A review by james1star
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

challenging dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

How to summarise my thoughts? Umm… I honestly don’t know! I didn’t necessarily enjoy 1984 but I respected its importance and impact I’d say. In Orwell’s novel we follow Winston Smith who lives in London in a dystopian 1984 where ‘the Party’ and ‘Big Brother’ is always watching you, controlling you, controls the past, present and future. Smith commits thought-crime amongst other things and Yhh I don’t want to explain the plot too much but basically it’s his journey. 

What I did like was the tension and eggarness to read on in how Orwell writes. The world building is continuous and vivid that you can theorise this dystopian world with pretty realistic characters. However, I personally though this detail and repetition of certain events, ideas, ‘facts’ and the like are very tiering and long. This was very apparent in Goldstein’s thesis being plastered into the middle of the book taking up a huge chunk of repetition that is seemingly never-ending that I despised. Why was it so long and drawn out? No thank you! Also, the characters do all lack depth and a likeness so in some sense you don’t care about what happens to them no matter how horrible it is - but then again they do live in a world built on terror and control so to find positivity is hard enough… but Yhh I didn’t warm to them. They’re also kinda annoying but I was still intrigued enough to read on. A LOT of it was also quite confusing with contradictory phrases and stuff I dunno - yes this was good in terms of world building the messed up nature of the society and party but still my brain was a bit whirled up. 

Overall, I didn’t like the story, plot or characters (not really my vibe) and was far too repetitive and long in my opinion. However, it was written mostly well, kept me intrigued and has became a staple due to its importance where many takes and comparisons to ‘our world’ can be made. So a solid 3 starts from me. 
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