Hergest Ridge

(Spoiler free, but does give a general idea of the plot)

Nineteen Eighty Four was in my hands before it had chance to gather dust on the mental ‘novels to read’ book shelve. It happened quite by chance, and had infact been a compromise to the main purpose for that day’s visit to the library. The title I was after was not available at the library branch I visited, and I had simply put in a request for it to be brought in. Not wanting to leave empty handed, I decided to look around and see what other goodies might turn up in the process. That’s when I found Nineteen Eighty Four.

It was only in the pages of 1984 that I realised the dual meaning of “Big Brother is watching you.” If Big Brother is trustworthy and really cares about those under him, the words are reassuring and comforting, but even an individual only partially lucid will agree that this portrait of the Big Brother is not the image that the mind conjures at instinct.

Orwell swiftly paints a hologram of a gray and drab world where the past, present and future is a product of a mastermind - The Party under the guise of Big Brother. Winston Smith is the main concern of the novel, and his experiences become the reader’s.

Here, I resist temptation to illustrate with clichés the success Orwell achieves in bringing the reader into this alternate universe, where the presiding social oppression becomes a cancer on the reader’s own mind. It’s no wonder then, that the heart and mind explodes with every positive emotion when this stoic stream of so called life is suddenly interrupted with three simple words - the last words one could imagine. I love you.

These spontaneous and unexpected written words tear out any remaining emotional detachments from the world at hand, and claim the reader as its citizen - Winston Smith the vehicle through it; It is where I completely surrendered myself to the world of 1984, only to suffer its twisted Doublethink, where two and two equals five, three, or any other and seemingly absurd solution.

In the words of Fredric Warburg, 1984 “is a great book, but I pray I may be spared from reading another like it for years to come.” Having read the final quarter of the book in one sitting, I hoped to end the therein torture sooner than later. Only by having read the novel in full had I learned that the suffering ends not with the novel, and that only ignorance or death can end the struggle.

Of the two, I’m pretty sure I know which will end it for me, but only insofar as my experience does not resemble that of Winston’s. Should the opposite manifest itself at any point, I’m afraid all bets are off.