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Why 1984 Should Be Banned

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As with any form of someone’s artistic creation there are bound to be good and bad opinions or criticisms. So when someone writes a book they know it will not please everyone. However, do any authors ever think, “Not only can my book be ill-received, but it might even get banned.” Now what does it mean for a book to be banned? Well it means that reading said book is not allowed either by school, state or even country. To enforce the banning libraries and bookstores will not have the books available for people to check out. For a book to be banned it must first be challenged, but not all challenged books get banned. For example, the book 1984 was banned in the Soviet Union for being against communism and was burned. However, in Jackson County, …show more content…

First of all, the fact that a book which depicts a government that controls what its people think gets banned, only further gives some credibility to the points the book makes. The way its own banning reflects the novel’s warning can lead us to believe that there is some truth to what the book teaches. 1984 was published in 1949 and quickly became a phenomenon in the US where it sold more than three hundred thousand copies in one year. The title is the year 1984 because it was how soon Orwell thought such a future could arise. When it was released the world was coming off the second world war and it was obvious there were two large superpowers with large governments. It seems like no coincidence that one of these superpowers, the USSR, would go on to ban the book for what they believed was a negative view on communism. Some critics even believed that Orwell attacked Stalin’s “midnight purges” by writing about how the government in the book would find people of opposing ideas and get rid of them. Furthermore, not only does the book portray a totalitarian government in a negative light, it's main character wants to rebel against said government. Lastly, another reason why it would be banned is because the book has the main character in a sexual relationship and does it partly out of rebellion. It is easy to see how such behaviour could lead some parents to not want their children to be …show more content…

In doing so, both of them can be arrested and accused of acts of rebellion simply by their meeting in secret. Both characters are aware what they are doing is illegal and are okay with it because they want to in someway feel like they are rebelling. When Julia asks Winston what he thought of her when he first saw her he says, “I hated the sight of you. I wanted to rape you and then murder you afterwards. Two weeks ago I thought seriously of smashing your head in with a cobblestone…” When Julia describes her activities with the government she says, “Hours and hours I’ve spent pasting their bloody rot all over London.” Both their language in this scene is vulgar and Julia’s is seen as a bigger surprise because workers of the government or citizens are not supposed to speak in that manner, especially about the government. However, since both of them dislike the government it is through their language that they can further rebel. Sometime later in the same hiding spot they had met, Winston and Julia have a moment of intimacy. This is one of the worst acts of rebellion against the government since being intimate can lead to forming a relationship. For the government, it also means that a citizen's loyalty is not entirely to it’s country. As they are about to begin Winston asks if she had ever done this before. Julia replies with, “Of course.

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