2 posts tagged “words”
Chilling. The most disturbing thing to me personally was the idea that the way to kill humanity is to attack the structure and vocabulary of language.
Orwell's novel is the most complete vision of dystopia that I've ever read. It's a masterpiece.
Everyone should read it...preferably after high school.
When I think about books and movies about the Holocaust I think of the stories being told from the point of view of the Jewish citizens mostly. It makes sense, as they were obviously the ones who suffered the most. But this book made me question that assumption a bit.
The family in this this story are not those in the concentration camps, not those hiding in an attic, not the Nazis themselves. They are just ordinary, average citizens living in Nazi Germany.
I have often wondered what it would have been like to see people being marched to death camps and others being whipped in the streets. How could those people have gone along with it all? Take a pinch of conformity, a dash of fear, and bake it really slowly. That's how it can happen.
Some have said Death as narrator is a bit hokey or pretentious, but really it's rather inspired. Who else could be an objective narrator of such a tale?