Why live in a society where you cannot tell the difference between the truth and what you’re brainwashed to think? This is the very dilemma facing Winston Smith, your average office-working, middle-aged man. He observes all information coming from the same source and he cannot fathom how he is expected to accept even the most obviously untrue. Working the very job that creates the misinformation being pushed back out into the public, Winston suffers daily contemplating his role in the process. 

1984 by George Orwell encompasses the futuristic fear that our government will become, one day, this mind-altering influence that lives in everyone’s mind. The Ministry of Truth, Winston’s employer, devotes their purpose towards proving the Party’s everchanging thinking to be presently correct. The Party, led by Big Brother, is full to the brim of conspiracy, delusions, and lies. Winston feels out of place, and he feels as if he may be the only one recognizing the reality. He wishes he could sum up the courage to publicly acknowledge the biased censorship. Omnipotence lies with the Party and persecution faces anyone who denies that obvious fact. What would you do in Winston’s place? You are caught between choosing a life of rewriting history for the worse and inducing self-loathing because of it, or simply being killed for speaking out. The repetitive sequence of thoughts controls Winston’s every waking moment – just until he sees her for the first time. Falling in love is just what Winston needs to motivate him in the right direction – disobedience of the absurd system seeming to be guiding the whole world. Together he pictures the two of them having the power to face this incredible authority that has the whole nation (almost) in its grasp. With maybe untrue rumours of uprisings and a secret manifesto making their way to his ears, Winston every day creeps closer to declaring himself an enemy of Big Brother.

Follow the convincing and perilous lifestyle of a man scrutinizing the actions of the Party he appears, to the public, to support whole-heartedly. When it comes to a point where no one can know the approximate year due to constant propagandization, it’s time for even the people with the most menial jobs to find something they can do. Reading 1984 will give you a whole new point of view on what a world can become after spiraling into a dark, hyper-monitored, hole. The imagination and depth that go into creating this fictional world make you wish you could knock some sense into the blind followers of Big Brother’s growing regime.