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Dear George Orwell,

As a huge fan of 1984, I believe your view of a dystopian, war-ravaged future is scarily accurate, and grows more so every passing moment.    With governments around the world growing more and more centralized in power, and the people mattering less and less, I soon fear to wake up one day and find myself in “Oceania”, governed by the tyrannical Big Brother, and being none the wiser.

Your book has changed my life in a number of ways.    Due to coming-of-age, and your book, my eyes have been open to the corruption, devastation, and the rampant greed, ignorance and fear that often orchestrate modern politics.   I became awakened to the silent cry of the masses as they are quietly shoved aside and institutionalized by TV, and the smiling, perfect smiles of our elected “Leaders”.   I’ve become attuned to the changing of facts, a crime heinous and stupid enough to deserve capital punishment.   Your book has become a lifeline, a signal for what will be if we can’t stop the senseless cycle of overthrowing a government only to have an equally unjust one jump in its place, like cutting off heads of a Hydra.   To think that I once thought that politics was for the masses is appallingly ignorant and naïve after having read your tome of amazing intellect.

As a book of intelligence, none that I’ve read prior or post can merit being called an equal.    As a character-driven story, none can wring the emotions from me as can the changes that occur to the character that are painted so vibrantly within 1984’s pages.   It is, in my humble, literary opinion, a book worthy of being called “Perfect”.   From its vibrant descriptions of dreary gray skies, streets, and people, to its exploration of middle-class mentality, the book is filled with messages both self-explanatory and subtle.  

It made me appreciate nature, free will, and choices, both right and wrong.    Your book is an everlasting message across the seas of time, a message everyone can take from, and experience differently.   I hope to live long enough to see the age in which your book is held aloft and exclaimed as the book that saved humanity.   I wish to see your name alongside the greatest writers and philosophers, almost all of which you outshine as the sun does the stars.

And oh, your use of meta-fiction!    Taking pages out of Goldstein’s book to further explain the world in which you’ve based your characters was the most exciting read of literature within literature that I’ve had the pleasure of viewing.   Your words seemed to pop off the page, even through Goldstein’s book.  And the ending…   How could anyone see such a stark shove back to bleak reality?   The torture scene, where Winston exclaims he could make anyone believe that 2+2=3 sent shivers of terror and human inferiority down my spine…   From beginning to well past the end, you kept me in a perpetual state of shock, awe, and hunger for more.

Yours Truly,

Logan G. Barker
11th grade, Madison High School
Madison, KS

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