Class Handouts:
Internet Resources:
There are many, many sites on the internet devoted to Orwell and 1984. Here are a few that may be of interest to students.
- Forget your book at school? No fear. The entire novel can be read online here at Life Research Universal. There's a nice introduction to the book to read, too. Online Literature has an online version that's searchable, which could be handy for writing papers about and discussing the book. Finally, here's another online version to read (or zip file to download) from University of Adelaide in Australia.
- Yes, you can try the Spark Notes, or Book Rags. There's even a faster version at Summary Central. But you're not going to pass any quizzes or tests without reading the book.
- A good, quick list of online resources devoted to the author, George Orwell, has been compiled by Kara C. Chiolo, a student at the University of Oklahoma in the US.
- Orwell Today is a site developed by Jackie Jura, who has taken many elements from the book and linked them to modern-day developments like government video surveillance and drug use. An interesting idea.
- George Orwell would have been 100 years old in 2003; to mark the occasion, Charles' George Orwell Links noted, "Big Brother a Reality on Orwell's 100th Birthday".
- "Big Brother is Watching," according to the Samizdata. Who are the Samizdata? They're "a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling."
- Here's a good site: The Students for an Orwellian Society, "Because 2007 is 23 years too late," an ironic site full of black humor, linking the events, images, ideas, and symbolism of the novel to today's headlines with devastating effect. The free posters alone are worth the price of admission.
- One thing I like about this George Orwell site is that it's from Russia, and most of the pages are available in Russian and Eastern European languages. It seems comforting to know Orwell's legacy lives on in what used to lie behind the Iron Curtain.
