MOST HORRIFYING BOOK

1984, by George Orwell - Probably the most horrifying book I've ever read, and ironically, it's not even a horror fiction. It's more of a political/ sci-fi novel. The world is set in an imaginary 1984 (the book is written in 1949), where the world consists of only 3 superstates after a worldwide atomic war: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. In Oceania, the only political party governing the country is INGSOC, and its figurehead is Big Brother, whose posters are everywhere with his face on it and the words "Big Brother Is Watching You".

In the world of 1984, the concept of political freedom and freedom of speech is totally alien to the people. Any forms of 'deviant thoughts' that differ from the orthodoxy is nipped from the bud, which is a job of the Thought Police, who monitor every single citizens' life everywhere, all the time with the countless telescreen in the people's home, public places and etc. It is a world where history is constantly rewritten, where records and documents are constantly destroyed whenever a change in history serves a purpose for the government.

It is a world where the outside world is completely shut out, thus the people can't imagine a better world that they could have possibly live in if they rebel, since they have nothing to compare their present government to. It is a world where children are the most horrifying creatures, who can readily reported anything uttered by their parents, even in their dreams, that shows signs of 'eccentricities' or rebellion, to the authourities without hesitation.

It is a world where all the people are trained since young to doublethink, which is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed. It is a world where a new language is in the process of creation and soon to be implemented as the only language used if Oceania: Newspeak, in which all vocabularies are reduced so intensively and simplified so much that each word has only 1 strong and clear meaning, and words that can incite rebellion and dissent are completely wiped clean, thus preventing the people from able to grasp the higher concept of freedom and rights.

It is a story about a man named Winston Churchill, who is in a grave danger simply bcuz his memory still functions: he's aware that the government keeps changing history and its current allies in whichever way that serves them better, he's aware that the propaganda about the victories Oceania has in war and the surplus in productivity are probably fabricated, and he's aware that the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual passion.

Drawn into a forbidden love affair with a girl named Julia, he is able to muster the courage to join a mysterious secret organization known as The Brotherhood, which is dedicated to the desctruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he embarks on an attempt to fight against the control of the Party over his life...

The world that George Orwell has constructed is so complex and believable, it's almost possible for one to see that this is wat our world are heading to gradually. The concepts he introduced in the book, such as doublethink, has already occured in our world: The majority of the people in the US genuinely believe that the wars in Aghfanistan and Iraq are improving the lives of the people there, and the casualties of the innocents are minimal, while at the same time juz blankly ignoring the news about the countless suffering and innocent death tolls that are rising juz bcuz of the lies spread by the government thru the mass media. Images of suffering can be seen everywhere, but doublethink has made the people to accept the lies blankly, all the while thinking that their country is the righteous one that brings goodness to the world.

1984 is a warning about the world we'll heading into, where individuals have lost their ability to reason, to think and to express, bcuz they've all forced into conformity and stupidity without realizing it. It is a nightmarish dystopia where humanity have lost all resemblance to humanity, and function as a group of soulless automaton, all incapable of independent dissendent thoughts, all conform to the wishes and objectives of the Party, all capable of showing love only to the figurehead of the government: Big Brother.