When did you read Orwell's 1984?

[undeterred]

Poll question: When did you read Orwell's 1984?

[undeterred]

1. I read it in high school, before 1984

and I was probably too young to appreciate it.

[KitchenWitch]

2. Me too

I need to pick up a copy and read it again. I would also like to re-read Animal Farm.

[leatherfeather]

16. Me too.

Both great books!!!

[KitchenWitch]

19. Welcome to DU

:hi:

[pintobean]

22. Here's 1984

ftp://ftp.mirrors.wiretapped.net/pub/security/info/books/george-orwell--1984.txt

[SeattleGirl]

3. High school, early 70's

[Nicole]

12. same here n/t

[sakabatou]

4. 2 years ago.

[scarlet_owl]

5. Around 1996, when I was in high school.

[LeftyMom]

7. same here.

:hi:

[Reverend_Smitty]

6. Considering I was born in 1984...

I probably read it for the first time around 1998

[Crazy Guggenheim]

8. About three months ago.

[elshiva]

9. I was 2 years old in 1984, so I read it after...

Great book, I loved the sex scene...

[LynzM]

10. In 2001, online...

Read it while I was in Germany, and that way was easy and free!

[Oeditpus Rex]

11. I think I was in 8th grade

Or maybe a high-school freshman. Either way, around 1970.

[Lady President]

13. Jr. High School-- 1984

I was in middle school in 1984, so we had to read it. I think there was an unspoken law that if you were in middle school or high school in 1984, then you absolutely had to read it that year.

[Rabrrrrrr]

14. I read it in the Fall of '83 for a humanities class,

then in Spring '84 for a science fiction class. This was high school.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

15. I keep a copy on my hard drive as a text file

I've found it a handy reference for the latest world situations. Funny how nobody in the press seems to have read and/or understood it...

[NaturalHigh]

17. I've never read it.

It's just never interested me. There is plenty of political intrigue in real life.

[undeterred]

20. it really is a classic text

[NMMNG]

18. Freshman year in high school

And many, many times since.

[progmom]

21. i first read it in 1984

when i was 12.

[maveric]

23. High School, 1972. Then we read "Animal Farm".

Orwell's works stuck to me a lot more than that Ayn Rand shit they also made us read.

[Skittles]

33. same here, same year

they were good books

[buddhamama]

24. in 1987

i have read it a couple of times since then.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

25. I have not read it yet.

I am a bad, bad person. :spank:

:evilgrin:

I know I'll read it next year in English, though. And I'll probably be the only person to appreciate it. :eyes:

[TimeChaser]

26. Seeing as I was born in 1986

It would have been difficult to read it before 1984

[Spider Jerusalem]

27. I first read it when I was about twelve or so, I think.

That would've been around 1989.

[Ariana Celeste]

28. Since I was born in '85....

;).

I first read it a few years ago, and while enjoying it, didn't quite "get it."
I read it again last year. I sure got it that time.

[Strong Atheist]

29. As a sci-fi reader since ~ 1976,

before .....

[jane_pippin]

30. Probably 1994, when I was starting high school. I've read it a few times

since then too. The last time was right after the 2000 election. As in days after. That thing got underlined like nothing has been underlined before that time I read it. For further thoughts on this book, please see my sig line. :D

[0007]

31. Before 1984 and twice afterwards

[Zorro]

32. Reread it just last month

It is chillingly relevant to what's going on today. Hate Week. Blackwhite. And Doublethink.

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them...To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while ot take account of the reality which one denies -- all this is indisputably necessary..."

"blackwhite...Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this..."

..."The Lottery, with its weekly payout of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention...it was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets..."

George Orwell Bush indeed.

[xmas74]

34. During 1984.

I was 10 years old at the time and had read Animal Farm a month earlier.

[flamingyouth]

35. In 1982 when I was a freshman in high school.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

36. 96

[ScreamingMeemie]

37. I *think* 1981...But I could be wrong. It could have been 1982.

Not totally sure.

[SillyGoose]

38. In HS pre 1984 and again just a few months ago.

I didn't appreciate it back when I was a kid. It really hit me this time.

[Ivan Sputnik]

39. In high school, I think

I've read it a few times. I used to think it was a satire about Communism (only). I never dreamed, until around 2000, that it would apply so much to "us".

[zanne]

41. Me too. High school.

I didn't know it at the time, but my high school English Dept. was pretty progressive. We also read A Clockwork Orange, Hiroshima and Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust.

[madrchsod]

40. 64 or 65

i read animal farm first then 1984. after that i read "the down and outs..." then his book about india

[tjwmason]

42. Didn't get chance before the actual year

Mainly because by the end of 1984 I was still only 5.

[uppityperson]

43. All of the above.

[greendog]

44. 7th grade

It was on the shelf in the back of the classroom next to "Animal Farm". Read that one too.

on edit: 1971

[Shine]

45. Before high school.

I graduated in 1982. You do the math...cuz I sure as hell don't want to. heheh
:)

[Dervill Crow]

46. Sometime in the 1960s? I don't even know when it was written,

but it was one of many books I swiped from my older brother, along with Animal Farm, Brave New World, Native Son, and a bunch of Mad Magazines and Famous Monsters from Filmland.

[nickgutierrez]

47. I turned 1 in 1984.

So, after. :)