Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Critical interpretations of 1984
1984 Analysis of George Orwell
1984 Analysis of George Orwell
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Critical interpretations of 1984
1984: A Disturbing Possibility For The Future George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984, is a startling possibility for the future. 1984 is considered to be a political and science fiction as well as a dystopian novel. It has an original copyright date of 1949 by Harcourt Inc. George's real name was Eric Blair and he lived from 1903-1950. He was born in Bengal. He wrote many political pieces including Animal Farm. He was a literary critic but hated intellectual people. Orwell's novels were used to prove that people were unable to deal with history. 1984 is one of his most memorable novels to this day. 1984's exposition starts off following the main character, an older man named Winston Smith, during a time period where Big Brother is watching everything. Big Brother is the new form government that is set up after the revolution. Winston works in Records Department for the Ministry where he destroys whatever documents are placed upon his desk and then rewrites history to portray Big Brother in a better light or eliminate the name of someone who has been vaporized. The only problem is his hate for the Ministry and for Big Brother. He cannot let his distaste for them show on his face in fear that the Thought Police or the telescreen see it and have him vaporized. The rising action and exposition seem to overlap. The rising action starts with Winston writing in a journal that he found. This is not typical behavior of a party member so he writes in it around the corner of the telescreen. Items of the past are not allowed and most have been destroyed. He found his journal in an antique shop in the prole district. The proles are the extremely poor who are not as strictly policed as the party members and inner party members. While walking ... ... middle of paper ... ... secret room with Julia. I liked that they fought and snuck around to have time together because they enjoyed it. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys dystopian novels or science fiction. 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale have very similar qualities. They are both dystopian novels warning of what the world could become. There is a new form of government in both novels that some people are unhappy with. They differ in the views on sexually related things. In 1984, sex is supposed to only be procreate. It has been desexualized and made dirty. This is to remove the potential connection it could create. The children are then used to spy on parents. In The Handmaid's Tale sex is used to procreate but children are valued. They are few and far between so birth and children are celebrated. Both novels were wonderful reads but portray similar issues in different lights.
1984 was written in 1948 and published in 1949 by Eric Arthur Blair under the pen name ‘George Orwell’. It is set in the year 1984 in Airstrip One, which is a province in the country of Oceania. The world is in a constant state of war between Oceania, and the other two countries, Eurasia and Eastasia. Oceania is controlled by English Socialism, or INGSOC in Oceania’s language, Newspeak. The powerful Inner Party controls the country using omnipresent surveillance, and manipulation.
The novel 1984 by George Orwell is a fictional future where The Party controls everything. The Party is lead by a larger than life figurehead named Big Brother. The main character is Winston Smith. The story is divided into 3 parts and chronicles Winston’s rebellion against and then re-entering of The Party.
George Orwell creates a dark, depressing and pessimistic world where the government has full control over the masses in the novel 1984. The protagonist, Winston, is low-level Party member who has grown to resent the society that he lives in. Orwell portrays him as a individual that begins to lose his sanity due to the constrictions of society. There are only two possible outcomes, either he becomes more effectively assimilated or he brings about the change he desires. Winston starts a journey towards his own self-destruction. His first defiant act is the diary where he writes “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER.” But he goes further by having an affair with Julia, another party member, renting a room over Mr. Carrington’s antique shop where Winston conducts this affair with Julia, and by following O’Brien who claims to have connections with the Brotherhood, the anti-Party movement led my Emmanuel Goldstein. Winston and Julia are both eventually arrested by the Thought Police when Mr. Carrington turns out to be a undercover officer. They both eventually betray each other when O’Brien conducts torture upon them at the Ministry of Love. Orwell conveys the limitations of the individual when it comes to doing something monumental like overthrowing the established hierarchy which is seen through the futility of Winston Smith’s actions that end with his failure instead of the end of Big Brother. Winston’s goal of liberating himself turns out to be hopeless when the people he trusted end up betraying him and how he was arbitrarily manipulated. It can be perceived that Winston was in fact concerned more about his own sanity and physical well-being because he gives into Big Brother after he is tortured and becomes content to live in the society he hated so much. Winston witnesses the weakness within the prole community because of their inability to understand the Party’s workings but he himself embodies weakness by sabotaging himself by associating with all the wrong people and by simply falling into the arms of Big Brother. Orwell created a world where there is no use but to assimilate from Winston’s perspective making his struggle utterly hopeless.
1984 is a dystopian novel set inn Airstrip One, which used to be Britian. Oceania is always at war with another superpower, and their main goal is to achieve the most power throughout their world. The main character is Winston Smith, a man who works for the party and is supposed to change history to match what the party has told him. Winston lives in a society where he is constantly listened to and watched by telescreens and microphones to make sure he is enthusiastic about hate, and to make sure he doesn’t commit any crimes. Everywhere Winston goes he always sees posters that say, “Big Brother is Watching You.” Big Brother is the party leader that may or may not be real. The official language of Oceania, the country where Airstrip one is located, is Newspeak. Newspeak is the only language in Oceania that lessens it’s words each year so that it is harder for people to commit thoughtcrime. Winston is a dedicated worker, but often thinks about rebellion against Big Brother. Winston idolizes a man named O'Brien that he thinks is part of the Brotherhood, a terrorist group who constantly sabotages the party. Winston begins to like a woman named Juli...
The novel 1984 is one that has sparked much controversy over the last several decades. It harbors many key ideas that lie at the root of all skepticism towards the book. With the ideas of metaphysics, change, and control in mind, George Orwell wrote 1984 to provide an interesting story but also to express his ideas of where he believed the world was heading. His ideas were considered widely ahead of their time, and he was really able to drive home how bleak and colorless our society really is. Orwell wrote this piece as a futuristic, dystopian book which contained underlying tones of despair and deceit.
In 1984 by George Orwell, the world is described as a desolate, bleak result of humanity where the land is governed by a totalitarian regime who rules the hindering the societal progress. The face of Oceania is Big Brother, an omniscient figure who is widely worshiped by its people. The Inner Party enforces a new language known as Newspeak that prevents anyone from committing political rebellion. The control that this Party has over the entire population unveils the theme of the novel, that intimidation by a higher up can lead to psychological manipulation. There are several paradoxes within the text that reveal this theme to be true due to the party’s way with words. A paradox is something that contradicts reason or expectation and Orwell
Living through the war and its enormous political shifts, Eric Blair was a figure whose pessimism was significantly impacted by the postwar period. But what was born of Blair was a more significant person known as George Orwell, who challenged the political views of his time by writing 1984, which stands as one of the most powerful political novels of the Modernist era written to expose the horrors of totalitarianism and impact the political thinking of the 20th Century.
Totalitarianism is one of the main themes in 1984. In WWII Europe, Oceania became the ruling power with the so called “Party” ruling everybody and have the “Big Brother” at its head. Some examples of totalitarianism is how they make people workout, they put tele-screens everywhere to monitor the peoples actions, also they refuse to allow any sexual intercourse outside of marriage. “Winston kept his back turned to the tele-screen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing” (Book 1, Chapter 1). This quote represents how fearful Winston is that he ...
The book, 1984 by George Orwell, is about the external conflict between Winston Smith and Big Brother; and the internal conflict between the two ideas, democracy and totalitarianism. Orwell wrote the novel to show society what it could become if things kept getting worse: he sensed of the expansion of communism when he wrote the novel. The conflict between democracy and totalitarianism at the year of 1945 created two characters, Winston Smith and Big Brother, in orwell's mind. Big Brother is the embodiment of all the ideals of the totalitarian party. In contrast to Big Brother, Winston Smith keeps the idea of democracy emphasizes freedom, he has to hide his own thought because the Big Brother's party will punish him by death if the party finds it out. George orwell criticizes of Big Brother's society by describing it as a dark and a gloomy place. It warns that people might believe that everyone must become slaves to the government in order to have an orderly society, but at the expense of the freedom of the people.
Just as Winston constantly judges his society - readers guess at the reality of the situation where he is placed in. This includes larger facts of the Party and who exactly controls everything and
It is evident that truth cannot be hidden, a facade will fade away and your true colours will show. Neo and Winston do this by waking from the dream world metaphorically and physically, both characters had to realize the situations that were in. Neo is shown by Morpheus that he has been living in a Virtual reality Neo begins to accept this when Morpheus tells him to open his mind and leaps of a building(A Wachowski, L Wachowski, The matrix). Neo realizes that he is in a dream and he needs to find a way to wake up. Winston and the rest of Oceania have been manipulated by false knowledge that makes the government
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.
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past” (K34). By manipulating and controlling reality, totalitarian regimes such as the Party in 1984 are able to maintain power by stopping the development of history and leaving the people without a precedent to which they can compare their current condition. In the novel, Winston Smith’s job is to rewrite documents in order to make sure they agree with the views of the party in that specific moment of time. Through this destruction of documented evidence of the past, “every prediction made by the Party could be shown … to have been correct” (K39).
Both 1984 by George Orwell and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood depict dystopian societies in which they demonstrate a society where living conditions are uncomfortable and testing. Dystopian societies show how the desire for a perfect world can turn and go very wrong. Both Orwell and Atwood demonstrate dystopia through the eyes of a main character, demonstrating their handling of their living conditions. 1984 is narrated in third person telling the story of Winston Smith and The Handmaids Tale is told in first person by main character Offred. Both characters are put into similar situations to demonstrate dystopian societies, but each book represents these societies differently. In both books dystopia is most commonly represented by lack
George Orwell wrote 1984 about 35 years before the actual year of 1984. He created a scene in which something different from the norm was not accepted in society, the “Thought Police”, and the Party. Every move and word said by a human being the government tried to see or listen too. However, Winston and Julia, a couple in love, try to find ways around the surveillance. Winston eventually learns that not only is it not safe to go against the party but not right. He learns not to ever rebel against the system, otherwise he will be severely punished. Even the people he thought he could trust could turn out to be a Party member or even on the “Thought Police” force.