Recently, I was assigned to read 1984, by George Orwell, in my English class. As a whole, I feel this book is a pretty good book.  I like the pure possibilities that Orwell gives to truly express what a society suffering from totalitarianism is like.  He really portrays why he thinks a totalitarianism society would be negative to our modern society, and I agree with it. Personally, I really liked this book because of the famous and iconic “Big Brother” and the oddly interesting storyline.

“Big Brother” is a title given in the society of 1984 to the government and represents the ways that the government can watch and see you at all times.  “Big Brother”, in a regular American household, is named after the overly protective older sibling in the household, wanting to make sure you are always doing well and constantly annoying you about it.  “Big Brother”, in 1984, constantly watches over their society through “telescreens”.  They can hear the words they say, watch every action they perform, and talk to people through the screens.  This is the government’s way of catching people who commit “thoughtcrimes”, which are illegal thoughts against the government that a person can be physically punished for.

Throughout the book, we see many instances where the main character, Winston, continually wants to know the occurrences in history.  As people in today’s society, we know that we have history classes, books, and the internet to help us know about all the things in our country that have happened historically. We take these references to be reliable and accurate.  But the 1984 society works a bit differently.  The totalitarianism government modifies history to make everything that Big Brother has done seem correct, destroying all other history that would make Big Brother seem incorrect.  This being said, any person who is thinking about things other than what Big Brother says is correct is committing thoughtcrime. However, Winston wants to find out about the true and accurate history of their society and proceeds to look for a way around Big Brother.  He stumbles across the so-called “Brotherhood”, a group of people who know how to find a way around Big Brother and find history. The Brotherhood gives Winston a book titled The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, supposedly written by the President of the group, Emmanuel Goldstein.  Winston reads the book, only to be caught by the Thought Police (equivalent to our police force today, however, they are only focused on illegal thoughts).  Winston is tortured and starved until falling under the complete reign of “Big Brother”, completely forgetting about questioning history again.

1984 was definitely a good read, and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes to read odd, dystopian based books that make you contemplate their relevancy to current times.  Does “Big Brother” watch us?  Will society in our future resemble “Air Strip One”?  I learned a lot about the dangers of a totalitarian government, and how it would hurt us as a society.  I loved reading the book and seeing what Big Brother was like, the mystery of who was an ally, and reaching the final plot.