General Books - Page 6

Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Facsimile of the Extant Manuscript

George Orwell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A historical masterpiece 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

One caveat if you are thinking of buying this edition: this is not the way you should read the story for the first time. However, if you've read it and would like a piece of history to call your own, this is a worthy addition to your library.

I first read 1984 when I was in the seventh grade. It earned me sneers and odd looks from my classmates, but I recognized it for what it is - a warning. This book helped shape my outlook on the world, and particularly on politics. It made me wary of false promises and doubletalk - "newspeak" - something that has unfortunately come true within my lifetime. War is peace, black is white, down is up.

Last year I finally bought a hardcover edition of the standard edition to add to my library. This manuscript is no substitute for a standard edition, in terms of reading at leisure. It has all of the corrections, crossed-out paragraphs (and pages), and the majority of it is in Orwell's own hand (i.e. not typed). To read the story in this form for the first time would be daunting.

Nevertheless I cherish it. I cannot recommend this book highly enough to devotees of Orwell. It occupies a treasured space in my bookcase.

Editorial Review:

Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmare vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of modern life--the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language--and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written.

Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Text, Sources, Criticism (Harbrace Sourcebooks)

George Orwell

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1984 (Everyman's Library classics)

George Orwell

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Editorial Review:

In "Nineteen eighty-four", one of the 20th century's great myth-makers takes a cold look at the future. Orwell's study of individual struggling - or not struggling - against totalitarianism remains a salutary lesson in any society.

Nineteen Eighty Four

George Orwell

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Editorial Review:

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him. The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted imply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

Box Set George Orwell (Animal Farm & 1984) [UNABRIDGED]

et al George Orwell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not recommended for American audiences 3 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This comment concerns 1984 as narrated Richard Brown. It is not a review of the book.

Mr. Brown has such a thick British accent it's very difficult to understand him at times. If you turn it up too loud in an attempt to hear him through his accent, you'll hurt your ears when he hits the hard s's and t's. If you have trouble with British accents, I do not recommend this version.

George Orwell double punch 5 out of 5 stars.
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"Animal Farm"

No animal may drink alcohol "to excess"

A fairy tale or a nightmare? It all began with a dream by Major, a Middle White boar, of equality, and freedom from oppression. Maybe not in our life comrade, but eventually.

The dream brings a song. Intolerable conditions lead to revolution. As time passes things change; not exactly as planned.

There are two striking parts to this tale that stand out. First when Boxer is sent to the hospital and Benjamin reads the side of the van "Horse Slaughterer." Secondly there was a party in the farm house as the pigs were playing cards with the men, two aces of spades showed up. An argument ensues. Then a realization was drawn by the creatures outside looking in as they "...looked from pig to man, and man to pig, and from pig to man again..."

------------------------------------------------------------
"1984"

Deviates corrected for their own good

In a society that has eliminated many imbalances, surplus goods, and even class struggle, there are bound to be deviates; Winston Smith is one of those. He starts out, due to his inability to doublethink, with thoughtcrime. This is in a society that believes a thought is as real as the deed. Eventually he graduates through a series of misdemeanors to illicit sex and even plans to overthrow the very government that took him in as an orphan.
If he gets caught, he will be sent to the "Ministry of Love" where they have a record of 100% cures for this sort of insanity. They will even forgive his past indiscretions.

Be sure to watch the three different movies made from this book:
1984 (1954) Peter Cushing is Winston Smith
1984 (1956) Edmond O'Brien is Winston Smith
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) John Hurt is Winston smith

Editorial Review:

Orwell's brilliant 1946 satire, chronicling a revolution staged by the animals on Mr. Jones's farm (Animal Farm). George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision of "Negative Utopia" is timelier than ever-and its warnings more powerful (1984).

Spark Notes 1984

George Orwell, SparkNotes Editors

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Editorial Review:

Get your "A" in gear!

They're today's most popular study guides-with everything you need to succeed in school. Written by Harvard students for students, since its inception SparkNotes™ has developed a loyal community of dedicated users and become a major education brand. Consumer demand has been so strong that the guides have expanded to over 150 titles. SparkNotes'™ motto is Smarter, Better, Faster because:

They feature the most current ideas and themes, written by experts.They're easier to understand, because the same people who use them have also written them.The clear writing style and edited content enables students to read through the material quickly, saving valuable time.

And with everything covered--context; plot overview; character lists; themes, motifs, and symbols; summary and analysis, key facts; study questions and essay topics; and reviews and resources--you don't have to go anywhere else!

Animal Farm

George Orwell

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Animalism In One Lesson 5 out of 5 stars.
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"ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS" is the Principle of Animalism - an allegorical term for Soviet Bolshevism, which had actually spread throughout Russia during the 20th century and haunted its various peoples and regions in the name of Socialism. The author, born in India of English parents, was a socialist and wrote this profound piece of political satire with the aim of destroying the Soviet myth. George Orwell wanted to show that the Soviets were using the rhetoric of socialism to veil their vicious statism and that the Soviets were not at all socialist, despite their claims that they were. One senses that if Orwell were alive today, he would write an Animal Farm that could strip away the myth from Tony Blair and George Bush doing war in the name of freedom when they are actually waging state terrorism and killing tens of thousands of civilians. Cutting through what Orwell would later term "Doublespeak" in another book (1984) is Orwell's aim.

The tale begins by introducing old Major, a talking boar who describes the horrible conditions all animals live under at Manor Farm. Major dreams of a socialist-type revolution where the "Man" can be overthrown by the animals: "Only get rid of Man" and everything would be peaceful for the animals. Major dies but the other animals are left inspired.

Their opportunity arises when the Man goes on a drinking binge and neglects the feeding of the farm animals. Starving, they must act and action is inspired by a combination of remembrance of Major and of dire straits; the animals take over the farm. Manor Farm is renamed Animal Farm. So far this is an allegorical retelling of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia when the starving peasants took control of the state from the decadent ruling class. The remaining events in the story mirror events that actually happened in Russia under Soviet rule. In the end, the pigs are no different from the Man.

Historically, this has been the fate of all revolutions. Crafty word-pushers see that seizing control of the state is a valuable prize because it results in a cudgel beneficial to whoever wields it to the detriment of those it is wielded against.

I miss Orwell. I wish he were around today to write about the British sleeper cell in Washington, District of Criminals that has gotten us Yanks to provide the brawn to British empire in all those quagmires created by the British - Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, etc. The Anglo-American wordpushers are creating a world as oppressive as Adolf Hitler's with no end to deaths and destruction being visited upon innocent peoples whose misfortune is to live atop oil fields.

Editorial Review:

George Orwell's classic satire of the Russian Revolution is an intimate part of our contemporary culture. It is an account of the bold struggle that transforms Mr. Jones's Manor Farm into Animal Farm, a wholly democratic society built on the credo that All Animals Are Created Equal. Out of their cleverness, the pigs Napoleon, Squealer, and Snowball emerge as leaders of the new community in a subtle evolution that bears an insidious familiarity. The climax is the brutal betrayal of the faithful horse Boxer, when totalitarian rule is reestablished with the bloodstained postscript to the founding slogan: But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.

Smothered Under Journalism: 1946 (Complete Orwell)

George Orwell

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Editorial Review:

Orwell’s articles on The Intellectual Revolt his famous short essay Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, the radio play The Voyage of the Beagle, and his letter to Dwight Macdonald on the necessity for people to rid themselves of violent revolutionary leaders.

I Have Tried to Tell the Truth: 1943-1944 (Complete Orwell)

George Orwell

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Editorial Review:

Orwell reviewed 86 books as Literary Editor of Tribune in addition to his "As I Please" column, printed without cuts in this edition. Also included are literary essays, The English People, four London Letters, and Can Socialists Be Happy?, written under the pseudonym John Freeman.

Our Job is to Make Life Worth Living: 1949-1950 (Complete Orwell)

George Orwell

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Editorial Review:

While a patient at the Cotswold Sanatorium, Orwell read the proofs of 1984 and wrote five reviews. He began but did not finish an article on Evelyn Waugh, made notes for an essay on Conrad, and sketched out a long short-story, "A Smoking-Room Story." The volume includes many unpublished letters, Warburg's report on his visit to Cranham, a clarification of Orwell's public statement on 1984, and a detailed examination of Orwell's relationship with the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office.