1984 Book Summary and Review (with quotes and recommendations)
What You’ll Find In This Article:
1984 Book Summary and Review
And I’m back at it again with another review!
After a trip to the Discworld, and another one, and another one (starting to sound like either DJ Khaled or Busted at this point..), as well as fighting a curse laid by Poseidon himself, and even tagging along with the Devil and his posse for a trip to 1930s Moscow, I’ve jumped into the lands of a dystopian future (or past, depending on your viewpoint) that we can only hope to never find ourselves in.
Of course, I’m talking about 1984, by George Orwell.
Before I even start sharing my thoughts on this absolute masterpiece, let me give you a fair warning: this is NOT a book you’d want to read. Let me rephrase that, actually: this is NOT a book you’d want to read, unless you’d like your entire world shattered.
And I’m not talking about “shattered’ in the sense that BookTok girlies use it to describe their emotional state or Nesta’s pelvis after that kitchen scene in A Court of Silver Flames. I mean “shattered” as in your entire perception about the flow of information breaking into teeny-tiny pieces.
Because once you open your eyes to jump into the rabbit hole, there’s no coming back again. So if you are content with your life, and you feel like intense paranoia is something you’d rather not deal with for the next couple of weeks, then this book is definitely not for you.
If on the other hand, you’d like to take the red pill… “you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes".
Welcome, comrade, to Oceania, and remember: Big Brother is always watching you!
Meet Winston Smith. Winston is a low-ranking member of the party who works for the Ministry of Truth. Winston is a good member of the party, who knows that the party is always right. Because Winston is the one altering history, to fit the party’s narrative.
You know something is very, very wrong already from the opening line of 1984, which goes “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen"
Like everyone else in London, one of the main provinces of Oceania, Winston is leading a very controlled and monotonous life. He knows exactly when he will wake up, and what he will have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He knows when he will go to work and when he will come back. And he knows how the hours before bedtime will proceed.
But unlike almost everyone else, Winston slowly begins to crack under the pressure of this existence, and without knowing it, he begins searching for a way to break free.
The Worst Crime a Party Member Could Commit
You know, behavioural conditioning, whether in beasts or men, is an age-proven tactic for ensuring that the subject of the afore-mentioned conditioning behaves in certain ways. Ideally, ways that fit the narrative and life you’d like them to lead (and by extension, the life you’d like to lead).
But while beasts tend to remember the lessons imprinted upon them and rarely seek to challenge authority once the change is fully in effect, men are no so easily tamed. Mostly, because of a pesky little thing I like to call “the human spirit”.
It’s an annoying bugger, honestly. You can beat, bribe, brake, and even bamboozle anyone for years-on-end, maybe even for their entire life, and you’d still find it hard to extinguish that little spark of rebelliousness. And once it’s ignited, it makes itself known not through bold acts of heroism or famous last stands - it becomes known through the overwhelming lack of impulse control to do something small and forbidden. A little, secret victory over your oppressor, to remind you that you are still human and you still have a will of your own.
As I said: an annoying little bugger. For Winston, a man who has only ever known the voice and face of Big Brother, monitoring his every move, that small act of rebelliousness comes when he acts upon an uncontrollable impulse and acquires a diary.
At first, he starts small. A word here, a sentence there. But soon, the fire of his soul is poured into the pages of this diary, the one thing in this world that is his and his alone. And thus, poor Winston commits the worst crime a party member could ever do - a thoughtcrime (thinking outside the idea of the party).
An Unexpected Affair
We’ve all been warned at some point in our lives about the avalanche effect - how one small action can cascade into another, bigger one, and then another, and another, until you find yourself neck-deep in a peculiar situation, wondering “How the hell did I get here?”
Winston’s small act of defiance grows into a full-blown rebellion against the doctrines of the party when he meets Julia, a young and bold woman who shares his discontent of the life led under party rule. It doesn’t take long for the two to begin a love affair. And soon after that, thoughtcrime becomes actions, as the two are approached by the enigmatic figure of O’Brien and inducted into the ranks of the Brotherhood.
Big Brother Sees All
Through his work, Winston is introduced to O’Brien, a high-ranking party member, whom Winston quickly suspects of harbouring thoughts, similar to his own. His suspicions prove true when O’Brien revelas to him and Julia that there is in fact a resistance forming against the party, known simply as the Brotherhood.
Enamoured by the idea of the Brotherhood, the lovers throw their hats in with O’Brien, and for a brief period of time there is hope for a better tomorrow. Yet both Winston and Julia have forgotten a fundamental truth, which should have been drilled into their very soul by that moment: Big Brother is always watching you!
For alas, O’Brien is actually a member of the Thought Police, who have been on to Winston almost since the beginning, playing a cruel game of cat and mouse with him.
If you think this book has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention
Winston and Julia are both captured by O’Brien, separated and tortured to reveal the depths of their betrayal. But this is not a democracy. There are no human rights. There is no law to save you from the Thought Police. There is only Big Brother and the party.
Winston is systematically broken down in the course of years, his mind torn apart piece by piece by O’Brien. Remember when I talked about the human spirit above, and called it a pesky little bugger that’s hard to destroy? Hard. Not impossible.
For eventually even the mightiest steele must either bend or break, and for Winston that moment comes when he willingly betrays Julia. O’Brien is finally satisfied and Winston is released back into society. But he is not the same man. Gone is the dreamer that had questions and opinions of his own. In his place, there is but a shell of a man, who is perfectly willing to accept that “2+2=5” if the party says so.
And worst of all, before the final page, the man who used to be Winston feels a deep and sincere love for Big Brother…
1984 Review and Final Thoughts
1984 is a book, which I think should be read at least once every couple of years. Or at the very least, every adult should have read once in their life.
It’s a book depicting a grotesque totalitarian future (from the perspective of Orwell) and most people treat it as fiction, without realizing that most of the morbid depictions are taken straight out of history. If you were to look at our not-so-distant past, you’d be shocked how eerily close some of the depictions in 1984 come to real actions performed by various regimes.
But what’s scarier than that is if you gave some thought about the truth of information and freedoms we have as a society today, and realize that what Orwell wrote as a warning is in some cases being used as an instruction manual.
With social media, AI content flooding the internet, and most media in the western world being owned by one family, it is truly terrifying how a small fraction of people have the power to rewrite and manipulate truth, history and even our perception of reality.
I can only hope in my heart that even though a “Big Brother” will always find their way to the top, they will forever find it difficult to extinguish the human spirit, and the individual’s desire for liberty.
Books Like 1984
The power of 1984 is in how close it hits to home, and how plausible that dystopian future looks like.
Immediately after reading it, I asked myself “What are books like 1984 by George Orwell?” so I went and did a little research on the matter. I’d like to share my findings below with anyone interested in continuing their literary journey with works that are dystopian, political, thought-provoking, and often more than a bit disturbing.
Some of the below I’ve read already, and some are still on my TBR (to-be-read) list, so I’d love to hear your suggestions about books that I can add/replace from this list.
Needless to say, some (or all) of these contain affiliate links, since I am very fond of the idea of, you know, food…
Books like 1984 by George Orwell
Classics of Dystopia & Political Control
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley – A must-read alongside 1984. Where Orwell feared oppression, Huxley feared distraction.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – A society where books are outlawed and "firemen" burn them.
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin – Written in 1921, this heavily influenced Orwell; totalitarian control and loss of individuality.
Animal Farm by George Orwell – Satirical, allegorical look at the corruption of revolutionary ideals.
Mid-20th Century & Cold War Paranoia
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess – Free will vs. state control in a violent near-future Britain.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – A chilling theocratic dictatorship controlling women’s bodies and roles.
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler – A psychological and political exploration of show trials and authoritarian regimes.
Contemporary & Modern Dystopias
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro – Subtle, haunting dystopia wrapped in a coming-of-age story.
The Circle by Dave Eggers – A near-future Silicon Valley world where privacy is eliminated in the name of transparency.
The Power by Naomi Alderman – A speculative dystopia where gender roles flip through the emergence of a new power dynamic.
Cult & Philosophical Explorations of Control
Lord of the Flies by William Golding – Breakdown of civilization and rise of tyranny on a deserted island.
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin – A more hopeful but still challenging look at anarchism vs. capitalism.
Atlas Shrugged or Anthem by Ayn Rand – Love them or hate them, both explore collectivism vs. individualism in dystopian tones.
My Favorite 1984 Book Quotes
Finally, before we wrap this up, I wanted to share some of my favourite 1984 book quotes, which made me personally fall in love with the book.
“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”
“We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
If you’ve enjoyed this 1984 book summary and review, as well as my list of books like 1984 and selection of my favorite 1984 book quotes, then strap onto your seat, because you’ve been paying attention to my series of book reviews so far, you will definitely be surprised (NOT) by what comes next.
That’s right, back to the Discworld be go for yet another adventure with our favourite team of overpaid and under-qualified wizards in Unseen Academics by Terry Pratchett!
Join me in exploring an alarmingly plausible dystopian future in George Orwell’s masterpiece. Check out our 1984 book summary and review, my list of books like 1984, and my favourite 1984 book quotes!