1984

A peculiar antithesis to the second great dystopia of the 20th century, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. What, in essence, is more terrifying: the "consumer society" taken to the extreme or the "idea society" taken to the extreme? According to Orwell, there is and can be nothing more terrifying than total unfreedom. Winston Smith's childhood occurred in the 1950s, when the English Socialist Party came to power in Great Britain as a result of the revolution. His father and mother disappeared without a trace. Winston doesn't know what happened to his parents—either they were dispersed or sentenced to long imprisonment in a concentration camp. From a young age, Winston worked in the Ministry of Truth, where his duties included editing documents that contained facts that contradicted party propaganda. Smith acknowledges his doubts about his party's ideology, but in public he must pretend to be a supporter of English socialism, as expressing any ideas against the party is dangerous. Winston might have continued to live peacefully, secretly recording his thoughts in a diary, if not for his meeting with Julia...