FREE ESSAY ON 1984 BY GEORGE ORWELL

1984 BY GEORGE ORWELL

1984 by George Orwell
Outline
Thesis Statement- This paper will examine how George Orwell wrote 1984 as a political
statement against totalitarianism.
I Introduction
II Summary of 1984
III Roles of major Charters
A. Big Brother
B. Winston
C. O'Brien
D. Julia
E. Shop owner
IV Propaganda
A. Ministry of Truth
B. Ministry of Love
V Orwell's thoughts on Totalitarianism
A. From life experiences
B. From a writers point of view
VI Conclusion 
Introduction Orwell observed that every line of serious work that I have written since
1936 has been written directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic
socialism, as I understand it (George Orwell). George Orwell has been a major contributor
to anticommunist literature around the World War II period. Orwell lived in England
during World War II, a time when the totalitarianism state, Nazi Germany, was at war with
England and destroyed the city of London.  I know that building' said Winston finally.
Its a ruin now. It's in the middle of the street outside the Palace of Justice.' That's
right. Outside the Law Courts. It was bombed in-oh many years ago' (Orwell 83). This
reflects Orwell's own life experiences as a citizen in war torn England and how he uses
this in 1984. George Orwell is famous for two major novels which attack totalitarianism.
The first is Animal Farm a satire describing the leaders of the Soviet Union as animals
on an animal farm. The second novel is 1984 a story of dictators who are in complete
control of a large part of the world after the Allies lost in World War II . The
government in this novel gives no freedoms to its citizens. They live in fear because
they are afraid of having bad thoughts about the government of Oceania, a crime
punishable by death. This is the gem in Orwell's collection of novels against
totalitarianism. This paper will show how George Orwell wrote 1984 as a political
statement against totalitarianism. 1984 is about life in a world where no personal
freedoms exist. Winston the main character, is a man of 39 who is not extraordinary in
either intelligence or character, but is disgusted with the world he lives in. He works
in the Ministry of Truth, a place where history and the truth is rewritten to fit the
party's beliefs. Winston is aware of the untruths, because he makes them true. This makes
him very upset with the government of Oceania, where Big Brother, a larger than life
figure, controls the people. His dissatisfaction increases to a point where he rebels
against the government in small ways. Winston's first act of rebellion is buying and
writing in a diary. This act is known as a thought crime and is punishable by death. A
thought crime is any bad thought against the government of Oceania. Winston commits many
thought crimes and becomes paranoid about being caught, which he knows is inevitable
(Greenblast 113). He becomes paranoid because he is followed by a young woman who is
actively involved in many community groups. Winston is obsessed with the past, a time
before Oceania was under strict dictatorship. He goes into an antique shop and buys a
shell covered in glass which is another crime punishable by death. He sees the same woman
following him. Many thoughts race through his mind I wanted to rape you and then murder
you afterwards. Two weeks ago I thought seriously of smashing your head in with a
cobblestone. If you really want to know, I imagined that you had something to do with the
Thought Police (Orwell 101). The girl who was following him slipped him a note while at
work. The note said I love you(90). They make plans to meet each other and carry on an
illegal love affair. This love affair is another rebellion against the government. It
goes on for some time. Winston rents a room where he and Julia can be secluded from the
outside world. They meet a man named O'Brien who indicates that he is another
revolutionary. Winston and Julia go to his house to meet with him. O'Brien gives than a
seditious book to read. Soon after that, they are caught by the Thought Police and never
see each other again. O'Brien, becomes Winston's rehabilitator and torturer for the next
9 months. O'Brien tortures Winston in stages. The first two stages are to force the
party's beliefs on him then learn and understand what is expected of him. In the third
stage, Winston is made to face what he secretly fears most, rats eating his face. After
being completely rehabilitated by O'Brien, Winston now loves the establishment and the
government. He is set free. Big Brother is the figurehead of a government that has total
control. The Big Brother regime uses propaganda and puts fear in its citizens to keep the
general population in line. Big Brother is watching you(Orwell 5) is just one example of
many party slogans that puts fear in its citizens. Big Brother uses various ways to catch
people guilty of bad thoughts In the world of 1984 the tyrant Big Brother does employ a
vast army of informers called thought police, who watch every citizen at all times for
the least signs of criminal deviation which may consist simply of unorthodox
thoughts(112). Winston Smith represents Orwell's view on totalitarianism. Winston rebels
against the government of Oceania by starting a diary and constantly having bad thoughts
against the government. Winston knows that he is doomed from the moment he has his first
heretical thought . The tensions of the novel concerns how long he can stay alive and
whether it is possible for Winston to die without mentally betraying his rebellion
(Greenblast 115). Winston starts writing in a diary for two reasons. The first is that he
wants to be able to remember the daily occurrences in the world. In 1984, the memory of
individuals, is effectively manipulated, programmed, and controlled from the outside by
the party (Kolakowski 127). People don't know what they are consciously remembering and
what is told to them. The party had invented airplanes (Orwell 127) is just one example
of the party's propaganda and false statements that change every day. The other reason
for the diary is so that people in the future will be able to read what went on during
Winston's time and to tell them about his daily reflections on his feelings about the
party. These are the same reasons why Orwell wrote 1984. He wanted to expose a communist
country (the Soviet Union) . The specific political purpose that had aro used Orwell's
sense of urgency was his desire to explode the myth of the Soviet Union as the paradigm
of the socialist state. He also wanted to expose the dangers of totalitarianism, which
the devaluation of objective truth, and the systematic manipulation of the common people
through propaganda (George Orwell). O'Brien is an informant to Big Brother. He is not who
he seems to be. He appears to Winston as a fellow conspirator, but actually becomes
Winston's torturer and rehabilitator. O'Brien and the party can't tolerate Winston's
betrayal of the government. O'Brien tells his victim : You are a flaw in the pattern,
Winston. You are a stain that must be wiped out...It is intolerable that an erroneous
thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be.
(George Orwell). In fact, the party can't comprehend his disbelief and must change his
thoughts through torture and brainwash. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty
and then we shall fill you with ourselves (Orwell 200). O'Brien represents the core of
communist or totalitarian rule, making the victims suffer by using brainwashing to
control them. O'Brien also tells Winston what he should feel about Big Brother when
Winston is at his lowest point mentally and physically. O'Brien's speeches to the broken
Winsto n Smith in the Thought Polices' torture chamber represents for Orwell the core of
our century's political hideousness. Although O'Brien says that power seeks power and
needs no ideological excuse. he does in fact explain to his victim what this power is
(George Orwell). Julia is considered a sexual deviant in the oppressed world of 1984. In
a normal world sex is free, in 1984 it's a forbidden act only allowed for reproduction
purposes to keep the party's numbers constant. Julia has been sexually active since her
teenage years. She had had her first love affair when she was sixteen, with a party
member of sixty (Orwell 109). Love and sex is not allowed in this totalitarian state so
Julia has to look as pure as possible so that she does not show any guilt. You thought I
was a good party member, pure in word and deed. Banners, processions, slogans, games,
community hikes all that stuff. And you [Winston] thought that if I had a quarter of a
chance I'd denounce you as a thought criminal and get you killed off  (101). The owner of
the antique shop is another example of someone appearing to be what he is not. Orwell
uses the shop owner to illustrate a point. Orwell shows that no one can be trusted in a
totalitarian country. Someone who appears to be your friend will actually turn you in and
have you killed. The shop owner appears to be an old widower who enjoys having
conversations with Winston Smith. Throughout the book it can be seen that looks can be
deceiving. He is actually a member of the Thought Police and gets a good laugh when
Winston and Julia getting caught. Now all he can do is wait for his next victim to enter
his store. The Ministry of Truth is a place where history and facts--significant and
insignificant are rewritten to reflect the party's utopian beliefs. They thoroughly
destroy the records of the past; they print up new, up to-date editions of old newspapers
and books; and they know corrected versions will be replaced by another, re-corrected
one. Their goal is to make people forget everything- facts, words, dead people, the names
of places. How far they succeed in obliterating the past is not fully established in
Orwell's description; clearly they try hard and they score impressive results. The ideal
of complete oblivion may not have been reached, yet further progress is to be expressed
(Kolakowski 126). Winston and Julia are workers at the Ministry of Truth. Winston gets
more mentally involved in his work than Julia. Winston Smith and his fellows at the
Ministry of Truth spend their days rewriting the past: Most of the material you were
dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of
connection that is contained in a direct lie' (George Orwell). Winston is not as strong
mentally as Julia. His work affects him more. The Ministry of Truth is like a
totalitarian country, because it has ways to scare its citizens. People guilty of crimes
are erased from having ever existed. Your name was removed from the registers, every
record of your existence was denied and then forgotten (Orwell 19). Again people were
taken away without any rights. ...there was no trial no report of arrest (19). The actual
purpose of the Ministry of Truth is to spread lies and to have control over its citizens
using memory erasing techniques. ...the distinction between true and false in their usual
meaning has disappea red. This is the great cognitive triumph of totalitarianism: it
cannot be accused of lying any longer since it has succeeded in abrogating the very idea
of truth (Kolakowski 127). These same control techniques are used by totalitarian nations
that seek control over there citizens. The Ministry of Truth is a complete contradiction
of itself. A Ministry of Truth should not change past occurrences or say people never
existed. It should exemplify the truth and not erase records of the existence of people.
The Ministry of Love is where all criminals are tortured, rehabilitated, then set free or
killed. As soon as Winston is captured he knows he is going to the Ministry of Love. The
Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all.
Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometer of it. It
was a place impossible to enter except on offical business, and then only by penetrating
throu gh a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests.
Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in
black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons (Orwell 8). In a totalitarian state
something resembling a Ministry of Love is common place. It's a place where the
government can inflict pain on its subjects for crimes big and small. That is how
totalitarian nations keep, power over their citizens-- by fear of pain. The name Ministry
of Love is a contradiction of itself. Its name shows a feeling of love and warmth, but in
actuality it's the complete opposite. It's a place of hate and pain and is cold and dark.
A better name for it would be the Ministry of Hate. George Orwell lived during a time
when Europe was in a period of rebuilding after World War II. During that time Soviets
gained six nations as satellites. England was helpless and had to worry about their own
problems and had to watch the Soviet Union take control of half of Germany. The leader of
the Soviet Union, Stalin, closely resembles Big Brother. They were both larger than life
figures in there respective countries. In the Soviet Union you could easily have found
large posters with Stalin's face on them. The same holds true in 1984; Big Brother's face
is everywhere. A famous quote from 1984 is Big Brother is watching you (Orwell 5).
Meaning if his Thought Police don't catch you, his telescreens and hidden microphones
would. In the Soviet Union, Stalin's K.G.B. sought criminals who plotted against the
government. In Stalin's regime over 10 million people were killed. In 1984 hundreds of
criminals were killed daily. Another aspect of the 1940's were the new broadcast T.V.'s
and mainframe computers. The new technologies could be used for means of control. Orwell
saw communist countries using these technologies for control (George Orwell). This is
where Orwell's idea of telescreens and hidden microphones came from. Before World War II,
Orwell had his worst encounter with communists. While Orwell was in the Spanish Civil
War, he was running away from Soviet communists who were trying to kill him. After that
experience he got out of the army and became a writer full time. Another shock to Orwell
was when the Nazi-Soviet pact signaled the breakdown and the beginning of the mental and
emotional state out of which grew Animal Farm and 1984(Greenblast 105). Orwell may of
have extracted what he saw in his world while writing but it was done to get people's
attention of problems in the existing world. Orwell's primary purpose is to distort
disturbing conditions tendencies and habits of thought that he saw existing in the
world(George Orwell). Orwell saw, the whole world steadily moving toward a vast ruthless
tyranny. He felt nothing could stop it's monstrous progress. 1984, in spite of its
setting in the future, is not primarily a utopian fantasy prophesying what the world will
be like in thirty or forty years but a novel about what the world is like now (Greenblast
112). Orwell always relates characters in his books to points of view and real people. In
Animal Farm every farm animal represents a person in the Soviet Union. In 1984, Orwell
represents his point of view in Winston. He shows a totalitarian leader, in O'Brien and
Big Brother, while Julia is the desire and lust in every human being. George Orwell had
deep resentment against totalitarianism and what it stood for. He saw the problem of
totalitarianism in his existing world. He also understood how the problem could fester
and become larger due to instability in Europe's economy after World War II. He purposely
makes the story, 1984, unrealistic and blown out of proportion to capture people's
attention and make them think maybe it wouldn't be unrealistic in the near future. With
his deep resentment toward totalitarianism it became the focal point of his novels.
George Orwell's, novels were directed toward against totalitarianism and for Socialism
and what it stood for. 1984, Bibliography Andrews, Paul. 1984 Plus 10. The Seattle Times
6 March 1994: A1+. Black, David. Wider Still and Wider European 25 October 1991: 8-9.
Daley, Alan L. George Orwell, Writer and Critic of Modern Society. Charlottesville:
Samhar Press, 1974. Deutscher, Isaac. 1984-The Mysticsm of Cruelty. George Orwell, A
Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Raymond Williams. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1974. 119- 132. George Orwell Discovering Authors. 1993 ed. Gale Research Inc.,
1993. Greenblast, Stephen J. Orwell as Satirist. George Orwell, ACollection Of Critical
Essays. Ed. Raymond Williams. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1974. 103-118.
Huber, Peter. Bye -Bye, Big Brother. National Review 15 August 1994: 48-50. Kolakowski,
Leszek. Totalitarianism and the virtue of the Lie. 1984 Revisited, Totalitarianism In Our
Century. Ed. Irving Howe. New York: Harper and Row, 1983. 122-136. Leyden, Peter. On the
Digital Age: Dawn of a Second Renaissance Star Tribune 25 June 1995: 1t+. Orwell, George.
1984. New York: The New American Library Inc., 1983. Reilly, Patrick. Nineteen
Eighty-Four, Past, Present, and Future. Boston G.K. Hall and Co., 1989. Stansky, Peter
and William Abrahams. Orwell: The Transformation. London: Gramala Publishing Limited,
1981. Tucker, Robert C. Does Big Brother Really Exist? 1984 Revisited, Totalitarianism In
Your Century. Ed. Irving Howe, New York: Harper and Row, 1983. 89-103. Verity, John W.
Why Big Brother Isn't Watching You. Business Week 9 January, 1995: 15- 16. Weight,
Richard. Return To Albion, Intellectuals in Wartime Britain. History Today. December
1994: 37-43. Outline
Thesis Statement- This paper will examine how George Orwell wrote
1984 as a political statement against totalitarianism.
I Introduction
II Summary of 1984
III Roles of major Charters
A. Big Brother
B. Winston
C. O'Brien
D. Julia
E. Shop owner
IV Propaganda
A. Ministry of Truth
B. Ministry of Love
V Orwell's thoughts on Totalitarianism
A. From life experiences
B. From a writers point of view
VI Conclusion 
Introduction Orwell observed that every line of serious work that I have written since
1936 has been written directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic
socialism, as I understand it (George Orwell). George Orwell has been a major contributor
to anticommunist literature around the World War II period. Orwell lived in England
during World War II, a time when the totalitarianism state, Nazi Germany, was at war with
England and destroyed the city of London.  I know that building' said Winston finally.
Its a ruin now. It's in the middle of the street outside the Palace of Justice.' That's
right. Outside the Law Courts. It was bombed in-oh many years ago' (Orwell 83). This
reflects Orwell's own life experiences as a citizen in war torn England and how he uses
this in 1984. George Orwell is famous for two major novels which attack totalitarianism.
The first is Animal Farm a satire describing the leaders of the Soviet Union as animals
on an animal farm. The second novel is 1984 a story of dictators who are in complete
control of a large part of the world after the Allies lost in World War II . The
government in this novel gives no freedoms to its citizens. They live in fear because
they are afraid of having bad thoughts about the government of Oceania, a crime
punishable by death. This is the gem in Orwell's collection of novels against
totalitarianism. This paper will show how George Orwell wrote 1984 as a political
statement against totalitarianism. 1984 is about life in a world where no personal
freedoms exist. Winston the main character, is a man of 39 who is not extraordinary in
either intelligence or character, but is disgusted with the world he lives in. He works
in the Ministry of Truth, a place where history and the truth is rewritten to fit the
party's beliefs. Winston is aware of the untruths, because he makes them true. This makes
him very upset with the government of Oceania, where Big Brother, a larger than life
figure, controls the people. His dissatisfaction increases to a point where he rebels
against the government in small ways. Winston's first act of rebellion is buying and
writing in a diary. This act is known as a thought crime and is punishable by death. A
thought crime is any bad thought against the government of Oceania. Winston commits many
thought crimes and becomes paranoid about being caught, which he knows is inevitable
(Greenblast 113). He becomes paranoid because he is followed by a young woman who is
actively involved in many community groups. Winston is obsessed with the past, a time
before Oceania was under strict dictatorship. He goes into an antique shop and buys a
shell covered in glass which is another crime punishable by death. He sees the same woman
following him. Many thoughts race through his mind I wanted to rape you and then murder
you afterwards. Two weeks ago I thought seriously of smashing your head in with a
cobblestone. If you really want to know, I imagined that you had something to do with the
Thought Police (Orwell 101). The girl who was following him slipped him a note while at
work. The note said I love you(90). They make plans to meet each other and carry on an
illegal love affair. This love affair is another rebellion against the government. It
goes on for some time. Winston rents a room where he and Julia can be secluded from the
outside world. They meet a man named O'Brien who indicates that he is another
revolutionary. Winston and Julia go to his house to meet with him. O'Brien gives than a
seditious book to read. Soon after that, they are caught by the Thought Police and never
see each other again. O'Brien, becomes Winston's rehabilitator and torturer for the next
9 months. O'Brien tortures Winston in stages. The first two stages are to force the
party's beliefs on him then learn and understand what is expected of him. In the third
stage, Winston is made to face what he secretly fears most, rats eating his face. After
being completely rehabilitated by O'Brien, Winston now loves the establishment and the
government. He is set free. Big Brother is the figurehead of a government that has total
control. The Big Brother regime uses propaganda and puts fear in its citizens to keep the
general population in line. Big Brother is watching you(Orwell 5) is just one example of
many party slogans that puts fear in its citizens. Big Brother uses various ways to catch
people guilty of bad thoughts In the world of 1984 the tyrant Big Brother does employ a
vast army of informers called thought police, who watch every citizen at all times for
the least signs of criminal deviation which may consist simply of unorthodox
thoughts(112). Winston Smith represents Orwell's view on totalitarianism. Winston rebels
against the government of Oceania by starting a diary and constantly having bad thoughts
against the government. Winston knows that he is doomed from the moment he has his first
heretical thought . The tensions of the novel concerns how long he can stay alive and
whether it is possible for Winston to die without mentally betraying his rebellion
(Greenblast 115). Winston starts writing in a diary for two reasons. The first is that he
wants to be able to remember the daily occurrences in the world. In 1984, the memory of
individuals, is effectively manipulated, programmed, and controlled from the outside by
the party (Kolakowski 127). People don't know what they are consciously remembering and
what is told to them. The party had invented airplanes (Orwell 127) is just one example
of the party's propaganda and false statements that change every day. The other reason
for the diary is so that people in the future will be able to read what went on during
Winston's time and to tell them about his daily reflections on his feelings about the
party. These are the same reasons why Orwell wrote 1984. He wanted to expose a communist
country (the Soviet Union) . The specific political purpose that had aro used Orwell's
sense of urgency was his desire to explode the myth of the Soviet Union as the paradigm
of the socialist state. He also wanted to expose the dangers of totalitarianism, which
the devaluation of objective truth, and the systematic manipulation of the common people
through propaganda (George Orwell). O'Brien is an informant to Big Brother. He is not who
he seems to be. He appears to Winston as a fellow conspirator, but actually becomes
Winston's torturer and rehabilitator. O'Brien and the party can't tolerate Winston's
betrayal of the government. O'Brien tells his victim : You are a flaw in the pattern,
Winston. You are a stain that must be wiped out...It is intolerable that an erroneous
thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be.
(George Orwell). In fact, the party can't comprehend his disbelief and must change his
thoughts through torture and brainwash. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty
and then we shall fill you with ourselves (Orwell 200). O'Brien represents the core of
communist or totalitarian rule, making the victims suffer by using brainwashing to
control them. O'Brien also tells Winston what he should feel about Big Brother when
Winston is at his lowest point mentally and physically. O'Brien's speeches to the broken
Winsto n Smith in the Thought Polices' torture chamber represents for Orwell the core of
our century's political hideousness. Although O'Brien says that power seeks power and
needs no ideological excuse. he does in fact explain to his victim what this power is
(George Orwell). Julia is considered a sexual deviant in the oppressed world of 1984. In
a normal world sex is free, in 1984 it's a forbidden act only allowed for reproduction
purposes to keep the party's numbers constant. Julia has been sexually active since her
teenage years. She had had her first love affair when she was sixteen, with a party
member of sixty (Orwell 109). Love and sex is not allowed in this totalitarian state so
Julia has to look as pure as possible so that she does not show any guilt. You thought I
was a good party member, pure in word and deed. Banners, processions, slogans, games,
community hikes all that stuff. And you [Winston] thought that if I had a quarter of a
chance I'd denounce you as a thought criminal and get you killed off  (101). The owner of
the antique shop is another example of someone appearing to be what he is not. Orwell
uses the shop owner to illustrate a point. Orwell shows that no one can be trusted in a
totalitarian country. Someone who appears to be your friend will actually turn you in and
have you killed. The shop owner appears to be an old widower who enjoys having
conversations with Winston Smith. Throughout the book it can be seen that looks can be
deceiving. He is actually a member of the Thought Police and gets a good laugh when
Winston and Julia getting caught. Now all he can do is wait for his next victim to enter
his store. The Ministry of Truth is a place where history and facts--significant and
insignificant are rewritten to reflect the party's utopian beliefs. They thoroughly
destroy the records of the past; they print up new, up to-date editions of old newspapers
and books; and they know corrected versions will be replaced by another, re-corrected
one. Their goal is to make people forget everything- facts, words, dead people, the names
of places. How far they succeed in obliterating the past is not fully established in
Orwell's description; clearly they try hard and they score impressive results. The ideal
of complete oblivion may not have been reached, yet further progress is to be expressed
(Kolakowski 126). Winston and Julia are workers at the Ministry of Truth. Winston gets
more mentally involved in his work than Julia. Winston Smith and his fellows at the
Ministry of Truth spend their days rewriting the past: Most of the material you were
dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of
connection that is contained in a direct lie' (George Orwell). Winston is not as strong
mentally as Julia. His work affects him more. The Ministry of Truth is like a
totalitarian country, because it has ways to scare its citizens. People guilty of crimes
are erased from having ever existed. Your name was removed from the registers, every
record of your existence was denied and then forgotten (Orwell 19). Again people were
taken away without any rights. ...there was no trial no report of arrest (19). The actual
purpose of the Ministry of Truth is to spread lies and to have control over its citizens
using memory erasing techniques. ...the distinction between true and false in their usual
meaning has disappea red. This is the great cognitive triumph of totalitarianism: it
cannot be accused of lying any longer since it has succeeded in abrogating the very idea
of truth (Kolakowski 127). These same control techniques are used by totalitarian nations
that seek control over there citizens. The Ministry of Truth is a complete contradiction
of itself. A Ministry of Truth should not change past occurrences or say people never
existed. It should exemplify the truth and not erase records of the existence of people.
The Ministry of Love is where all criminals are tortured, rehabilitated, then set free or
killed. As soon as Winston is captured he knows he is going to the Ministry of Love. The
Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all.
Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometer of it. It
was a place impossible to enter except on offical business, and then only by penetrating
throu gh a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests.
Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in
black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons (Orwell 8). In a totalitarian state
something resembling a Ministry of Love is common place. It's a place where the
government can inflict pain on its subjects for crimes big and small. That is how
totalitarian nations keep, power over their citizens-- by fear of pain. The name Ministry
of Love is a contradiction of itself. Its name shows a feeling of love and warmth, but in
actuality it's the complete opposite. It's a place of hate and pain and is cold and dark.
A better name for it would be the Ministry of Hate. George Orwell lived during a time
when Europe was in a period of rebuilding after World War II. During that time Soviets
gained six nations as satellites. England was helpless and had to worry about their own
problems and had to watch the Soviet Union take control of half of Germany. The leader of
the Soviet Union, Stalin, closely resembles Big Brother. They were both larger than life
figures in there respective countries. In the Soviet Union you could easily have found
large posters with Stalin's face on them. The same holds true in 1984; Big Brother's face
is everywhere. A famous quote from 1984 is Big Brother is watching you (Orwell 5).
Meaning if his Thought Police don't catch you, his telescreens and hidden microphones
would. In the Soviet Union, Stalin's K.G.B. sought criminals who plotted against the
government. In Stalin's regime over 10 million people were killed. In 1984 hundreds of
criminals were killed daily. Another aspect of the 1940's were the new broadcast T.V.'s
and mainframe computers. The new technologies could be used for means of control. Orwell
saw communist countries using these technologies for control (George Orwell). This is
where Orwell's idea of telescreens and hidden microphones came from. Before World War II,
Orwell had his worst encounter with communists. While Orwell was in the Spanish Civil
War, he was running away from Soviet communists who were trying to kill him. After that
experience he got out of the army and became a writer full time. Another shock to Orwell
was when the Nazi-Soviet pact signaled the breakdown and the beginning of the mental and
emotional state out of which grew Animal Farm and 1984(Greenblast 105). Orwell may of
have extracted what he saw in his world while writing but it was done to get people's
attention of problems in the existing world. Orwell's primary purpose is to distort
disturbing conditions tendencies and habits of thought that he saw existing in the
world(George Orwell). Orwell saw, the whole world steadily moving toward a vast ruthless
tyranny. He felt nothing could stop it's monstrous progress. 1984, in spite of its
setting in the future, is not primarily a utopian fantasy prophesying what the world will
be like in thirty or forty years but a novel about what the world is like now (Greenblast
112). Orwell always relates characters in his books to points of view and real people. In
Animal Farm every farm animal represents a person in the Soviet Union. In 1984, Orwell
represents his point of view in Winston. He shows a totalitarian leader, in O'Brien and
Big Brother, while Julia is the desire and lust in every human being. George Orwell had
deep resentment against totalitarianism and what it stood for. He saw the problem of
totalitarianism in his existing world. He also understood how the problem could fester
and become larger due to instability in Europe's economy after World War II. He purposely
makes the story, 1984, unrealistic and blown out of proportion to capture people's
attention and make them think maybe it wouldn't be unrealistic in the near future. With
his deep resentment toward totalitarianism it became the focal point of his novels.
George Orwell's, novels were directed toward against totalitarianism and for Socialism
and what it stood for. 1984, Bibliography Andrews, Paul. 1984 Plus 10. The Seattle Times
6 March 1994: A1+. Black, David. Wider Still and Wider European 25 October 1991: 8-9.
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