all youre fucking theory of god the goverment and other things just go with the sanity of winston that by the party is seen as insanity is just some deep shit

  • without doubt the most soul crushing last line to any book i've ever read. the implication that the system will always win over the individual is pure torment.

    but a vital piece of work no dount, hopefully keeping warning of what might happen.

  • Wow, the ending is a slap to the face. You think everythingd gonna be alright, big brother falls, but no. It sticks to reality. No good happens. He ends up like the others. No sarcasm here, but good job, George Orwell.

  • The ending is a slap in the face????

    The fact Orwell wrote about this sort of shit decades and decades and decades ago, yet it continues to play out exactly as he warned is a slap in the face.

    The ending is simply fact.

  • Ironic that he based his police state / totarianism books on communist russia. When it applies so well to our nation now.

  • It was not a criticism of communism, it was a criticism of totalitarianism. Orwell was a marxist

  • he was untill he became disillusioned with communism during the spanish civil war. animal farm was a criticism of communism in russia. he was socialist not communist.

  • Exactly. There's a difference between communism and socialism (obviously) and he was a democratic socialist.

  • Orwell was not a marxist.

  • He definetly hated stalinism, but that does not make you anti marx... if you ever decide to check out any of marx's work he doesn't say anything about mass executions and slave labour camps.

  • marx didnt managed too see the 1 rouge element in his plan the human element maxisme can only work if even the highest of highest are truly dedcated

  • he was socialist

  • The world may never know how important this man is. I hope we do not ignore his warning and give up our humanity for delusional safety. I pray we don't lower ourselves to a piece of information and lose everything that makes us innately human. If you have never read 1984 or Animal Farm, go to the Library right now.

  • omg...crying

  • 911 was an inside job.You Tube is part of the Ministry of Truth.

  • oh noes!

  • so why have you got an account with youtube then, you dumb fuck!

  • You are a shill,aren't you ? I suppose you think Emmanuel Goldstein and the Brotherhood did 9/11 ?

  • big brother did do 9/11...

  • Absolutely.And they blamed it on Emmanuel Goldstein and the Brotherhood.

  • Ingsoc is Democratic neoliberalism

  • Yes indeed. And I'm sad that it is not acknowledged enough

  • Orwell's prophet for predicting Chinese Culture Revolution.

  • i liked more the voice in my mind when i read it.

  • I miss George Orwell. I miss him dearly and I never met him. He saw his times more clearly than most. There is so little difference from generation to generation, though we'd like to believe otherwise. A war against our minds, always.. always..

  • that is bleakest ending that anyone could have given - orwell does not let not even the slightest dim of light enter 1984 - as he had said 1984 is not a prediction of how the future will look like,it is merely a warning of where the future might turn (or is already turning..)

  • It is pure dystopia, I love the way he submits in the end to society. All is well.

  • lol, i hear George Orwell's msn @ 0:44

  • War is peace/Freedom is slavery/Ignorance is strength/Black is beautiful.....the media is brainwashing you.

  • Shit youre right! I always thought he was shot! He only dreamt it...

  • I don't understand the ending. Is is happy or tragic?

  • In a way, it is happy, since Winston's struggle with the truth has ended. In a way, it is tragic for the very same reason.

  • It is happy for his body, because it does not need to suffer anymore. It happy for him if you think about Winston as an animal. But he wast completly defeated as a human. He has lost everything as a Winston Smith. At the end they took away even his hatred towards Big Brother wich he wanted to hide deep inside his heart and release it in the last moment of his life to show THEM that they could not completly break him. And also, he had betrayed Julia. He was betrayed by her. They both have lost.

  • Is that Eric Arthur Blair speaking?.

  • I seem to remember reading no recording of Orwell's voice exists. Either way this isn't him.