The World as Portrayed in 1984 by George Orwell
The World as Portrayed in 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 Orwell’s grim dystopia Nineteen Eighty-Four that these circumstances exist. It was written in 1948 as a warning to where society could be headed. Orwell had experienced war, and had seen the world as it existed then, titling on the ledge of despair, ready to drop and shatter into a thousand pieces. This book is a warning to all, that if the world stayed on its current track, the world of Big Brother, would not be as unlikely as it seems.
Orwell stresses the similarity of Oceania to our very own world. Which not only offers reader association and verisimilitude, but it also makes Orwell’s political point of how easy it would be for our world to slip into that of Oceania, a lot more prominent in the minds’ of the readers. This point is emphasised in the very first line of the book; “the clocks were striking thirteen.” This immediately startles the reader as it is easily recognisable as something belonging to our own world, but warped and distorted, and very militaristic. This clever use of language associates the reader with the book. Another example of this is the “telescreen”. Which we never receive a definition for, but through reading the book we understand what it is, more importantly, what it does. Orwell’s use of language here again associates us with something common to our world, the television, but then warps the idea and mixes it with a solution of irony. The telescreen, instead of being watched like a television, watches us. The idea is so sinister and intriguing, yet so similar. In our modern world, we have close circuit television cameras, which effectively do the same thing. The telescreen also produces streams of statistics, showing propaganda claiming how successful the world under the party us. This also is similar to Party Political Broadcasts.
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. Yet Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four appears more...