1984

In my opinion, George Orwell's 1984 is incredibly overrated. Yes, there are some interesting political ideas. Yes, it's important to read this book and be on guard against a society like the one portrayed happening. Yes, we still refer back to this book constantly when we talk about things like Big Borther, Newspeak, and Double Think. But the characters are boring and hard to sympathize with and the plot is barely there.

Seriously, thirty pages of this book was devoted to Goldstein's analysis of Oceana. As dry as it was, it was probably the point of the entire book.

There were a couple of things that stood out as interesting. One was the presentation of Big Brother and Goldstein, which set them up in a God/Satan dynamic.

Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counterrevolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching.

I read it as a comment on fascism as a kind of religion, demanding the same fervor and blind faith to sustain it. Since we don't all live in fear of the Catholic Church anymore, that comparison seems to undermine the point Orwell is trying to make that this sort of society is inescapable. Or he might be trying to argue that Oceana as improved on the Church's techniques using 24-7 surveillance. At any rate, I like the parallels

The other thing that caught my attention was Winston's declaration that "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four". Later, when he's being tortured, he is shown four fingers while his torturer insists that there are five. The reason this stood out to me is that is also happens in the Star Trek episode, Chain of Command.

Picard's the man. Far more likeable than Winston, plus he wins. What I'm trying to say is that you should just go watch Star Trek instead of reading this book. You've probably already absorbed all of the important parts by osmosis.