1984

Talking about numbers. And interesting stories. And the work I have to do.

Now I want to introduce you the book I'm reading right now for the Catalan class: 1984 by George Orwell.

The lecture was optional, well, not at all. We MUST read a book, but we can choose which one. I've decided to take this one because we once read Animal Farm in the Spanish class, another book by George Orwell and I liked it a lot.

1984 was written in 1948 (ironic, don't you think?) and tells us the story of a futuristic world (even in our time we could say it's still futuristic) where three huge states, Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia have got the power and are in permanent war. The protagonist, Winston Smith, lives in London, Oceania, and works for the totalitarian government with their ideology called "Ingsoc". Everywhere there are big telescreens (a word of the "Newspeak", the new simplified English) which show a face of the dictator, the Big Brother, who watches and observes everyone at any time at any place (actually the TV programme "Big Brother" is based on this novel... sad that they make truth what was an not so much absurd futur vision...). In Oceania, every news, every book, every film, anything that says something about the government what disgusts the dictator is changed to fit his wishes. This is Winston's work: He rewrites newspaper articles. But Winston isn't as stupid as many other people. He knows the things are going wrong. He wants to escape from that world but at the same time (after years and years of brainwashing) he makes him think he must obey the government.

I've just read about 100 pages of the book but I can already say it's very interesting. And I just learned about the World War II and about the nazism and the fascism, so it's has a good relation for me to the History classes right now.