AS A WRITER, journalist and avid reader, I’m a firm believer in free speech. Never have I seen that right more threatened in America than it is today. It’s downright scary—efforts by the federal government to suppress voices (already occurring), promises of retribution (now being carried out), abuse of power (happening on so many levels) and much more that threatens our very freedoms, our democracy. I could go on and on.
But today I want to focus on Banned Books Week, which ends tomorrow. Thursday evening I gathered with a group of volunteers for an appreciation event at Books on Central in Faribault, a used bookshop founded by the Rice County Area United Way. While I don’t volunteer there (yet), I’ve blogged about the bookstore numerous times because I love books and I love that monies from BOC book sales help nonprofits in my area. We weren’t there to discuss banned books, though, but rather to celebrate volunteerism and this small bookshop which has become much-beloved by the Faribault community and beyond.
It was not lost on me as I sat there surrounded by books, listening to volunteers share their passion for this place and for books, that everyone who walks in the door is surrounded by choices. As it should be. Choose what you want to read or want to share with others.
Yet, there are individuals, organizations, elected government officials and others who want to determine what we can read by banning books from libraries, schools and elsewhere. That, my friends, is censorship. And I’m not OK with that. If I find the content of a book to be offensive, then I can stop reading it or never open it in the first place. Likewise parents can monitor their child’s reading materials just as they would online content.
In the words of the American Library Association’s 2025 Banned Books Week theme, “CENSORSHIP is so 1984.” That’s a reference to George Orwell’s prophetic 1949 novel, 1984, about a totalitarian government. That’s a simplistic summary. But the book is particularly relevant to today. I intend to check it out from my library to reread.
After the bookshop appreciation event Thursday evening, I stopped at Buckham Memorial Library to see if staff had created a Banned Books display as they have in the past. They did. After I read the information and looked at a sampling of books that have been banned (not from my library), I grabbed a green bracelet imprinted with this message: CENSORSHIP is so 1984. READ FOR YOUR RIGHTS.
I will continue to read. I will continue to write. And I will continue to embrace, support and advocate for free speech. I have a voice. I refuse to be silenced.
© Copyright 2025 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
1984 Oceania & 2025 America December 31, 2025
Tags: 1984, America, book review, books, commentary, dystopian novel, fiction, freedom, George Orwell, novel, Oceania, reading, We the People
MULTIPLE TIMES I NEARLY STOPPED reading the book. But I was determined to finish, although the process took weeks. Sometimes I could read many pages. Other times I had to stop, set the book aside and not pick it up for several days. Yet, I continued slogging through the pages.
What book caused me to struggle so? The answer: 1984 by George Orwell.
If you’ve never read this dystopian novel and, no, I hadn’t, you should. Written in 1949, it is so relevant to today that the book could easily be titled 2025. And that’s not a good thing.
I jotted four full-sized pages of notes while reading. And what emerged was downright scary, because the fiction Orwell penned 76 years ago strongly resembles the United States of America under our current administration.
PLOT SUMMARY
But first, a summary of 1984. Main character Winston Smith lives in Oceania, a country ruled by The Party and the unseen Big Brother, who is watching, always watching. Smith is a writer, working for The Ministry of Truth, which is anything but. Workers there are tasked with rewriting history, basically erasing the past. Censorship. Smith, however, secretly disagrees with The Party’s work and ideology. But he, like others of the same mind, must be careful, oh, so careful. No one can be trusted, as Smith eventually learns firsthand.
People are disappeared from the streets, snatched. Vaporized, as if they never existed.
Troubling words like hatred, Thought Police, thought crime and control emerge in this novel. All are connected to The Party, a party focused on absolute power, world domination, acquiring more territory, on shaping narrative, on eliminating art, literature and science.
If The Party told you that 2+2=5, you better believe that. Smith didn’t.
The Party aims for absolute dominance—authoritarian rule under a dictatorship that opposes individual freedom and seeks to control every facet of life and the mind. Children are indoctrinated, blindly following and adoring The Party, becoming little spies who will turn on anyone suspected of defying Big Brother’s ideology. A woman calls Big Brother “My Savior.” Big Brother’s image is imprinted upon a coin. The eyes are watching, always watching.
HOW WILL IT END?
As I turned page after page, I tried to hold hope that 1984 would end well, although I knew it wouldn’t. I can only hope that the fiction George Orwell wrote does not fully become our reality in America. Whether it does or doesn’t is on all of us.
We can choose love over hatred. We can choose to exercise our personal liberties by speaking up, voting, contacting our elected officials, protesting, standing strong in and for freedom. We can advocate for others, calling out wrongs, working for the marginalized, the “snatched,” those struggling emotionally, financially and otherwise. We can help, encourage, uplift. We can listen. We can remember and learn from the past, not some rewritten version of the past. We can stand up for art, science, literature, truth. We can support freedom of the press, turn to trusted and reliable media sources. We can declare that we, the people, hold the power. Not Big Brother. Not a single man or his followers. Not The Party. But, we, the people.
WE THE PEOPLE
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. —Preamble to the United States Constitution
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TELL ME: Have you read 1984? If yes, what are your thoughts in the context of today, specifically in America? Do you see similarities, relevancy? What concerns you, if anything?
© Copyright 2025 Audrey Kletscher Helbling