History YMMV / Nineteeneightyfour

** Plenty of people have commented on how the constant monitoring and citizens spying on each other makes Oceania look a lot like North Korea, but Winston's backstory also bears some disturbing similarities to the story of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Dong-hyuk Shin Dong-hyuk]], the only known person to ever escape from a North Korean labour camp (having been born there because of the crimes of his parents or grandparents, he isn't sure which) and escape. Shin claims to have turned in his mother and brother for execution when they tried to escape. He did this because he saw them as competitors for food, and was hoping the guards would let him eat a full meal for the first time in his life (to this day he says he doesn't know what "love" means, and his entire concept of "freedom" is based around being able to eat as much as he wants.)

* TooBleakStoppedCaring: A lot of people report struggling to finish the book or abandoning it altogether due to how pessimistic the story is.

** When O'Brien has Winston and Julia busted for thoughtcrime, he declares [[PreMortemOneLiner "You are the dead!"]] Which sounds a lot like [[Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar a later memetic character]]'s [[YouAreAlreadyDead catchphrase]], both in wording and intent.

** When O'Brien has Winston and Julia busted for thoughtcrime, he declares [[PreMortemOneLiner "You are the dead!"]] before taking them in for thoughtcrime. Which sounds a lot like [[Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar a later memetic character]]'s [[YouAreAlreadyDead catchphrase]].

** When O'Brien has Winston and Julia busted for thoughtcrime, he declares [[PreMortemOneLiner "You are the dead!"]] before taking them in for thoughtcrime. Which sounds a lot like a [[Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar memetic character]]'s [[YouAreAlreadyDead catchphrase]].

** Making poor real life comparisons to the setting or themes in the book is also a good way annoy the book's readers, especially if there's no elaboration on why nor evidence of any exploration of ''1984'' beyond knowing that there's a {{Dystopia}} in it. Oceania is a dystopia written with nuance, built on surveillance, psychological manipulation, and an iron grip from the government, so citing it as just a generic "bad place" to inappropriately use as a comparison for any single possible bad thing is a disservice to the book's themes.

** The Party's arbitrary changing of their enemies and allies in the possibly-fictional war makes sense both in-universe and out, as a display of their power, and refers to how the USSR went from being stridently anti-Nazi to neutral with friendly leanings during the M-R Pact to being fiercely anti-Nazi again (which to be really fair, is something they only did once, briefly, and that after many years of anti-Nazi coalitions formed with the West fell on deaf years). However, even vaguely insinuating that in a wartime context based off of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, that all sides are the same and the war crimes of one state are merely propaganda would probably, and ironically, get Orwell compared to Nazi apologists and possibly even Holocaust deniers today.

** Relatedly, if you compared the setting or characters of this book to your own least favorite place or political figure, chances are that you've went exactly opposite to the book's message. ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' is about a totalitarian government holding control by warping the English language to their own ends and writing propaganda loaded full of lies, relying on reduced intellectualism in the population to go unchallenged in their rule. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe64p-QzhNE As TED-Ed points out,]] trying to spin this book as something it's not, or repeating what someone else says about it without critically thinking about if it's true, is falling to the exact thing that ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' warns against.