You can certainly correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure, almost positive even, that there isn't a book, and can never be a book....more depressing than this.Don't get me wrong, I totally get it. The world is corrupt. There is too much war. The government higher powers are manipulative. We could all turn into mindless droids. But that was a serious way to drive your point home, George.
Spoiler alert - everything ends up horrible. If you read this book, just know it gets worse as you read. It wouldn't be so bad if I actually had strong feelings for some of the characters. It was getting pretty good when our lead character met a woman and started a relationship, but I never found that I truly liked his character. I wanted more. When things were really at their worst at the end, I felt like I was watching someone I didn't care about all that much getting tortured. Not really pleasant or interesting.
I have a great appreciation for this book. I know that it has an extreme importance in society and education. Extremes examples are wonderful ways of opening people's eyes to the current situation. I'm just a little worried. This is one of two Orwell books I have on my list. Can I survive a second novel without entering a deep depression? We'll find out.
A list of what's to come, and what has already been explored.
My Written Artwork Journey Explained
- Animal Farm - George Orwell
- The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Emma - Jane Austen
- Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
- Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
- Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
- Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
- The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
- Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
- Nineteen Eighty-four - George Orwell
- Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
- Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
- The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
- Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
- Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
- Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
- The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
- Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
- Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
- Lord of the Flies - William Golding
- Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
- The sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
- Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
- Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
- Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
- Little Woman - Louisa Ma Alcott
- Crime and Punishment - Fedor Dostoyevsky
- Watership Down - Richard Adams
- Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
- Alls Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
- Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
- Moby Dick - Herman Melville
- The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
- Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
- Tales - Edgar Allan Poe
- Diary of a Madman and Other Stories - Nikolai Gogol
- Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
- A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway
- Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
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Weird. I just finished reading this book last week for the first time. And I share your sentiments almost exactly. Personally, I don't think I'll pick up another of Orwell's books for awhile. I will say, however, that good literature evokes emotion -- positive or negative -- which Orwell seems to have done with us more than 60 years after he wrote the book.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, I'm excited for the remainder of your written artwork journey. I'm embarking on a similar but much more informal literary renaissance myself. I started with Moby Dick, which I saw was on your list. Let's just say that I'd recommend the abridged version, if you don't consider that cheating. I certainly won't think less of you, in fact, I just might envy you.