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Loading... 1984by George Orwell
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0451524934, Mass Market Paperback)George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision of "Negative Utopia" is timelier than ever-and its warnings more powerful.Amazon.com (ISBN 0451524934, Mass Market Paperback)"Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere."The year is 1984; the scene is London, largest population center of Airstrip One. Airstrip One is part of the vast political entity Oceania, which is eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia and Eastasia. At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or that it has always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Winston Smith knows this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth involves the constant "correction" of such records. "'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'" In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid fiction. He knows the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual passion. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be. Newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrime--in 1984, George Orwell created a whole vocabulary of words concerning totalitarian control that have since passed into our common vocabulary. More importantly, he has portrayed a chillingly credible dystopia. In our deeply anxious world, the seeds of unthinking conformity are everywhere in evidence; and Big Brother is always looking for his chance. --Daniel Hintzsche Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0452262933, Paperback)First appearing in 1949, the novel 1984 seemed like a nightmarish vision of the future in a totalitarian world. Playing on the public's worst fears about governmental control, different readings saw the former Soviet Union as the object of satire, while others focused on increasingly powerful democratic governments.The title, George Orwell’s 1984, part of Chelsea House Publishers’ Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on George Orwell’s 1984 through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on George Orwell, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0452284236, Paperback)Thought Police. Big Brother. Orwellian. These words have entered our vocabulary because of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel, 1984. The story of one man's nightmare odyssey as he pursues a forbidden love affair through a world ruled by warring states and a power structure that controls not only information but also individual thought and memory, 1984 is a prophetic, haunting tale.More relevant than ever before, 1984 exposes the worst crimes imaginable-the destruction of truth, freedom, and individuality. With a new forward by Thomas Pynchon. Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0451516753, Paperback)The George Orwell classic with an afterword and bibliography.Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0679417397, Hardcover)(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Nineteen Eighty-Four revealed George Orwell as one of the twentieth century’s greatest mythmakers. While the totalitarian system that provoked him into writing it has since passed into oblivion, his harrowing cautionary tale of a man trapped in a political nightmare has had the opposite fate: its relevance and power to disturb our complacency seem to grow decade by decade. In Winston Smith’s desperate struggle to free himself from an all-encompassing, malevolent state, Orwell zeroed in on tendencies apparent in every modern society, and made vivid the universal predicament of the individual. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:17 -0400) |
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