MY OPINION: *
TW: r*pe and murder
SPOILERS AND I DON'T CARE B/C YOU HAVE EITHER READ THE BOOK ALREADY OR YOU SHOULD JUST NEVER READ THE BOOK FOR THE REASONS LISTED BELOW
I want to say that this will be a short review for a multitude of reasons, mainly that I am too busy to write this right now and that I simply hated this book too much to think about it for an extended period of time.
This is going to be a pure rant so if you haven't read the book, I'm sorry but don't expect a plot summary.
I read this book for AP Literature and it is definitely my least favorite book that I've had to read for school, though I've hated a fair amount of them. I personally could not stomach anything about this book from the plot to the characters to the so-called "symbolism" rampant throughout the book. Everyone in my class was fairly polarized about this book: either they loved it (don't know how) or despised it (I consider myself president of this party). I have also found that to be true of the reviews on Goodreads as well.
As some of you may have seen from my 25 word review yesterday, I absolutely found nothing to love about this book. Now, I recognize that many people simply love this book for the profound ideas represented throughout it. However, I cannot justify 90% of what happened in this book and the fact that some people can and do justify and LOVE the book is quite alarming and scary about current society.
Before you dare comment that I am too immature or too young or too unintelligent to understand this book and its meaning, please just leave my review now. I understood what the book was about, especially since we spent weeks just talking about the book for hours and hours with no breaks. As I said before, it's not that I'm too stupid to understand the meaning of the book. It's that the meaning of the book was stupid.
I am not a fan of dystopians and science fiction and I have never been. However, I usually can force my way through it and end with a liberal, average two-to-three-star rating. But this one was too much for me. Every single page felt like the torture that Winston endures at the end of the book. My teacher also assigned sixty pages at once so I would spend about an hour each night trying not to cry or rip the book apart as I turned each page. Maybe it's because of my lack of interest in the genre but I found this to be the most boring, grueling, mundane, torturous book that never seemed to end.
There were blocks of words that didn't need to be blocks of words. Half of that could have simply been cut from the book and the meaning would have been the same. The excerpt from the Brotherhood's supposed book did not need to be there, ALTHOUGH I did find this to be the most interesting part of the entire book. I can appreciate the logic behind the arguments presented about governments and society and socialism and lack thereof but it still does not merit a good book.
I read books for enjoyment. I read books that I find as outlets to make me happy or interested or engaged, something to take my mind off the horrific thing that is known as daily life. However, this one made me believe that my life is the utopia that Thomas More could only dream about as I struggled my way through each page. There was nothing enjoyable about this book, not just because of how profoundly boring it was but also because of how DEPRESSING it was. While I usually love depressing books, this one was just a pessimistic, doomsday-sounding, depressed-little-man's perspective on a potential future society that is the opposite of a utopia.
The most salient part of this book that fueled my hatred was the blatant sexism rampant throughout it. Sure, it was written in the 1940s or whatever, but that simply does not excuse the need for there to be multiple paragraphs of hateful commentary on every single woman mentioned in the book. There was an entire scene where Winston dreams of r*ping and murdering a girl simply because he cannot have her sexually or physically or emotionally. I don't care that it was during the Two Minutes Hate. I don't care that it was a different time. I felt physically sick to the stomach reading about that and literally had a visual reaction when I realized that the author made Julia's, the girl in question, reaction literally the calmest and most nonchalant thing I have ever read. I cried reading about Winston's blatant hatred of women. Anytime he sees a woman he goes on mini rants in his head like "ew... so ugly... so weak... I hate all women because they are the most vulnerable to the Party... blah blah blah... old woman... ugly woman..." As a woman, I did not appreciate a single thing this man said and I do not care if that was an important feature of Winston and the book. I simply did not need to read a fully sexist commentary for 300 pages straight.
There were lines in the book that I had to stop and gaggle at while reading them out loud to my sister in shock and disgust. There was absolutely no need for these horrific sentences and yet the author felt the need to put them in.
I liked the idea of Big Brother and the Party but it all felt so poorly constructed and just a basic commentary on the ramifications of the world wars and the Nazis and so on. I understand the time period and all of that but the least the author could have done was flesh out the Party. I UNDERSTAND that it's SUPPOSED to be ambiguous but the entire time it just made me annoyed that I was reading 300 pages of AMBIGUITY. I simply do not feel the need to care about something that might not even exist.
Winston's character made me want to punch someone in the face. So did Julia's and Mr. Charrington's and Parsons and Parsons's kids, and virtually everyone else. I could not stand a single one of them. All of them needed to learn to shut. up.
Speaking of which, I am done. I cannot write anymore about this book but this pretty much sums up 80% of my hatred for it (the other 20% you can just imagine on your own). I would not recommend this book to anyone..
Is this review too controversial? I simply do not care. The hatred I felt for this book was unsurpassed by any hatred I have felt for a piece of so-called literature in my entire life.
It's only redeeming quality was...
I genuinely can't think of any.
Though I did like the idea of doublethink because it really twists your mind and was a quite interesting idea, I cannot lie.
Main Character: Winston
Sidekick(s): Julia, etc
Villain(s): Party, Big Brother, etc
Science Fiction Elements: This book was all set in a fictional futuristic universe.
OVERALL THOUGHTS FOR RIGHT NOW 9/29/2021
-hate dystopians, so really hated this one
-sexist.
-hate winston
-boring
-sexist.
-do not dare tell me that I'm too stupid to understand the meaning of this book. that wasn't the problem. I understood just fine. it's just that the meaning of the book was stupid.
-sexist.
-I don't care when it was written, what time period it was written, etc. it was still problematic. and. sexist.
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