1984 critics

Philip Rahv - "This novel is the best antidote to the totalitarian disease

that any writer has so far produced."

Frederick Warburg - 'This is amongst the most terrifying

books I have ever read'

Warburg - 'Orwell had no hope, at least he allows his reader no hope,

no tiny flickering candlelight of hope'

Tom Hopkinson “Orwell has imagined nothing new…

His world of 1984 is the wartime world of 1944, but dirtier and more cruel”

Bernard Crick - “It's not a prophecy,

it's a warning”

Orwell - “Every line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been written, directly of indirectly,

against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it”

Lynskey - “During the Cold War, it was a book about totalitarianism. In the 1980s it

became a warning about invasive technology. Today, it is most of all a defence of truth”

Conheenyl - “It highlights the importance

of resisting mass control and oppression”

D. J. Taylor - “alone or relatively friendless, at the centre of a hostile world from which they

cannot escape and where their every movement is subject to constant surveillance.”

Daniel Bell - "A human society stripped of

the last shreds of community"

Bell - "Fear and anxiety

the daily staple of life"

E M Forster - "Big brother also lurks behind Churchill and

any leader whom propaganda utilises or invents"

Karina Jakubowicz - “Reading in Oldspeak means we're immersed in the language of

the proles and the rebels, and we're automatically on their side.”

Lisa Mullen - “There is no resting place: we never find a place where we can find a

sense of relief from the grimness and lack of freedom.”

John Bowen - “Why is Winston so important that they spend

all that effort on him? It's not clear, unless he is the last man.”

Dorian Lynskey - '[O'Brien] is both real and

a part of Winston: his shadow self.”

Schellenberg - 'This big brother society is too

well-constructed to break apart in the face of one mans resistance'

Podhoretz - “Orwell's ruling passion was the fear

and hatred of totalitarianism”

Bossche - “It contains no prophetic declaration

only a simple warning to mankind”

Berkes - “Language becomes a

method of mind control”

Topham - “Language is degraded to such a state

that it only serves the government”

Emily John - '1984 plays with our

deepest fears'

Pimlott - “Sexual happiness is the

biggest threat to the system”

Lynch - "There are many parallels between...

Big Brother and Stalin"

Orwell - "Two and two could make 5

if the Fuhrer wished it."

Orwell - "The invisible Stalin is worshipped

in terms that would make Nero blush"