1984

 The most interesting thing about the novel 1984 so far is the setting.  The novel was written in the late 1940's.  The author, George Orwell, set the story in what he imagines London to look like in 1984, based on the advances of his own time and what he feels society is coming to.  A line that continually comes up in the story is, "Big Brother is watching you."  Big Brother is the total dictator that rules over England, called Oceania in the book, and it shows George Orwell's view of how the world is rapidly becoming full of Communism.  This fits with the actual time period of the late 1940's, only a few years since the end of WWII and more specifically, Hitler's ruler over Germany as a dictator.  In this setting, a person can be killed for showing any opposition at all to the Big Brother, who watches you at all times, even when you are sleeping or bathing.  Executions are a form of public entertainment, and as soon as a person is executed all records are wiped clean of their existence.  People are not allowed to speak of them again under penalty of death, and the public is forced to believe they never existed.  A quote I thought had good imagery was "The Ministry of Truth... was startlingly different from any other object in sight.  It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace, after terracing, three hundred meters into the air.  From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the party:

War is Peace

Freedom is Slavery

Ignorance is Strength."

 This quote shows the starkness of the building well, and puts a good visual of what it must look like in your head, along with the inference that it must be important, and the slogan demonstrates how oppressive the world is in the story's setting. 

 What if you lived in a world like this one?  What would you do, and how would your life be different?