1984 by George Orwell

[The Plague Rat]

I have to read it this year and I really like it.
Did anyone else maybe read this? Or plans on?

[MoonFullofStars]

I want to read it SO bad. I never have the time to read what I want, though.

Definitely on my Christmas vacation reading list though.

[The Plague Rat]

Finally done with Part I. I'm glad that part is over.
But Part II makes me wonder how fucking stupid they are.

[Subnova]

Yes, Part II is where we get into the real meat of the story, when we find out how the party truly works.

Part I is all development and plot, which, obviously, is important, but the true power doesn't arrive until Part II.

In other dystopian fiction news: don't read Brave New World.

[The Plague Rat]

^haha yeah, my boyfriend told me it's a fucking waste of time, but that just makes me feel curious

[Subnova]

Yikes. I'm afraid for your boyfriend. What would you do if he told you to not jump off a bridge?

Aldous Huxley wrote a few sequels to Brave New World. Sequels. A dystopian novel needs to stand on its own. If the writer can't get his message across in one book, then it's not a message worthy, or the author plainly sucks.

One of the sequels, The Island, was written thirty years later, took every single thing painted as BAD in BNW, and promptly turned it around for enlightenment and good, like drugs and sex. It's insane. If you read BNW, read The Island as well. If you do get something out of BNW, then reading the Island will negate it and cement in your mind the fact that Huxley is a nutjob.



Your boyfriend seems smart. I think I'd like him. Too few people are free thinkers on such 'literary classics'.

[The Plague Rat]

I'd jump just to piss him off.
No, he's a big feeted jerk.

[The Plague Rat]

Done with Part II last night! The end of it was pretty exciting. Part III is killing me.

[The Plague Rat]

Hitler planned 'Big Brother' style television to broadcast Nazi propaganda

By Will Stewart
Last updated at 11:14 PM on 21st October 2008
Comments (24)
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Adolf Hitler was on the verge of creating a 'Big Brother' style version of cable television to broadcast Nazi propaganda

Adolf Hitler was on the verge of creating an Orwellian-style cable TV system to broadcast Nazi propaganda around Germany.

Screens would have been set up in public places, including in laundries so housewives could tune in, according to a documentary based on papers and tapes found in his bunker.

When the Allies overran Germany, engineers were on the point of a technological breakthrough to allow TV pictures to be transmitted to screens and sound to radio receivers.

They had also recorded programmes on news, sport and education.

Prototype programmes included Family Chronicles: An Evening With Hans And Gelli, an early reality TV show depicting the wholesome Aryan life of a young German couple for the rest of the population to model themselves on.

Another plan was to show footage of executions of traitors to the Nazis.

The plans first came to light in 1945, when boxes with tapes were found in the ruins of Berlin by Soviet soldiers, the Russian documentary says.

According to the programme, the engineer Walter Bruch was asked to make 'people's television' a reality.

He tabled a document to Hitler called 'Plan to supply people's transmitter to German homes,' and the laying of a broadband cable between Berlin and Nuremberg was begun, it claimed.


Mass television broadcasts by Big Brother were a fundamental part of the regime in Orwell's 1984

A former SS officer, Curt Schulmeitser, told the programme how a relative of Hitler's mistress Eva Braun was filmed being shot after being caught trying to flee Berlin as the Soviet army advanced.

Schulmeitser said Hitler's deputy Heinrich Himmler authorised the filming and hinted it was being filmed for Hitler to watch.

He said: 'Himmler wanted somebody else in a different place to see what was going on.'

Josef Hebbels, who masterminded the plan, told Rudolph Hess's sister Margaret, who was also working on the scheme: 'We'll be able to show whatever we want. We'll create a reality, which the people of Germany need and can copy. Your task is to teach German women to live this way'.

Hitler early on realised the power of television propaganda. His address at the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936 was broadcast to system of bulky mobile TV stations where Germans could watch in town squares.

But the programme claims the Nazi leader and his scientists were planning a far more complex series of public TV screens before the allies overran Germany and he committed suicide in 1945.

The scheme is reminiscent of George Orwell's novel 1984, where Big Brother looms out from public screens entreating the subdued populace to work for the state and telling them 'Big Brother is watching you'.

The reality television show, Big Brother, in which contestants are under constant surveillance, is based on Orwell's concept.

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[SignOfRadiance]

Hmm i hadn`t read it.
But i had read the book the animal farm from george orwell.
I am not sure to read 1984.
Is it a good book?
Would you say i should read it?
Or is it bad?

[The Plague Rat]

I think it's en excellent book. The first part is really, really boring, but from part 2 on it get's pretty exciting. Part 3 is heavy, you'd have to read it slowly to understadn it all.
It's a lot of fun to analyze. If you hated the Animal farm (HOW COULD YOUU????!!!!), you should like this better I think

[SignOfRadiance]

I like the animal farm, it is a very good book.

Okay then i will read 1984 from him =)

Thanks =)