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DixieGal · 08-27-2009, 10:32 AM

I haven't read 1984 since my senior year of high school in 1981. (It was an advanced class.) We read it along with Animal Farm to compare and contrast. The teacher was a former female army person, very old and cranky. In fact, she is one of two teachers that both my mother and I had in high school! She was strict and ran her classroom like it was basic training or something! She is the one who had our advanced class crying because of having to read Milton's Paradise Lost. Heavy stuff for 17 year olds!

She told us how it had been in occupied Japan after the war, when she was there. The book was new then, and was about how the Cold War was starting, etc. She related to the book from her own experiences.

I remember 1984 like it was only yesterday (the book not the year which is sort of blurry) because it was an older book that was so relevant to what was going on at the time. The country was in a terrible recession as we were looking at leaving high school and trying to find a future in a bleak economy while our government was spending all of its money on expanding the military. Our takeaway lesson was to look out for #1 and do anything it took to get ahead. We weren't afraid of Big Brother, and in fact, we wanted to be Big Brother. The 80's was a very harsh and superficial decade.

I remember that 1984 and Animal Farm got peeled down to the skeleton in that class. Turns out that they are the same book under the skin. The message that came through to us was that power over the weak always leads to abuse of the weak, as seen in real life every day in the Soviet Union. And since the Soviet citizens were mostly very poor, except for the leaders, well, we '80's yuppie wannabes saw that as the bedrock truth pretty quickly. The citizens were just trying to find a future in a bleak economy while their government was spending all of the money on expanding the military.

Orwell did not really write about anything new. His talent was that he wrote about the same things that happen again and again in a way that was new and fresh. I wonder what the book means to young people today who will be looking at leaving high school and trying to find a future in a bleak economy while our government is spending all of its money on expanding the military.

08-27-2009, 10:32 AM	#7
DixieGal Hi There! Posts: 7,473 Karma: 2930523 Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Ft Lauderdale Device: iPad	I haven't read 1984 since my senior year of high school in 1981. (It was an advanced class.) We read it along with Animal Farm to compare and contrast. The teacher was a former female army person, very old and cranky. In fact, she is one of two teachers that both my mother and I had in high school! She was strict and ran her classroom like it was basic training or something! She is the one who had our advanced class crying because of having to read Milton's Paradise Lost. Heavy stuff for 17 year olds! She told us how it had been in occupied Japan after the war, when she was there. The book was new then, and was about how the Cold War was starting, etc. She related to the book from her own experiences. I remember 1984 like it was only yesterday (the book not the year which is sort of blurry) because it was an older book that was so relevant to what was going on at the time. The country was in a terrible recession as we were looking at leaving high school and trying to find a future in a bleak economy while our government was spending all of its money on expanding the military. Our takeaway lesson was to look out for #1 and do anything it took to get ahead. We weren't afraid of Big Brother, and in fact, we wanted to be Big Brother. The 80's was a very harsh and superficial decade. I remember that 1984 and Animal Farm got peeled down to the skeleton in that class. Turns out that they are the same book under the skin. The message that came through to us was that power over the weak always leads to abuse of the weak, as seen in real life every day in the Soviet Union. And since the Soviet citizens were mostly very poor, except for the leaders, well, we '80's yuppie wannabes saw that as the bedrock truth pretty quickly. The citizens were just trying to find a future in a bleak economy while their government was spending all of the money on expanding the military. Orwell did not really write about anything new. His talent was that he wrote about the same things that happen again and again in a way that was new and fresh. I wonder what the book means to young people today who will be looking at leaving high school and trying to find a future in a bleak economy while our government is spending all of its money on expanding the military.