Look, I've taught 1984 for eighteen years. Eighteen years of watching seventeen-year-olds suddenly realize their phones might be watching them back. Eighteen years of explaining that no, Orwell wasn't predicting TikTok specifically, but also... kind of? So when I tell you I was dreading listening to this audiobook, understand it's not because I don't love the novel. It's because I've read the opening paragraph about clocks striking thirteen approximately four hundred times, and I wasn't sure I could handle hearing it out loud without grading papers in my head.
I was wrong. Hugh Kermode made me feel like I was encountering Winston Smith for the first time.
The Voice That Got Inside My Head
Here's the thing about teaching a classic—you stop actually reading it. You start performing it. You know where the important quotes are, you know which passages will make the kids sit up, and somewhere along the way the words become furniture. Kermode's narration stripped all that familiarity away.
His Winston isn't the tragic hero I'd been presenting to my students. He's smaller than that. More pathetic, honestly. And I mean that as the highest compliment. Kermode captures this man who has already been broken before the story even starts—he's just going through the motions of rebellion because he can't help himself. The way Kermode reads Winston's diary entries, there's this tremor underneath the words. Not dramatic quivering, just... uncertainty. Like Winston can't quite believe he's doing what he's doing.
And O'Brien. Oh, O'Brien. Kermode gives him this warm, almost fatherly tone that made my skin crawl. Because that's exactly right, isn't it? The Party doesn't come for you with obvious villainy. It comes with understanding. With patience. With the promise that it knows you better than you know yourself.
Where Orwell Hits Different Now
I listened to most of this walking the lakefront with Denise on Saturday mornings. She's heard me lecture about doublethink enough times that she can probably teach the unit herself, but she kept pulling out her earbuds when I'd stop walking to just... process something.
"What?" she'd ask.
"Nothing. Just. This part."
The sections about the mutability of the past hit harder in audio. When Winston is at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, and Kermode reads the descriptions of documents disappearing down the memory hole—there's something about hearing it that makes the horror more immediate. We're not talking about some distant dystopia anymore. We're talking about arguments I've had with relatives about things that definitely happened and definitely didn't, depending on who you ask.
My students would hate that I'm making this political. (Everything's political, kids. That's the point.)
But Kermode doesn't editorialize. His reading is clean and direct, which is exactly what Orwell's prose demands. This isn't a narrator who's going to wink at you or emphasize the "relevant" parts. He trusts the text. He trusts you to get it.
The Slow Burn That Paid Off
Eleven hours is a commitment. I won't pretend it doesn't drag in places—the Goldstein book-within-a-book section is rough going, even with Kermode's measured pacing. (I usually skip that chapter when I teach it. Don't tell my department head.) But the audiobook format actually helped here. When you're reading, you can skim. When you're listening, you're forced to sit with it. And sitting with Orwell's systematic breakdown of how totalitarianism functions... it's uncomfortable in a way that feels necessary.
The ending, though. The ending.
I've read those final pages dozens of times. I've discussed them in class, written about them in grad school, referenced them in my podcast episode about dystopian literature that my mom definitely slept through. But hearing Kermode deliver "He loved Big Brother"—the flatness of it, the complete absence of hope—I had to stop walking. Just stood there on the path while joggers went around me.
Denise didn't ask what was wrong that time. She already knew.
Who This Is For (And Who Should Skip)
If you've only ever read 1984 in high school and remember it as "that book about surveillance," Kermode's performance will remind you it's actually about love, and memory, and what it means to be human when humanity itself is being redefined by power. Skip it if you need comfort listening or something light for your commute—this one demands your full attention and will leave you unsettled. I'm recommending it to my AP Lit students, which is basically the highest endorsement I can give. I had a similar experience revisiting The Midnight Library—sometimes you need to encounter a story differently to really feel what it's doing.
Class Dismissed
The prose deserves to be savored. Kermode understands that pause is punctuation. Worth pausing the faculty meeting for. (Sorry again, Principal Martinez.)
