by MadScience

Created on: February 28, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

'1984' is very difficult to define. It can be viewed as a prophetic vision of the future, as pure science fiction, as political commentary or even a tragic love story. Its enduring appeal and its greatness as a novel is due to the fact that all these labels apply.

In order to understand the motivation behind writing 1984 we have to know a little about the author George Orwell and the times in which he lived.

*THE AUTHOR

George Orwell was born Eric Blair in 1903, he described himself as lower-upper-middle class' although he had a privileged upbringing he never felt comfortable with it. From an early age he felt strongly about the oppression and tyranny that he saw around him.

On leaving private school and joining the British Burma police he developed a loathing for the strict authoritarian attitudes of the British colonial system. This coupled with bouts of serious illness led him to return to England and begin a career as a journalist and writer. In 1936 he published Down and Out in Paris and London' where he rejects the concept of capitalism and seems to favour a more socially egalitarian system of government embracing the then new ideas of socialism. He was a journalist in the Spanish civil war and he learnt of the brutality that the fascist forces were capable of. As he witnessed the rise of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet empire Orwell became firmly against any form or totalitarianism and this inspired him to write scathing thinly veiled attacks on those regimes with Animal Farm' in 1945 and finally with the publication of 1984' in 1949.

1984 was born out of Orwell's first hand knowledge of the horrors of dictatorships and totalitarian forms of government on either end of the political spectrum, and it remains even today fifty year after its publication one of the most powerful, horrific and compelling works of social commentary of the dystopian' genre..

*PLOT

The central figure in the novel is Winston Smith a low ranking official in the ministry of Truth part of the political machinery of control based in London, which at this time is part of the super state of Oceania. This is a time when every aspect of people's lives is controlled and monitored. History has been re-written, language has been re-invented as Newspeak' carefully eliminating all references to subversion or rebellion. Even certain types of thought are illegal and monitored by the thought police. Sex is controlled and individuality is seen as a crime. Everyone is constantly under surveillance.

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