1984 blog

     Something that stands out to me about this book or rather the society that was built in this book is the lack of empathy. Empathy just doesn’t exist in their society, it was driven out of them, no one cared about anyone else. People could form connections as we saw with Winston and Julia but they did not really care for each other. Empathy is an important part of humanity and it is the key to avoiding an Orwellian society. If we put people’s lives before profits and power and everything else then I think we'll be fine. There’s a lot that needs to be dealt with in our society and thankfully we have a chance to change the direction we’re heading in but we need to do it soon because we are running out of time. I would say that people need to be the priority and that’s exactly what’s missing from the 1984 society. Without people their society has no reason to exist and if all of the people are miserable or mindlessly being controlled does that really count? While we don’...

     I think that John and Winston are very similar as is the relationship between O’Brien and Winston, and the relationship between Mustapha Mond and John. Mustapha Mond allowed John to come back to/join their society, to live there, to experience it. John ended up being unhappy there and wanted to leave, so Mond let him leave. After leaving John thought he was free, he thought he had gotten away and could be happy, and then everything started to go downhill. People were watching him, and bothering him, and there was a  movie about him and etc.. John became miserable and ended up hanging himself. Mond was in control the entire time.       I think this is very similar to what happened with O’Brien and Winston. It starts off with Winston’s diary, and Winston thinking he had managed to rebel without being caught and then it goes even further with his relationship with Julia. He thought he found the Brotherhood and was willing to rebel. Then it is re...

 “How many fingers am I holding up Winston? “Four” “And if the Party says that it is not four but five, then how many?” “Four” This exchange on page 249 was very interesting and reminded me of the book Frindle. While I am aware that the point is that they can change what is true, they can control facts, I can’t stop seeing it as they control language. The words four and five in and of themselves are arbitrary, they mean nothing as themselves, their only meaning comes from how we define them. Here’s what reminded me of Frindle . In this book the main character, Nick, asks his teacher where words come from. Upon finding out that people create and define words he created the word frindle to replace the word pen. It becomes extremely popular and gains national attention, by the end of the book it’s been added to the dictionary. While this comparison obviously does not work in regards to changing historical events it does work in cases like four and five, where changing the word really...