I remember being asked in class what we all thought was the message of 1984.

I was like, obviously it was about the danger of giving up your power to other people and the corruption of that power.

My classmates were pretty convinced it was about how important it was to have power over other people.

First time I twigged onto exactly how dumb, short sighted, and self interested, otherwise intelligent people can be.

Edit: I swear I remember reading something Tolkien (maybe) said about the eye of sauron being basically an analogy about the press. The eye focuses a spotlight on the thing it is looking at giving it great importance, but ignores everything else. It is not actually omnipotent, it is just propaganda and marketing.