Books We Read
Lord Of The Flies
This was the first book we read in class, around October 2016. Since we had access to technology such as chromebooks, we didn't need to get the paperback copy of the books, so we just read an ebook instead. This book was a survival tale of a bunch of young boys stranded on an island and how they functioned together as a society. This book goes in depth about the true nature of boys and how they act in different situations. I was very surprised to learn about how far they would go in order to survive. For instance *SPOILER ALERT* when the boys in Jack's tribe killed Innocent Simon just because of their paranoia of the beast. They thought it was the beast and rushed towards Simon to kill him off. I was truly shocked to know how brutal and savage these boys were, ending someone's life in just a moment.
The Animal Farm
This was the second book we read in class, and this time, it was a bit more informative and complicated. The Animal Farm is a book about communism, but the story was wrote to represent the Soviet Union as animals. The book has secret meanings and definitions to the past of World War I and the Cold War, but if you don't constantly stop to compare the animals and historic characters, you might miss the whole idea and concept of Animal Farm. For example, *SPOILER ALERT* the book portrays the farm as the country and how the animals that work in the farm are the lower class. The owners of the animals are the kings/rulers, and they are tyrants who rule unfairly. One day, the animals decide to revolt, motivated by a certain pig called Old Major, which is in reality, Vladimir Lenin, who got killed before the rebellion started. After taking down the humans, the pigs started to take control, yet the animals were yet to know how maupilative the pigs were. The pigs, who in reality was Jospeh Stalin, were sugarcaoting their tyrannical actions by saying its the good for Animalism and that what they're doing doesn't even compare to the human reign. Therefore, the farm animals were being controlled yet again by pigs, who convinced them that they were finally free, but made them work even harder for their own profit.
1984
This is the first novel we read in the spring semester, but overall the third novel we are reading this year. 1984 focuses on how fearful and manipulating our government can be, by keeping constant watch of its citizens and feeding them lies. This novel was written in 1948 but was set in 1984, as an example of how our society might become. The main character, Winston, is a middle-aged man who has an injury in his leg and lives his life as an ordinary citizen in Oceania. Nothing about him really stood out until he started to write in his diary about all his doubts about the government. As the story progressed, Winston got more and more involved with Oceania's mysteries, to the point where he was paranoid about getting caught. Up to that point in the book, I realized that Winston wasn't just an ordinary citizen; he was an intelligent person. In Oceania, 85% of the society is made up of proles, the lowest rank in the social class, since they don't think twice about anything. Yet Winston was determined to not accept the facts the government gave out and didn't believe in Big Brother. In the end, we weren't able to finish the whole book, but we read up to the first half of it.
There were many things that 1984 went over that might remind us of some of the things our government does today. An example is the Thought Police in the novel vs the Patriot Act. Basically, the Thought Police are government officials who monitor what you do every day by having cameras watching you everywhere, even in your homes. The Patriot Act is a similar invasion of privacy by giving the government the power over checking your browser history, text messages, and whatever you use the internet for. They have access to everything that is online. In a way, both of these examples make it almost impossible for you to keep secrets. 1984 also goes over brainwashing their citizens by feeding them lies through newspapers, broadcasts brochures, books and everything that is published. An example is a motto "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength". In this society, the intelligent would get vaporized and the ignorant will live. In other words, if you're smart enough to realize what the government's doing is wrong and unjust, then you would be accused of being a rebel and get killed. Only the ignorant people can live because they don't think for themselves and believe everything they're told without a second thought.
Overall, 1984 was a great read and it really made us think about our current world and what we could do to prevent things like that happening in the real world.
