George Orwell 1984 Essay

 

     English writer and a public person Thomas More wrote a book back in the year 1516 entitled Utopia to cut it short. Translated from Latin, this word means a place, which does not exist. When people say of someone`s dreams to be utopic, that means them to be unreal, fantastic.

     Thomas more has become a founding father of literary genre of utopia. Until XX century, people believed in the probability of creation a perfect society on the planet Earth, where a happy work for the public good and general economic welfare would be.

     After The First World War and revolution in Russia, the world has changed. Disappointment, worries for the future, growth of atheism were the attitudes of people`s minds. As a result, a genre of anti-utopia was given birth. If there is a perfectly good society under conditions of utopia, then there is a perfectly bad one in the world of anti-utopia. It is an utopia inside out, a parody of it.  

     Yevgeny Zamyatin wrote the first anti-utopia of the XX century. This is a We novel written in 1920. In imitation of Zamyatin, an English author Aldous Huxley writes his anti-utopia entitled as Brave New World (1932).

     Another English man George Orwell writes one of the scariest and strongest book of this genre in 1948 entitled as 1984 because of everything happening this year. As soon as one begins reading, it takes away. Eponymous film is not worthy of being watched, it basically copy the book and it is not beneficial at all.

          Oceania is the place where everything happens with England being implied. Winston Smith is the main character who suddenly feels himself the last normal person but who is unable to admit it – there are monitors and listening devices all over. Surprisingly enough, there is a storeroom in his apartment where the eye of the monitor cannot reach. Winston keeps a diary with all the understanding how risky it is.   

          Everything in this country is upside down. For example, the Ministry of Love takes care of war and the Ministry of Truth – of lie falsifying the history. Winston works there. Big Brother is standing above all. He look pretty much like Stalin. No one has never seen him but the cult exists and followed.   

          Another English man George Orwell writes  one of the strongest symbolic details is the image of the future, a shoe stepping in a man`s face. Oceania is a typical totalitarian country. Everyone is kept under fear and total obedience. If someone like Winston and his lover Julia get wise enough to have an opinion of their own, dispute and have doubts, they are forced to confess that and break both morally and physically. A cage with rats is a tournament, which Winston cannot bear. He betrays Julia and himself too.

          Orwell wrote the book soon after the war when it seemed for the Nazi to get beaten. But the novel was written like a warning. Hitler lose a war on the battlefield but did not in people`s heads. So, the new dictatorship can be established the when and the where it can if there will be proper conditions.

          Whom to rely on? Winston hopes for revolt of proletariat. It is something difficult to agree with. Proletariat will never revolt. They do not live, they exist. There is one hope for the state based on fear, hatred and ultimately crash under the load of this all. But how much time will pass before it happens is unknown.

          there is not much of external actions in the novel but a lot of descriptions of state and public organization of Oceania, its principles, style of life of citizens. But there is no room for boredom. It gets intense from page to page.

          it is highly recommended for reading if one wants to get the idea of anti-utopia as a genre, who cares for the past, who did not forget how to learn from the history`s lessons, who does not want a new dictatorship for is country and mass repressions.   

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