Nathan John Cooper <p>started reading</p>
Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
Brief Answers to the Big Questions is a popular science book written by physicist Stephen Hawking, and published by Hodder …
Animation Student at Arts University Bournemouth
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Brief Answers to the Big Questions is a popular science book written by physicist Stephen Hawking, and published by Hodder …
If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are alone? You are outside history, you are non-existent.
Some of the words I got from this book: - heretic (a person who holds controversial opinions) - sententious (terse and energetic in expression) - vitality (the capacity to live, grow, or develop) - proletarian (relating to a proletarian or to the proletariat (the class of people who do unskilled work))
(There were many more fantastic words but I was so encapsulated in the plot that I could not stop myself from reading to note them down)
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.
Content warning Spoiler Alert.
This book is so beautifully written and Orwell's extensive vocabulary offers so much in the way of description and meaning. I'm really glad that I have finally read this wonderful classic and can now understand so many of the references to it in modern works. With each chapter, I was smiling at the realisation that 'so-and-so' book/film/song/play from way back when was actually referencing this book. Additionally, the notion of reducing the English language to prevent heretical statements (and, thus, alliances) is both so intelligently thought-out and horrifying. Living in the 21st century, there are now cameras all around us (in phones, computers, laptops, security systems, buses, trains, airports, restaurants, shops, etc. They are everywhere and) each one of these cameras (generally speaking) has a microphone. So, we are always being watched and listened to. In addition to this, social media has adjusted the linguistic scope of many people and I am in no way claiming to be a logophile of any sorts but, these people use words like 'slay' and 'blessed' or phrases like 'weird flex but okay', 'this ain't it', and 'it's the [] for me' in place of the thousands of pre-existing words and phrases that are around today. All this is to say that we are being watched consistently, we are listened to consistently, and the language of tomorrow is forever adjusting - perhaps even shortening, colloquially. You might think this is a rash proclamation but it's just something I found myself thinking of whilst reading the book. As a university student surrounded by other 18/19 year olds, I find a lot of people frequent these social media (newspeak) terms as a sort-of comfort blanket to use as opposed to having to invoke a short period of silence prior to employing the correct term.
(I hope this does not come across pretentious and I am in no way implying that I am above these people in any way, shape, or form but I just find the evaluation rather fascinating.)
Newspeak, Doublethink, Big Brother, the Thought Police - the language of 1984 has passed into the English language as a …
**2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
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