Nineteen Eighty-Four

Eric Arthur Blair was born in Motihari, Bihar, British India where is father was a deputy of the opium department. While he was 1 year old he left for England with mother and sister. He studied at Eton College. Then he joined the Imperial Police of the Indies and went to Burma. When he came back to Europe he knew poverty. In 1936, he became a “Brigadista” during the Spanish Civil War but he was wounded. During 1945, he is a special correspondent from The Observer in France and Germany. He died in London because of tuberculosis.

Better known by his pen name : George Orwell, he was a novelist, a chronicler and a political journalist. Through his opus, he denounced injustices of the society, criticised the imperialism and showed the excesses of the totalitarism notably in Animal Farm and 1984.

Nineteen Eighty-Four was written by George Orwell in 1948, then published by Secker and Warburg in 1949. It is a dystopian novel about a society whose the only aim is to serve the only Party. Life in Airstrip One, new name of England after the Revolution, is dedicated to Big Brother the leading chief of the Party that rules Oceania, one of three intercontinental super-states.

The story of Winston Smith describes life in London after a Great Global War where states used the Atomic Weapon to fight to each other in the 50’s. Winston Smith is a member of the Outer Party. During the civil war, the Ingsoc movement (English socialism) in an orphanage for training and subsequent employment as a civil servant. Winston work at the Ministry of the Truth. He is an editor responsible for the historical revisionism concording the past to the Party’s contemporary official version of the past. Winston should have to use doublethink to forget what he did but he saw the proof that three political criminal killed by the Party were not guilty so he decides to keep a diary. He hates Big Brother and dreams of a free world. During, the story he meets Julia of whom he falls in love with. However, they have to hide their sentiments in this world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance and incessant public mind control.

Unfortunately, they will both get arrested. Winston learns that he was spied for 7 years. Then the character confesses crimes even those that he never did. Torture and brainwashing will convince them to betray themselves to each other.

As a conclusion, we know that the individual can’t rebel alone because the state is too powerful. I loved read this book because it was very interesting and learn about different aspects of the totalitarism.