George Orwell's 1984

Literary Analysis
The author of the novel 1984, George Orwell, is a political critic. Therefore, he used very precise descriptions of situations and words to provide the reader a clear understanding of the entity he is criticizing. When Winston describes the destruction of past records to create new ones to Julia, he says: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” (pg. 162). Here, instead of only saying “Every record has been destroyed or falsified”, Orwell describes in-depth which materials exactly were destroyed. This provides the reader a better picture of the situation in Oceania because instead of only thinking that paper records were rewritten, now the readers know that even street names were constantly rewritten, which makes the people’s lives more problematic due to the learning curve involved with new street names. This description of rewriting of records really shows to what extent the government is willing to go to achieve full control of the past and gives the reader a very scary feeling on a totalitarian system. Orwell also uses some unique word choice to express the feelings of his characters. When Winston describes Syme, he alleges that he is a “venomously orthodox” (pg. 52). Instead of using an adjective like ‘extremely’, Orwell takes it to another extent by applying the adjective ‘venomously’. Use of this adjective provides a darker feeling about Syme because the word venom is usually associated with ...

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...he USSR under Lenin and Stalin. He was dismayed by the total monitoring system, control over people’s thoughts, loss of happiness with loved ones, and loss of freedom happening in the USSR, which caused him to dread the future of other countries. Therefore, in addition to creating a replica of the USSR, he portrayed the perfect totalitarian government in his novel to emphasize many problems associated with it. To summarize, the author’s motives behind writing this novel helped me realize the astonishing resemblance of our society to the fictional society of the novel. It forces one to think of the risk associated with giving any single person or entity too much power or control over our lives. This led me to the conclusion that we shouldn’t engage in any activities that might put our privacy at risk if we want to avert a potential totalitarian system in the future.