"Big Brother is Watching"

I finished my first classic on my own!  Sure I have read other classics: To Kill a Mocking Bird, Wurthering Heights, The Great Gasby, and The Grapes of Wrath to name a few.  However, this is the first time I actually picked up a classic and read it cover to cover without being required, and I must say that it was well worth it.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of those books that is right up my ally, and I probably should have read it years ago.  It takes place in a futuristic dystopian society where all hell has broken loose, complete with a romance and an overpowering government.  All these aspects combined create a book that should have my name stamped on its cover.  That being said it did take me a while to finish the book.  First of all I probably did not choose the best time to begin the book.  I ordered it on whim during the middle of my second semester at college.  Bad idea.  College just is not the time to get any major reading done.  With all the friends, parties, and let's not forget the studying, reading gets placed on the back burner.  Needless to say I read Nineteen Eighty-Four sporadically. 

Once I got home for summer, though, I was able to focus a little more and reread parts that I had skimmed.  But everyone knows that May is the month when new books coming flying onto the shelves, and many of these books were highly anticipated sequels (Ahem...Bitterblue and Divergent).  Once again my lovely copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four got thrown onto the shelf for a few more weeks. Just the other night I saw it laying there looking sadly unfinished and I remembered why I began reading the book in the first place. 

Now as reviews go I cannot say that Nineteen Eighty Four leaves a happy feeling in your stomach.  It is more like a sick sensation of impending doom.  Later you find out that, contrary to many modern dystopian novels, the protagonist really doesn't win.  He is stifled by his government and you can only hope that somewhere in that world there is someone else who will bring change and the fog will lift.  

I liked this though.  Happy endings are all over the place, I mean they are nice (fluffy even), but it was refreshing to see something new and real.  The end leaves you hanging in space as you reread the final words and try to pick the meaning out of them.  Does the protagonist really fall prey to those he has been so desperately fighting?  Well, that is for you to decide.  

All I know is that I wish I had read the whole book in one sitting.  I will be rereading this in the near future to get some of the parts I missed or forgot.  Also I hope to get through a few more classics before the summer is over.  I believe it is really important and helpful to developing your own writing.  (And let's not forget that I have a crazy obsession with analyzing writing, but that I will discuss in another post).