Global Events Influencing 1984 by George Orwell Down with Big Brother, the omnipresent leader of Ingsoc, or English socialism, and the force that has society in a vice of fear and ignorance. It is in George Orwells grim dystopia 1984 that these circumstances exist. It was written in 1949 as a warning to where society could be headed. George Orwell was an English writer that had just witnessed the horrors or World War II and the power of a strong central leader that nearly took over the whole of Europe, Hitler. All of these factors form Orwells’ writing that is 1984. This book is a warning that if the world stayed on its current track, the world of Big Brother would not be as unlikely as it seemed. The book is a satirical dystopia that warns of the dangers of totalitarian governments like those of Russia or China. The book is still relevant today because of how easily we could slip into the ways of Ingsoc, Newspeak for English Socialism, the system of government in 1984. George Orwell’s main contentions are that this world portrayed in book was not only possible but quick to come about. Orwell’s belief of such a drastic change in such a short time could be related to the times he would have just witnessed in real life. Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power in the short time between World War I and World War II. The Party rose to power and instituted there government in a matter of one or two generations. George Orwell wrote this book in 1949 and we find Winston in April of 1984, Orwell believed that we were on such a wrong course that the likes of Ingsoc could rise in 35 years. Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, had a different view of how to keep society in bondage. In his book, he uses drugs and sex to keep the masses in submission as opposed to the repression of sex to keep people in a frenziable rage found in 1984. The quality the two books share is the use of drugs to keep society in a stupor for easier control. In Huxley’s book they use a perfectly manufactured drug that makes everything seem great and Orwell uses cheap, oily Victory Gin to keep the people numbed. The two books paint ugly pictures of a controlled society but Orwell’s is more realistic due to its grimness. The only problem I had with the book is that the second half drags too much. Early on, Orwell makes it very clear that the Party cannot be taken down, so when Winston
Based upon Fromm’s analysis many of the warnings presented in 1984 exist in today’s society. Currently society exists with “doublethink”, meaning as the days past society is one step closer to a dark era. Many people have already adapted this way of thinking, but if we want to
1984 was written as a warning to the western countries about having a totalitarianism government which is refers to a system of government in which lawfully electes representatives maintain the integrity of a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little to no participation in the decision-making process of the government. The author felt like these countries were not able to find tactics to withstand the communism that was being taken placed. When the book was written in 1949 the Cold War had not yet broke out, and most people supported the diplomacy with the democratic communism. The author found the cruelty that was committed in the communist countries very disturbing, and the technologies that were used to help these countries control the citizens intriguing. This book tells how a complete government controlled country could be. Warning those who lived during this time to that if they did not want this to happen then they better vote against totalitarianism.
Orwell has real concerns about the way in which society worked, particular when considering hierarchies and the way the powerful manipulate information. As can be seen there is a strong hierarchy system in the novel 1984 with references to poor and wealthy classes, the proles being lower class and the inner party members being higher class. Orwell spent time in boarding school, wasn’t wealthy and saw disparity between people who had and hadn’t, there are many references towards headmaster and control “ When he spoke it was in a schoolmasterish kind of way” (3.5.297). Orwell also used Hitler’s actions as a leader and incorporated them into 1984; this is evident through the propaganda of Big Brother, dictatorship and the way the Inner party was able to manipulate society to change their beliefs. “The German Nazis and the communist came very close to us in their methods…” (3.3.276) Orwell’s values and beliefs about communism and democracy have strongly been developed through his trepidation in power and historical references to Hitler.
The book “1984” by George Orwell is a fictional work that was penned as a discourse on Orwell’s views of what it would be like to live in a totalitarianism society. It is my belief that his views were based on his personal life experiences as he witnessed first hand many of the violent crimes perpetuated by those in positions of authority. Often, these crimes against one segment of society were carried out by other members of the same society in the name of political advancement or at other times out of fear for one’s life. Due to his experiences, Orwell began to write of his hatred of political power and the concept of a totalitarianism society. “1984” serves as a warning to readers of how a government can become abusive when seeking total control of it’s population. Furthermore, it showcases in great detail how a society can allow itself to be controlled through a series of psychological abuses and manipulation of historical information.
In, Brave New World, Huxley shows how what we enjoy turns into distractions, and how people in his created society
...ailed as a system of government. Perhaps in Orwell's socialist commentary he failed to take notice of the trends being embraced by capitalism. Behavioral psychology states that reward is a far greater incentive than punishment is a deterrent. In society today thought control is much more pleasant, subtle, and diverse than it was in Orwell's vision.The media, television, the internet, computer games, and movies serve to indoctrinate us into the norms of society in a way which is much more complex than Big Brother's propaganda. We are depoliticized, kept away from the real issues by superficial diversions, much like the proles. Big Brother may not exist, but his name is everywhere. Perhaps Aldus Huxley's Brave New World would have better served as a predictor of modern society's fall. Orwell predicted that the truth would be concealed and that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley thought that the truth would be drowned in irrelevance and that what we love will ruin us. Orwell's political commentary and philosophical issues are still relevant, but we live in a world far more complex than he could have ever predicted. Big Brother isn't watching. He doesn't need to. We're watching him.
[1]George Orwell was completely against totalitarianism, "He was fighting Franco's insurgents in Spain as a member of a left-wing, but non-Stalinist militia" (BBC.com "Orwell's Road to Dystopia"). [2]Then later in his life he wrote the dystopian novel 1984. [3]George Orwell wrote the novel 1984 to criticize the new trend of totalitarianism that was rising up; which, in his time period, would have been Hitler's reign and then Stalin's rise. In his letter he wrote, "I must say I believe. Hitler, no doubt, will soon disappear, but only at the expense of strengthening (a) Stalin, (b) the Anglo-American millionaires and (c) all sorts of petty führers of the type of de Gaulle."
So the question of whether or not the situation in Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 could happen here in the United States is the wrong question to ask. The real question to ask is how true Orwell’s predictions has proved to be and how much more will they continue to prove to be true? While there was a backlash to the NSA leaks, there has been little down politically to change the course of this program. US citizens either did not have the political will or power to do anything about this. The Obama administration justified this like the Inner Party does in the book: because we are at war and these measures are necessary for safety. But at what point is there a line that should not be crossed in the name of protecting freedoms? We are currently all living in a version of 1984.
Many believe that Orwell came up with the political ideas surrounding his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. It was written in a time were politics were influenced by World War One and the decade after. In The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell wrote, “The horrors of the Russian Revolution were still fresh in everyone’s minds.” I don’t think Orwell was necessarily giving us a detailed picture of how the future will look, or how political communication will be conducted. In D. J. Taylor’s 2004 biography of George Orwell he observed that, “the appeal – and the resonance – of Nineteen Eighty-Four to many of its original readers stemmed from the fact that it depicted a world that, by and large, they already knew.” This quote reinforces my idea that Orwell did not prophesize the future but forces us to think about how our past actions control our future. O’Briens statement "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." Is Orwell stating about what he and many others experienced as a teenager living through the horrors of the First World War. In my mind this only reinforces the notion that Nineteen Eighty-Four was written around the structure of the Russian Revolution feeding the predictions Orwell...
...nly contemplate living as an alpha or beta because we cannot contemplate living without being able to formulate ideas or basically think. No one considers living as one of the lower castes and only working throughout life until death. Thus, it seems that Huxley intended to portray an acceptable society on the surface with undesirable traits hidden deeper. In conclusion, both of these novels portray an attractive life in a utopian society, if one can conform to the rules. When people cannot conform to the societies in which they dwell (as the main characters of both novels cannot) they are branded as subversives and punished as traitors. Life in 1984 would be almost too unbearable to live. Life in Brave New World is only acceptable if one is willing to live a life of the caste one is in, that is to produce (as a lower caste) or consume (as a higher caste).
Upon my reading of the 1984 novel, I was fascinated by George Orwell’s vision of the future. Orwell describes a world so extreme that a question comes to mind, asking what would encourage him to write such a novel. 1984 took place in the future, but it seemed like it was happening in the past. George Orwell was born in 1903 and died in 1950; he has seen the horrific tides of World War II and. As I got deeper into this novel, I began to see similar events in world history built into 1984.
Read, Herbert and Harold Bloom. "1984." Bloom's Modern Critical Views: George Orwell;. Bloom's Modern Critical Views. "23 March 2005". EBSCOhost. p25-27, 3p. EBSCOhost. "3 April 2011". http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=6982cc7c-d6f5-41a1-9965-e42d8024e481%40sessionmgr114&vid=1&hid=106&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=lfh&AN=16493082.
Howe, Tom. "George Orwell." British Writers Volume VII. Ed. Ian Scott-Kilvert. New York: Scribner, 1984. 273-287.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a novel which was released in 1949, and has had massive success, reaching best-sellers list on popular websites like Amazon, among others. Nineteen Eighty-Four is considered a classic among many of those same websites (Amazon, 2013), and although George Orwell may not have received many awards for it, Nineteen...
Steinhoff, William. George Orwell and the Origins of 1984. The University of Michigan Press, 1976. Print.