An overview of the book..

The book took me quite a while to finish and even at the point of the video conference with the American Students, I was probably halfway through the book.

After reading 1984, it comes across to me as something scary and highly probable that it may be materialise one day. In fact after reading the last few pages, it gave me a shock and a sense of despair that the protagonist, Winston actually becomes indifferent to many things around him and that he loves Big Brother. It makes me wonder whether his effort so far in trying go against Big Brother had gone down the drain.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU..
Upon reading the first few pages of the novel, we are introduced to the phrase "Big Brother is watching you". It makes you wonder what on earth is this Big Brother character and why is he watching you. The most straight forth reason would be for control and surveillance. Orwell uses this notion of a person of high authority keeping watch of every citizen in Oceania to bring across this idea of control and surveillance to the reader. it makes the readers reflect on this idea and also the validity of it in our world. in the form of Satellites maybe?? This is coupled with the telescreens that cotains a camera and a microphone and they are installed everywhere and anywhere. We get the idea that every move that the citizens in Oceania is potentially being watched. There is no one time you can tell whether Big Brother is really watching but you do know that somehow or another, you are obliged to behave in a proper manner.

This reminded me of some tower in the middle of a building and I went to yahoo and typed in 'tower of control' and it gave me this interesting term called Electronic Panopitcon which actually refers to computerised tools for monitoring purposes.

Here goes "the original Panopticon, proposed by Jeremy Bentham, is an architectural design for a prison which has a central tower in a circular building that is divided into individual cells. Each cell extends the entire thickness of the building and has both inner and outer windows. "The occupants of the cells ... are thus backlit, isolated from one another by walls and subject to scrutiny both collectively and individually by an observer in the tower who remains unseen". The final goal is for the inmate to internalise the mechanism of surveillance that the building establishes. The actual and imagined inspections act to reinforce each other in the minds of the prisoner. As Bentham describes it, the "... apparent omnipresence of the inspector ... combined with the extreme facility of his real presence". Surveillance is continuous in its effects even if it is discontinuous in its actions."

This article then talks about computer in our current society, that it also monitors and records datas and information which for example a employer can use to assess his employees. Similarly the Telephone operators. The most interesting part would be the closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras and I quote "Who's watching the watchers?". I drew parallels with the telescreens in Oceania and it seems to convince me that I am in no situation to dismiss the validity of 1984.

Then comes the three famous slogans of the Party,
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
I was absolutely confused by this oxymoronic slogan. Your mind will naturally register War as anything but peace and so on. But why is this slogan widely used by the party? For propaganda or maybe as a warning to the citizens that obedience all the party asks for and there shall be no compromise. War is said to be the restoring of current order as it guarantees Big Brother's ultimate victory. Freedom is something that is seen to be burdensome, it is probably refering to the deviation of thoughts of the citizens. Only with ignorance will the citizens be appreciative of the party's effort and they can make Oceaniz a better place (eew. so cliche..)

To sum up, basically this novel has three parts to it, one being the introduction and how the protagonist, Winston develops illegal thoughts against the party. The second part being, his rebellious act against the party and also the little romance with Julia and how both of them were able to share their private feelings about the party. Lastly, the novel ends of with Winston's betrayal by O'Brien and his own betrayal of Julia. He was punished and tortured for his obstinate nature to believe in what the party believes in, that is 2+2=5. But eventually we know that he loved Big Brother..

Yay.. done..