1984 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Orwell wrote 1984 just after World War II ended, wanting it to serve as a warning to his readers. He wanted to be certain that the kind of future presented in the novel should never come to pass, even though the practices that contribute to the development of such a state were abundantly present in Orwell’s time.
Orwell lived during a time in which tyranny was a reality in Spain, Germany, the Soviet Union, and other countries, where government kept an iron fist (or curtain) around its citizens, where there was little, if any freedom, and where hunger, forced labor, and mass execution were common.
Orwell espoused democratic socialism. In his essay, “Why I Write,” published in 1947, two years before the publication of 1984, Orwell stated that he writes, among other reasons, from the “[d]esire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.” Orwell used his writing to express his powerful political feelings, and that fact is readily apparent in the society he creates in 1984.
The society in 1984, although fictional, mirrors the political weather of the societies that existed all around him. Orwell’s Oceania is a terrifying society reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union—complete repression of the human spirit, absolute governmental control of daily life, constant hunger, and the systematic “vaporization” of individuals who do not, or will not, comply with the government’s values.
Orwell despised the politics of the leaders he saw rise to power in the countries around him, and he despised what the politicians did to the people of those countries. Big Brother is certainly a fusing of both Stalin and Hitler, both real and terrifying leaders, though both on opposite sides of the philosophical spectrum. By combining traits from both the Soviet Union’s and Germany’s totalitarian states, Orwell makes clear that he is staunchly against any form of governmental totalitarianism, either from the left or the right of the political spectrum.
By making Big Brother so easily recognizable (he is physically similar to both Hitler and Stalin, all three having heavy black mustaches and charismatic speaking styles), Orwell makes sure that the reader of 1984 does not mistake his intention—to show clearly how totalitarianism negatively affects the human spirit and how it is impossible to remain freethinking under such circumstances.
1984 STORY SETTING AND BACKGROUND
The setting of 1984 is Oceania, a giant country comprised of the Americas; the Atlantic Islands, including the British Isles; Australia; and the southern portion of Africa. Oceania’s mainland is called Air Strip One, formerly England. The story itself takes place in London in the year 1984, a terrifying place and time where the human spirit and freedom are all but crushed. In the novel, war is constant. The main character, Winston Smith, born before the World War II, grew up knowing only hunger and political instability, and many of the things that he experiences are hyperboles of real activities in wartime Germany and the Soviet Union.
It is important to remember that Orwell based 1984 on the facts as he knew them; hunger, shortages, and repression actually happened as a result of the extreme governmental policies of these countries. The war hysteria, the destruction of the family unit, the persecution of “free thinkers” or those who were “different” or not easily assimilated into the party doctrine, the changing of history to suit the party’s agenda, were all too real. Orwell’s speculation of the future is actually a creative extension of how the masses were treated under Franco, Hitler, and Stalin.
By setting 1984 in London, Orwell is able to invoke the atmosphere of a real war-torn community, where people live in “wooden dwellings like chicken houses” in bombed-out clearings. His intent clearly was to capitalize on a memory that every reader, especially a British reader, was likely to have. London in 1984, then, becomes not just a make-believe place where bad things happen to unknown people, but a very real geographical spot that still holds some connection for the modern reader.
In 1984, the world is sliced into three political realms—the super states of Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia. Orwell drew these lines fairly consistent with the political distribution of the Cold War era beginning after World War II. Each of these three states is run by a totalitarian government that is constantly warring on multiple fronts. By creating an entire world at war, Orwell not only creates a terrifying place, but he also eliminates the possibility of escape for Winston, who is forced to live within his present circumstances, horrible and unremitting as they are.
Oceania’s political structure is divided into three segments: the Inner Party, the ultimate ruling class, consisting of less than 2 percent of the population; the Outer Party, the educated workers, numbering around 18 to 19 percent of the population; and the Proles, or the proletariat, the working class. Although the Party (Inner and Outer) does not see these divisions as true “classes,” it is clear that Orwell wants the reader to see the class distinctions. For a socialist such as Orwell, class distinctions mean the existence of conflict and class struggle. In Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, for example, the few people who comprised the ruling class had a much higher standard of living than the masses, but in these nations, as in 1984, revolt was all but impossible.
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George ORWELL wrote excellent allegory novels criticizing totalitarian society and is
certainly the most important political writer of the post war years.
The author´s real name was Eric Blair. He was born in India in 1903 in the family of an Indian Civil servant. At the age od eight he was brought back to England, attended a preparatory school in Essex, then he went to Eton (the famous public school).He did not like it there and was truly unhappy. When he was 18, he joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. He turned his five year experiences into the novel Burmese Days (written in 1934) In 1927 he resigned from his post, having decided he could no longer be an instrument of British colonialism.
To learn more about the life of the lower class, he decided to live as one of them. He spent over one year in Paris and London working in hotels and restaurants as a dishwasher. He lived in a poorly furnished room. His experiences there formed the basis for his next book Down and Out in Paris and London (1933).
At the end of 1920s he returned to England and lived in his parents´home in Suffolk, earning money by writing occasional articles. There he took his pseudonym from the river Orwell in Suffolk. He went from job to job, teaching, later working on a farm, but always using his experience in his writing. A Clergyman´s Daughter was his next novel before he moved to London to work in a bookshop. This period is reflected in Keep the Aspidistra Flying. (1936)
In the same year he was commissioned to write a book about the conditions of the unemployed in the industrial north of England.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out (1936), he went there (like Hemingway did) to fight on the side of the Republicans. Homage to Catalonia (1938) tells about the fights, his injury, his courage and the disillusionment he experienced there. After his return to England, Orwell was diagnosed as having tuberculosis, which in fact was the cause of his premature death at the age of 46.
Orwell´s experiences in Spain of war and revolutionary politics, particularly his contacts with the Communists, sharpened his rejection of Soviet- style communism and completed his break with the ortodox Left. (although he remained a Socialist) When the World War II broke out, he tried to join the army, but was rejected for health reasons. During the war he worked for the BBC and began to write his famous book The Animal Farm, which tells the story of a political revolution that went wrong. It was finished in 1944 but he was rejected by several publishers on political grounds because Britain and the USA were, at the time, allies of the Soviet Union.
The novel is an allegory for the situation in the Soviet Union. We easily recognise the major political figures of the Soviet totalitarian regime – Stalin (pig Napoleon), Trotsky (pig Snowball) and Lenin(old pig Major) represented here as animals taking over the leadership on the farm. The animals on a farmled by the pigs, drive out their master Jones and take control of the farm, but the purity of their political ideas is soon destroyed, and at the end they are just as greedy and dishonest as the farmer whom they drove out. This satire is written in the form of a fable which bears the message that absolute power corrupts and a new tyranny replaces the old.
The pigs make up a complete ideological system which is named Animalism. According to this ideology Seven Commandments are accepted and the animals should live by them:
After the revolution (driving out the lazy, greedy and drunken farmer) the animals are happy and work hard. Their first harvest is marvellous. But gradually all went wrong. Napoleon (Stalin) trains up a bodyguard of fierce dogs (=the Soviet secret police) and uses them to drive Snowball (Trotsky) off the farm and to kill everyone who is against him. Napoleon starts to deal more and more with Men. As the time passes pigs, who long ago moved into the farmhouse, sleep in beds, walk on their hind legs, wear Mr Jones´clothes. Yet the other animals have never lost their sense of honour and privilege in being members of the only farm in England owned and operated by animals.
The last chapter of the book shows a drunken party at which Napoleon and his colleagues entertain some local farmers. The poor animals, looking into the farmhouse room from outside, cannot tell the pigs from the Men. Also the basic commandment is changed:
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
Orwell´s second best novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was finished in 1949 when he was suffering from renewed tuberculosis. It can be read as a warning against totalitarian tendencies. Winston Smith, the main hero, tries unsuccessfully to oppose the regime and gain some individual freedom. Working for the Ministry of Truth, he sees how truth and everyday news can be falsified. This book describes a future world where every word and action is seen and controlled by the state, which has developed a kind of television that can watch people in their own homes, and is changing the language so that only words left are those for objects and ideas that the government wants the people to know about. For Orwell, the quality of a language suggests the quality of the society that uses it, so that zhe government controls a language in order to control completely the people who use it. This picture of the future, influenced by the hardships and dangers of the WWII and the political events that followed it, is a dark despairing one. Orwell recognizes the important part that the state must play in a fair society, but he also feels that all human beings need to be able to be private sometimes so that they can be themselves.
It is the story of Winston Smith, a party worker, who begins to question the logic and the truth of the ruthless and uncompromising ruling Party „Ingsoc“ and its leader Big Brother. Winston starts to také risks. He hides from the government cameras which are designed to spy on the population. He finds a book which has been banned by the government. He meets and falls in love with a girl. They make love, knowing that being in love is an illegal act which can be punished by death. He joins a secret group of revolutionaries, who want ot overthrow the government and restore democracy. This, however, is not a story with a happy ending. Winston is caught by the Thought Police and arrested. He is tortured and brainwashed until finally he cannot think for himself anymore and is only able to believe at everything the government says and does is right.
In 1949 (when Orwell wrote the book), the year 1984 was a long way off. Fortunatelly, Orwell´s vision of the future was misguided and hasn´t fulfilled. When the year 1984 arrived, citizens were not oppressed by the all-powerful dictatorship, there was no Thought olice or Room 101.
Nowadays cameras are everywhere, media is controlled by a few very rich and internationally powerful men. Who knows, Orwell´s vision might become true in the future ???!
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1984 – GEORGE ORWELL
It is a time, or was I should say when anything was possible. The death of a people that felt, thought, and knew something to be true because of it’s very nature. Instead that reality is replaced by the thought that a government that controls the future past and present can make anything believable. And yet as well all know truth must live in, whether it be in the lives of a tragic few, or in the monstrosity of the unknown. It is there, still waiting for man to find it.
In thought our world is the world of George Orwell’s 1984, in deed it is nothing of the sort. In one’s mind it can be imagined that we are governed under the principles of Ingsoc. Yet where is this shown, and how? Let us examine where we are, and where we have come from. What is our future?
The dark drab world of Winston Smith in 1984 is often viewed with a sense of dark foreboding. Wonders & dreams take us there and back. Yet not one of us will ever succumb to the terrors of room 101.
In the world of 1984 the basic wants and needs of each person, are removed, and replaced only with a love for big brother. The desires of the body that can be troublesome have been eliminated. Sex has become drudgery, and reporting one’s parents to the state is looked upon as an act to be admired. The only fear is that of being different. Out side the norm. Facial expressions, the shrug of the shoulders, any thing that sets you apart, or outside of the general norm, endangers your life.
We also notice that hate has become a vital part of the party system. Keeping the general population down and under the control of the small elite is all that is desired. The others often puzzle Winston during the two-minute hate. The actions, the lewd names, the point which people have degraded them selves to. And all of this is done for the good of the party.
The party has taken place of any other kind of love in the world. There is nothing but to love the party, to love Big Brother. The love found in companionship is no longer there, which is shown by Winston’s relationship with his wife. The only true love the Winston finds seems to be contraband. The love for parents from children has been changed to hate and suspicion. The love of neighbors seems to be gone, as Winston describes the interaction with his neighbors.
At one point in the book Winston realizes, as he remembers that:
The thought that now suddenly struck Winston was that his mother’s death, nearly thirty years ago, had been tragic and sorrowful in a way that was no longer possible…she had sacrificed herself to a conception of loyalty that was private and unalterable. Such things, he saw, could not happen today.
We see for sure that things that once were very possible were now not possible. It was as if certain aspects of life had been snuffed out, and erased by the wishes of the state.
The interesting thing that I found about the Society in which Winston was enveloped was this. And I will quote from the book that I read it out of since I don’t feel that I could put it a better way: “Here there are no laws; nothing is illegal. But everything that could make life tolerable is condemned by social pressure.” Of course an example of this is primarily shown in Winston’s intellectuality, another is Julia’s rebellion against the party in her uncomplicated sexuality.
This sex instinct is exactly what the party is trying to eliminate. That is because it creates a private world. The government of Oceania cynically adapts Freud’s theory of the relationship between sexual sublimation and civilization to its own purposes. For example Julia, in the story, points out that: “All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour.” And as if the strengthen this suspicion, O’Brien, assures Winston that the party will destroy the orgasm.
The simple fact that hope is gone is despairing enough to drive a man into deep depression. But somehow we see that hope still prevails in the minds of a few. But the fire hoses of the state quickly quench this small fire. The fact that we were led on all through the book to believe that Winston had a chance was cruel. All along the state was simply toying with him.
Once again Orwell was right. In this quote from the book George Orwell, Roberta Kalechofsky says: “In the character of Winston, Orwell suggests that man does posses a human nature that can be known through one’s instincts and intuitions, but that the knowledge of this human nature, as well as the nature itself can be destroyed.”
Here the irony is shown in that Winston lives in Victory Mansions, smokes Victory Cigarettes, and drinks Victory Gin, but as a human lives a life of utter defeat.
It is in Julia that we find hope. It is a subtle hope. Her ability to survive in this world is interesting. Also a thing to note is that she would have probably survived had Winston not implicated her in his Brotherhood conspiracy. She is portrayed as someone who knows how to get along in this totalitarian world without to much damage to her mind. She, unlike Winston feels no need to establish a past, and cares little whether a fact can be proved or not. A good example of this is when she falls asleep when Winston try’s to read her a book about the principles, and origins of Ingsoc.
In all the present world and the world of 1984 seem to be in stark contrast with one another, but in reality they share subtle likeness’s that seem to sound a warning that needs to be heeded. For instance this quote from a good friend of mine sums it up quite nicely.
I found that book terribly depressing because the protagonist seemed to be in a hopeless state, then found something to make life bearable, and all along the state was just playing with him and they squashed all his hopes at the end of the book. I think it has all relevance today that it had in the late 1940s when it was written. I recall in the year 1984 (as opposed to the book) lots of journals were discussing how the theme of the book had not come true, but journalists are not very bright, and they seem to have not noticed that the tenants of 1984 have nothing to do with Joseph Stalin's Russia, or Mao's China, or Hitler's Germany, but have to do with what people are like at their very worst. The book explains that lies, and politics, and superstition, and ideology, and fear are always within a hair's breadth of making 1984 a reality in any society. Look at the current epidemic of political correctness, or look at how schools these days are overreacting to perfectly normal behavior among kids...I mean they are putting little bitty kids in jail for threatening one another. That's what normal little kids do, for Pete's sake. You can ignore it. But administrators and teachers seem to be acting like nitwits...they are acting like people did in the book 1984 ... any little deviance from an allowed normal and we report you to the appropriate authorities!
Oddly enough it is the end that most of us see what we fear. But is it really the world of 1984? Possibly, right now it is, I feel, at the point where we shape what the future will be. Mind you any likeness of 1984 is a long way off. For instance those that see communism and socialism as the fulfillment of Big Brother are a bit off. Consider the excerpt of the book:
…in the twentieth century there were the German Nazi’s and the Russian Communists. The Russians persecuted heresy more cruelly that the Inquisitions had done. And they imagined that they had learned from the mistakes of the past; they knew at any rate, that one must not make martyrs. Before they exposed their victims.
…the German Nazi’s and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but pretended, perhaps they even believed, that the had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.
…the object of power is power.
Straight forth it is plainly laid out the flaw in the plan of the Marxist’s and the Nazi’s and the Bolshevik’s. The thought that power could be relinquished for the greater good. The principles of Ingsoc clearly state, “We are not interested in the good of others ”
So where is communism going? As of the writing of this paper the age-old stronghold of communism is moving back toward just that. Russia’s president, Putin moves every day closer to the military state that used to be the U.S.S.R. China still holds out, but becomes more and more capitalistic every day. North Korea is in the middle of a famine, or recovering from one, and Cuba begins to open its doors to the capitalist ideas of the United States.
All around we see the failure of the communists. But what is our future? Is it the state capitalism of the United States? Or is it the European Union and the Euro? I would have to say capitalism. So far it has reigned supreme. Pushing the world economy forward. But we see that the problem is when the government intervenes and try’s to fix what it has no place dealing with. Take for example several command solutions, the California energy crisis, the fate of Russia and her economy, and European workers Unions.
The actual government of Oceania was nothing more than, Big Brother. More than the foreboding presence that is there to keep you in line. The US government however is often thought of as the same way. But when approached from the point of a comparison to that of Oceania it is relaxed and unobservant. Each day people such as the Unabomber coexist with us. We are allowed to question our government. We choose our own friends. We have families and we choose our jobs. We are allowed to love, feel, smile, and express ourselves, which would have gotten us sent to room 101 in Oceania. The ministry of Love would be full of us.
The simple fact of the matter is that we are blessed in a sort of way that cannot be realized without reading fine works such as 1984. The US government is pretty far from what Winston Smith had to deal with, but we can never be to careful. Ever watchful, we must enjoy our freedom and not let it slip away
George Orwell was a pen name for Eric Blair, a British Author who achieved prominence in the late 1940’s as the author of 1984 and Animal Farm.
He was born in 1903 in and Indian village named Motihari. At this time India was a part of the British Empire. In 1907 the Blair family moved back to England to live in Henly. His father however continued to work in India until her retired in 1912. Eric was sent to private preparatory school in Sussex at the age of eight. At age 13 he won a scholarship to Wellington, and soon after another to Eaton, the famous public school. It was here that he apprenticed him self to studying the great English authors Swift, Sterne, and Jack London. However after graduation he failed to win a university scholarship, and joined the Indian Imperial Police. He trained in Burma and served five years there. When home on leave in 1927 he resigned. One reason for this was that he was unable to follow the path in life that he felt he was to lead, to be an author. It is also stated in Road to Wigan Pier (1937) he wishes to “escape from … every form of man’s dominion over man”.
In London he moved into a gritty bedroom on Portobello road. He spent endless hours teaching himself to write. And finally resolved himself to living among the poor. He spent time also among the poor and working class in Paris at the time. He felt that this would expose him to those who were the oppressed. Much like the Burmese in their own country.
In 1929 he spent Christmas with his family, where he announced that he was going to write a book on his times in Paris. It was completed in 1930 and titled A Scullion’s Diary. After rejection from publisher Orwell wrote Burmese Days (published in 1934), and book based on his experiences in the colonial service. We owe the rescue of Down and Out to Mabel Firez : She was asked to destroy it. Instead she took the paper and took it to Leonard Monroe. Literary agent at the house Gollancz, and bullied him to read it. It was accepted on the condition of the editing of all swear words, and the changing of some names. It was now that Eric took the name Orwell. Not in the sense that most writers take a name. His reason was to separate himself from his old identity and to form a new one. Which is exactly what he did.
His next book was A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935) and Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) He then opened a village shop in Wallington, Heartforshire, in 1936. He did business in the mornings and wrote in the afternoons.
It was in the later parts of 1936 that me made his way to Spain. Where fighting between the communist party and the Fascists had begun. He joined in on the fighting and was wounded in the throat. When he returned to Barcelona he found that the dream of a classless society, which he had observed on his first trip there, had all but vanished. He was barely able to escape to France with is wife.
The long threatened war between Britain and France finally broke out. Orwell rushed to sign up to fight against the Fascist enemy, but was declared unfit for service. He spent time at home with the BBC, and finally he went to Europe as a reporter during the end of the war. Late in 1945 he went to island of Jura off the Scottish coast, and settled there in 1946. He wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four there. The islands climate was unsuitable for someone suffering from Tuberculosis and Nineteen Eighty-Four reflects the bleakness of human suffering, and indignity of pain. Indeed he said that the book wouldn’t have been so gloomy had he not been so ill. Later that year he married Sonia Bronwell. He died in January 1950.
The fear of the thought of the world of 1984 pervading ours has caused us to try to stamp out communism. We went through the red scare. McCarthy was brash enough to come up with a list of names and try to prosecute those that he felt were communist supporters. Suddenly it was a crime to think a certain way. We were nearing what some would call the society we were trying to run from. But then to reason of a few saw this flaw and stepped in and stopped it. The US went back to is peaceful contentment, and the world of 1984 moved further toward the horizon.
We can never get to comfortable though. The thought that someday our future may just be what George Orwell predicted is too much a reality for us to let go. So we need to make sure, as Mr. Kilty said earlier, to stop persecuting people for doing what is perfectly normal. When it is a crime to talk a certain way, to think a certain way, or to believe that there is even a God, we will be to far gone to come back.
George Orwell himself wrote that, “It is quite possible that mans major problems never be solved. But it is also unthinkable! Who is there who dares to look at the world of today and say to himself, ‘it will always be like this:’ ”. This is an interesting point in saying that our problems can never be solved, but also to think that any man that thinks the world will always stay in it’s present state is also a bit crazy. It can’t, just during Orwell’s time we saw the rise and the fall of the Nazi party. I am sure some Germans thought that the Nazi’s would forever be in power.
No matter how far man has come, there will always be further to go. We must never become satisfied with where we are, and by doing this. We will never have to worry about Big Brother, or the thought police. But this is only to be avoided through aware ness. So let us keep our minds and hearts open and alert.
George Orwell, Roberta Kalechofsky pg. 118
George Orwell, Roberta Kalechofsky pg. 112
George Orwell, Roberta Kalechofsky pg. 119
Ideas and Issues: readings for analysis and evaluation, Laser-Cathcart-Marcus pg. 162
George Orwell, Roberta Kalechofsky pg. 120
George Orwell, Roberta Kalechofsky pg. 114
George Orwell, Roberta Kalechofsky pg. 114
Excerpt from an e-mail from Kevin Kilty, 2001
1984, George Orwell pg. 258
1984, George Orwell pg. 234
The Crystal Spirit: a study of George Orwell, George Woodcock pg. 28
www.k1.com/orwell/bio1.htm
George Orwell, Raymond Williams pg. 6
George Orwell, Raymond Williams pg. 5-6
www.k1.com/orwell/bio2.htm
The Crystal Spirit: a study of George Orwell, George Woodcock pg. 6
George Orwell, Roberta Kalechofsky pg. 110
The Red Scare, Max Robertson pg. 54
Direct Quote from an email, Kevin Kilty, 2001
George Orwell, Roberta Kalechofsky pg. 110
George Orwell and the Origins of 1984, William Steinhoff pg. 73
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