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Essay on the concept of social stratification
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It’s hard to imagine living in a world with no privacy from the government whatsoever. In George Orwell’s 1984, the ever-present theme of repression and dehumanization by the totalitarian government reinforces the innate fear that most citizens have of complete governmental control. The novel was written to be satire, but could be perceived as a warning to all future societies. The dystopian classic is still highly relevant today and Orwell’s portrayal of the future continues to endure. George Orwell wrote the novel 1984 to emphasize the dangers of absolute, political and personal control by the government, to highlight the social stratification within the society, and to depict the manipulation of humanity by the elite through the use of sexual repression.
Author Eric Arthur Blair, more commonly known by his penname George Orwell, is one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. He was born in British India on 25 June 1903, where he lived for four years until his father moved the family back to England. Subsequently following the move, his father returned to India where he remained until retirement. As was traditional at the time, when his father returned home, Orwell was sent to St. Cyprian’s boarding school where he earned a scholarship to Eton College, most recently famous for Prince William's attendance there. He graduated
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from Eton in December 1921, and decided to forego university and become an imperial officer. After several years of work as an officer, Orwell encountered countless individuals victimized by their governments. No longer passionate about his career as an officer, he wrote a letter of resignation and became a teacher in April 1932 at The Hawthorns High School, a private school for boys in West London. In 1933 he assumed his penname and one year later he produced his first novel, Burmese Days. Between 1933 and 1937, Orwell produced two more novels including The Road to Wigan Pier, along with several essays and book reviews. During this same period, Orwell married his first wife, Eileen Maud O’Shaughnessy, a student he met in London, and they went to Spain where he found himself on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. This event led to Orwell writing his most famous nonfictional work, Homage to Catalonia, followed a year later by the novel Coming up for Air. During the last years of World War II, he produced the novel Animal Farm making his name internationally known. When 1984 was produced four years later, he achieved the status of literary master. Orwell’s death in 1950 was a monumental blow to the literary world. Three months prior to Orwell’s death, he married his second wife, Sonia Mary Brownell, who is believed to be the model for Julia, the heroine of 1984. He met Brownell when she worked as an assistant for a friend of Orwell’s from Eton College. Brownell helped Orwell, who was suffering from severe tuberculosis, through the last few painful months of his life. He is buried in an Anglican cemetery in Oxfordshire, England and his gravesite features a simple gravestone reading “Here lies Eric Arthur Blair.” George Orwell’s contributions to literature are still highly evident today.
Phrases such as “Big Brother” and “Orwellian” can be found in modern works of literature. "Orwellian" is now defined as an adjective describing a situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. Orwell remains one of the most read and most quoted authors of the twentieth century. Although he is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading essayists, modern readers may think of him as a novelist because of his reputation for his last two works, Animal Farm and
1984. George Orwell’s 1984 is set in the fictional country of Oceania sometime in the future. Orwell, having written the book in 1948 projects this future as the year 1984. The novel features several characters including Winston Smith, Julia, O’ Brien, and Mr. Charrington. Winston, the protagonist, is a member of the Outer Party, a fictional social stratum. Julia, a secret rebel, is also a member of the Outer Party. O’ Brien, the antagonist, is a member of the Inner Party, and receives special perks for his dedication to the government. Mr. Charrington is an undercover member of the Thought Police, the secret police of the fictional super state, Oceania. To start with, 1984 exemplifies the dangers of an all-knowing, totalitarian government. The novel begins with Winston being bombarded by the face of “Big Brother, a personification of the ruling Inner Party. As described in Orwell’s novel, “The black-mustachio’d face gazed down from every commanding corner” (Orwell 6). The government, known as “The Party,” concerns themselves with the complete control of every citizen, down to the thoughts in their head. According to John V. Knapp, “the political order so dominates everyday life that independent thought is a crime” (Knapp 8).
From birth people are told cautionary tales. Stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears have been passed down and told countless times to convey to individuals various messages. Many people have noticed a warning in George Orwell’s 1984 about the future of human freedom in a world where political organizations and technology can manufacture power. Orwell wrote the book 1984 as a cautionary tale for future generations to warn them about the effects of a totalitarian society and the loss of independent thought.
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.
Howe, Tom. "George Orwell." British Writers Volume VII. Ed. Ian Scott-Kilvert. New York: Scribner, 1984. 273-287.
1984, a novel by George Orwell, represents a dystopian society in which the people of Oceania are surveilled by the government almost all the time and have no freedoms. Today, citizens of the United States and other countries are watched in a similar way. Though different technological and personal ways of keeping watch on society than 1984, today’s government is also able to monitor most aspects of the people’s life. 1984 might be a dystopian society, but today’s condition seems to be moving towards that controlling state, where the citizens are surveilled by the government at all times.
When George Orwell’s epic novel 1984 was published in 1949 it opened the public’s imagination to a future world where privacy and freedom had no meaning. The year 1984 has come and gone and we generally believe ourselves to still live in “The Land of the Free;” however, as we now move into the 21st Century changes brought about by recent advances in technology have changed the way we live forever. Although these new developments have seamed to make everyday life more enjoyable, we must be cautious of the dangers that lie behind them for it is very possible that we are in fact living in a world more similar to that of 1984 than we would like to imagine.
Ultimately, common ideas found in the novel 1984, totalitarianism, surveillance, and lack of privacy are also ubiquitous in modern society and government. Big Brother and modern day government have been able to control its citizens through surveillance equipment, and fear all for a little more power. There is much to learn from such an undesirable form of society much like the one of Oceania in 1984. Examining Big Brother government closely, alarming connections can be made to real-world government actions in the United States and the cruel world within Orwell's book.
I strongly agree with Fromm’s viewpoints and interpretations of Orwell’s 1984 text. He warns that the future federal powers will dehumanize society and leave everyone alienated. Thus, I agree with Fromm to the extent that he acknowledges the fact that humanity can indeed cease to exist as a result of our own self-destruction as well as the effect of our actions. Many of his opinions and warnings expressed by Orwell to an extent appear in contemporary society.
War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength. The party slogan of Ingsoc illustrates the sense of contradiction which characterizes the novel 1984. That the book was taken by many as a condemnation of socialism would have troubled Orwell greatly, had he lived to see the aftermath of his work. 1984 was a warning against totalitarianism and state sponsored brutality driven by excess technology. Socialist idealism in 1984 had turned to a total loss of individual freedom in exchange for false security and obedience to a totalitarian government, a dysutopia. 1984 was more than a simple warning to the socialists of Orwell's time. There are many complex philosophical issues buried deep within Orwell's satire and fiction. It was an essay on personal freedom, identity, language and thought, technology, religion, and the social class system. 1984 is more than a work of fiction. It is a prediction and a warning, clothed in the guise of science fiction, not so much about what could happen as it is about the implications of what has already happened. Rather than simply discoursing his views on the social and political issues of his day, Orwell chose to narrate them into a work of fiction which is timeless in interpretation. This is the reason that 1984 remains a relevant work of social and philosophical commentary more than fifty years after its completion.
Eric Blair, known to his readers under the English pen name of George Orwell (1903-1950), was a man familiar with the roles of government. He served with the British government in Burma under the Indian Imperial Police. Returning to his European roots, Orwell also sided with the Spanish government as he fought with the Loyalists in their civil war. It wasn't until he wrote professionally as a political writer that Orwell's ideas of government were fully expressed. Orwell, in his political writings, was extremely contradictory. He was a critic of communism, yet he also considered himself a Socialist. He had hatred toward intellectuals, but he too was a political writer. It is only natural that a man of paradoxes would write of them. In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell develops his Socialist Utopia as a paradoxical society that ultimately succeeds rather than flounders.
George Orwell, an alias of Eric Arthur Blair, is know for the books 1984 and Animal Farm. In both of these, as well as in most of his others, he seems to delight in using vivid and wholly believable characters, easily believable because of their obvious and tragic faults. Another similarity seems to be the consistent use of irony, a stylistic choice which plays big in Burmese Days and in several other works. Also, Blair enjoyed placing his characters in situations and settings that were out-of-the- ordinary, constantly reversing or switching roles. It is a mark of talent that he is able to use all of these so effectively, making us believe the unbelievable and accept the incredible at the same time that he makes us emphasize with the characters and see similarities between them and ourselves, long after they were written.
Dystopian novels are written to reflect the fears a population has about its government and they are successful because they capture that fright and display what can happen if it is ignored. George Orwell wrote 1984 with this fear of government in mind and used it to portray his opinion of the current government discretely. Along with fear, dystopian novels have many other elements that make them characteristic of their genre. The dystopian society in Orwell’s novel became an achievement because he utilized a large devastated city, a shattered family system, life in fear, a theme of oppression, and a lone hero.
As the man’s lips grasped the edge of the cup and slurped the hot drink, the reflection of two eyes in the darkened coffee grew tremendously. The man immediately puckered his lips and placed the cup atop the wooden surface with dissatisfaction. His hairy arm was revealed from underneath his cotton shirt as he reached for the glassware containing packets of sweet crystals. He picked up the packets labeled Stalin, Hitler, and World War II, and dumped them into the caffeinated drink. Within seconds, a thick, redolent cream labeled, ‘Totalitarian Governments’ crashed into the coffee with force. A tarnished spoon spun around the outer edges of the cup, combining the crystals and cream together, and, unknowingly creating the themes for the book in which Big Brother would become a regime—this was the cup of George Orwell. Written in 1944, the themes in 1984 are reminiscent of the fascist and totalitarian governments formed in the early twentieth century.
The struggle for complete domination and power has been apparent in the past, most notably when Germany and Russia conflicted to maintain control in World War 2. In 1984, written by George Orwell, a totalitarian society seeks unlimited power by constantly monitoring it citizens. This monitoring was used to manipulate the minds and alter the thoughts of the people of Oceania. The population of Oceania is led to support ideas, which they do not truly believe. The lack of privacy and personal belief in citizens induces the idea of “doublethink”, where two contradictory ideas are both accepted. This is utilized by George Orwell to demonstrate political power and dominance. The Party forces the people to believe that “WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,
The imagination and creativity of one of the 20th century's greatest writers, George Orwell, is kept alive by the all-encompassing work that he passed on to the world. His novel 1984 is a classic example where the groundwork and raw materials that herald the creation of a dystopian society are well exemplified. Winston Smith, the main character in the book, explores the various tools and issues that are used by Big Brother to enforce an unjust totalitarian society (Orwell, 1949). In as much as the work speaks of a bygone era, with the ramification of the post world war II and international diplomatic conflicts, our society currently masquerades in a dystopian of its own but using different tools. The neo-dystopian is insidious and concealed in our daily lives in a manner that is very difficult to comprehend.
Who could have ever pondered that the book 1984 is incorporated into the rundown on one of the world's top ten most restricted books. Orwell's book 1984 has tested a wide range of perspectives and caused discussions all over the reading community. Individual security and space is never permitted all through 1984.One can notice some changes in the society in terms of surveillance and security. The biased news and social media is common. Since cutting edge media one-sided, many individuals don't think autonomously, notwithstanding when they think they are. They just trust the falsehoods the media nourishes them and don't investigate themselves. In the book, every individual is continually subject to observation, even by their own particular relatives