I recently asked an English teacher from a public high school in an urban (but fairly affluent) area what book he recommends for a teenager, and I was pleasantly surprised he suggested 1984.
I'm glad to hear it too. I was in high school during the Cold War. The obvious implication and motivation for reading those books was to contrast the dystopian Soviet system versus the "free country" United States. It almost seems funny now. I can see school boards avoiding those books like the plague today.
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The interesting thing about that book is that anyone can read it and obviously see the evils of totalitarianism, but then simultaneously view the world through their favored political lens and fall for the exact thing the Orwell tries to warn us against (i.e. the "my team is always right, your team is always the bad guys" mentality).
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Maybe, but I think after the fall of the Soviet Union and the post 911 Patriot Act it would be hard not to see the obvious.
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