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Joseph Glenn Professor Suzanne Ingram English 1101 9 July 2013 How an old book can describe a forever new society The book named 1984 which I read my senior year was sadly one of the most interesting book in my high school career. The reason behind this is because all of the other books that I had to read during my high school career were terribly boring and didnt fit what I wanted to write about. The book basically described how a dystopian society was run and how two peoples life changed because of it. I thought the book was going to be boring, I took one good look at that cover and sighed with depression. This is going to be fun I said sarcastically. When I read the first couple of pages, I was bored at first until I fully understood what was going on, how the nation was ruled by an oligarchy that watched your every move and made sure that you couldnt even think something that went against the nation. I had to think about that, what if the government was like that now? That would be very frustrating. As I was reading the book at home I watching TV, and reading this book on the carpet floor I thought this book has an interesting atmosphere, it was relative to the movie the fugitive. He was tired of it so he wanted to overthrow the place because he knew of all of the dark secrets the oligarchy. Being tired of the government however, wasnt the only reason that he wanted to overthrow it. Since he was in the Ministry of Truth, he knew everything that the government and Big Brother were doing, and it sickened him how ignorant the people were. He also disliked how the government was doing things in general. It reminded me of the U.S and how the media can change things around for the good of the country, but not for the people if the makes any sense. I was watching the news to

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test this theory the 10:00 news to be exact on channel nine on the leather couch in the den, and I noticed that a lot of the stories about Charlotte were negative and mainly aiming at African Americans doing most of the crimes. I was kind of annoyed at this, African Americans arent the only ones committing crimes I said. I believe thats when my eyes were opened for the first time, because I didnt think how everyone I knew thought at the time. Even when I moved to Fort Mill, many of the people were afraid of Charlotte because of the media which told about nothing but the crime that occurred there.

As I started to read more of the book, I started to compare the nation in the book to the U.S. As I was going to Charlotte in my moms Honda I started to think, who would the Proles be? They must be easily satiable, wouldnt ever cause an uprising, and there must be many of them. I think that the Proles are the Lower-class of the U.S; it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. They get food from the government, and can buy small yet enjoyable things. This book is one of the books that I read even during the weekends on the leather couch downstairs; I even turned off the TV to read the book which is saying something. One small, but interesting detail that I thought was rather odd but weird was that, in order to dull the Proles minds they put something in the victory alcohol. That makes me wonder how many unnecessary ingredients do they put in the medicine that we use and these factors doesnt just pertain to the U.S., but many other countries as well. The posters about Big Brothers watching you I thought were definitely true, the first example I thought of was Google maps, so I used my laptop to find my own location and Im not lying when I tell you that I could see myself sitting in my room.

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Phone companies also can track you by your phone. I find this rather cool if you get lost, but I still find it creepy that people are tracking your every move. Google tracks what you look up by your IP address even if you dont have an account with them, they still have a file of what you look up what you buy, and they can sell it to other companies. When I read this book and found out all of this information I started to become rather paranoid because this means that when we think we have privacy we really dont. The reason I liked this book is because it showed how life is on the other side of life, the part of life where you arent the one that the others are cheering on, and yet somehow they persevere anyway. Even if they were both mentally reset they both remember certain things that happened. I was really interested in talking about the book with my classmates who were equally interested about the book because we heard different ideas from each other, and even asked the same questions. One example of asking the same question was whether Obrien was really a part of another organization who tried to overthrow the government, but he was working as a double agent and needed the trust of the government in order to obtain it. Personally I think he may have been, but he didnt really know how to exactly overthrow the government in one attack, and because of this it forced him to act as the person who is a part of the government in order to lay low.

The Socratic Seminar that we had for the book was actually fun, if you dont know what the seminar is, its an event that all the students do but setting up all of their desks in a circle (or a shape close to one) and we write about 5 questions beforehand in order to ask them to each other. We can bring food and drinks but nothing too extreme we can also highlight text in the books to prove our points and we talk about it from there, one person talks at a time and when we start we are all given the same question by the teacher and each of us can talk about it but it isnt

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mandatory that everyone needs to talk about the question. The questions that we mainly asked were how the nation does from the book, relate to the U.S., was OBrien really a traitor or was he just testing them, questions such as that. I was very focused in the Seminar even when I forgot my book; I remembered some very important points that helped me to get my participation grade up. Hey bro, can I use your book when youre done? I asked my friend Shea, Sure, I just need to get this 100 first he responded. For a decent amount of the Seminar I felt useless without the book, but I started to remember some key points like Winston being reset, and the significance of the Ministries. This guy named Josh, well there were two of them who were equally as funny, made everyone laugh and so it took some of the pressure out of the seriousness of the Seminar which helped me to remember most of what I read. Unfortunately the book that I wanted so that I could get more points never arrived in my hands so, I got an average grade, and I believe it was a C, but on a 10 point scale I would have gotten a B. The book opened my eyes to how society may run, but honestly I had no clue how to respond to it so now when I see something on the news, I know that there is always a different side to it, and not only a different side, but something that someone else has done that they wont show. So with this I conclude my essay, reading the book 1984 opened my eyes a little of how society could possibly be run not just by the U.S. but many other nations and how the media can definitely change not only the way people feel about you, but it can change the world itself.