George Orwell, life and 1984 + extract named "Big brother is watching you"

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he described his experiences among the poor; it was followed by Burmese Days (1934), a book based on his experience in the colonial service. In 1936 he married Eileen O'Shaughnessy. In the same year, he went to Catalonia with his wife to report on the Spanish Civil War. In Barcelona he joined the militia of the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) and fought in the trenches of the Aragon front. The next year he published a report of factory workers and unemployed in the industrial North, The Road to Wigan Pier. Back in England, the Orwells adopted an infant child and called him Richard. George suffered from bronchitis and pneumonia, and his wife dies during an operation in 1945. An influential voice ofthe 20th century When the Second World War broke out, Orwell moved to London and in 1941 he joined the BBC, broadcasting cultural and political programmes to India. He also began writing Animal Farm, which was published in 1945 and made Orwell internationally known and financially secure. Orwell's last book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was his most original novel. He died in 1950. The artist's development Orwell had a deep understanding of the English character, of its tolerance, its dislike of abstract theories... On the other hand, his experiences abroad contributed to his ability to see his country from the outside and to judge its strengths and weaknesses. So he chose to reject his background and to establish a separate identity of his own. As a consequence, he was open to new ideas and impressions. Orwell's life and work were marked by the unresolved conflict between his middle-class background and education and his emotional identification with the working class. In his essay Inside the Whale (1940) Orwell tried to define the role of the writer by considering the literature of the 1920s and 1930s. Whereas the writers of the Twenties had expressed a tragic, post-war pessimism, those of the Thirties had valued social devotion and substance over form. His desire to reveal facts and draw conclusions led him to believe that writing interpreted reality and therefore served a useful social function. However, Orwell believed that the writer should be independent. Social themes Orwell was a book-reviewer, critic, political journalist and pamphleteer. Indebted to Charles Dickens in his choice of social themes and the use of realistic language, he conveyed a vision of human fraternity and of the misery caused by poverty. He insisted on tolerance, justice and decency in human relationships. Above all he strongly criticised totalitarianism, warning against the violation of liberty and helping his readers to recognise tyranny in all its forms. Nineteen Eighty-Four Plot The novel describes a future world divided into three blocks: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. The oppressive world of Oceania is ruled by 'the Party', which is led by a figure called 'Big Brother', and is continuously at war with the other two States. In order to control people's lives, the Party is implementing 'Newspeak', an invented language with a limited number of words, and threatening them through the 'Thought Police'. Free thought, sex and any expression of individuality are forbidden, but the protagonist, Winston Smith, illegally buys a diary in which he begins to write his thoughts and memories, addressing them to the future generations. At the 'Ministry of Truth', where he works (rewrites historical records to suit the needs of the Party), Winston notices an attractive girl staring at him, and is afraid she might be an informant who will prove him guilty of 'thoughtcrime'. The girl's name is Julia; she proves to also have a rebellious attitude, and they begin a secret affair. One day O'Brien, a member of the powerful 'Inner Party', invite them to his flat and tells them that he too hates the Party and works against it as a member of the 'Brotherhood' led by Emmanuel Goldstein, which is trying to overthrow the Party. O'Brien gives Winston a copy of Goldstein's book, the manifesto of the Brotherhood. Winston is reading it to Julia in their room when some soldiers suddenly break in and arrest them. He is taken to the 'Ministry of Love', where he finds out that O'Brien is a Party spy. O'Brien tortures and brainwashes Winston for months, but he struggles to resist. At last O'Brien sends him to Room 101, the final destination for those who oppose the Party. Here Winston is forced to confront his worst fear: rats on his head, ready to eat his face. Winston's will is broken and he is released to the outside world. He meets Julia, but no longer loves her. He has completely given up his identity and has learned to love Big Brother. Historial background The novel is set in a state of perpetual war suggesting the World War II. The idea for the three countries described in the book remember the Tehran Conference where Roosevelt (USA), Churchill (Britain) and Stalin (Soviet Union) met to coordinate their military strategy against Germany and Japan and make important decisions about the post-war period. The society, although fictional, reflects the political atmosphere of the tyrannies and that is why the novel is infused by descriptions of hunger, forced labour, mass torture and imprisonment, and perpetual monitoring by the authorities. The 'character' of Big Brother is both Stalin and Hitler, both real and terrifying leaders, though on opposite sides. So Orwell made clear that he was against any form of totalitarianism, either from the left or the right of the political spectrum. Setting The setting of the novel is Oceania, a large country including the Americas, the Atlantic Islands, Australia and the southern portion of Africa. The story takes place in a terrifying London in the year 1984. The shortages, the bomb sites, the squalor were drawn from real life. Orwell's aim was to work on a memory that every reader was likely to have. Oceania's political structure is divided into three segments: the Inner Party, the ruling class (2% of population); the Outer Party, that is the educated workers (18-19%) ; and the Proles, or the proletariat, the working class. Although the Party (Inner and Outer) does not see these divisions as true 'classes', Orwell wants the reader to see the class distinctions. For a socialist such as Orwell, class distinctions meant the existence of conflict and class struggle. Characters The overwhelming impression of Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sense of loss, a feeling that beauty and truth, and all finer emotions and values, belong to the past. This is symbolised by the protagonist, Winston Smith, the last man to believe in humane values in a totalitarian age. 'Smith', the commonest English surname, suggests his symbolic value; 'Winston' evokes Churchill's patriotic appeals during the Second World War. Winston is 39 and physically weak; he experiences alienation from society and feels a desire for spiritual and moral integrity. His main concern is the manipulation of history by the Party, and he fears the moment when no one will have any memories of actual history. He is in love with Julia and he remains loyal to her until his last torture experience. Julia is more naïve and is pessimistic about the Party, since she believes that it will never be overthrown. She is not much concerned with historical truth. O'Brien is a member of the Inner Party who tricks Winston and Julia. He is a mysterious character, with little background information. O'Brien is the main agent of Winston's torture, asking him to believe in the Party in order to be cleaned and saved. Themes Nineteen Eighty-Four is a satire on hierarchical societies which destroy fraternity. The dictator is called 'Big Brother' but he actually does not watch over his people as a brother should do; so 'watching' here does not mean 'taking care of' but 'controlling'. Memory and mutual trust become positive themes in the struggle put up by Winston to maintain his individuality. Orwell believed that if man has someone to trust, his individuality cannot be destroyed because his identity emerges from interaction, not autonomy or isolation. Decency is mutual trust, tolerance and extremely important for political action and civic culture. According to Orwell, the major theme of memory is linked to a view of morality. An egalitarian post-revolutionary society would not change values but would put an end to exploitation and draw on the best of the past. So Winston tries to write a diary in which private memory is defended. Key idea - A dystopian novel Set in a grotesque London, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel. While a utopia is an ideal or perfect community, a dystopia shows a possible future society that is anything but ideal and that satirises existing conditions of society. Orwell establishes a model of what the world should not become by presenting a frightening picture of the future as being under the constant control of 'Big Brother'. There is no privacy because there are monitors called 'telescreens' watching every step people take; love is forbidden but there is the 'Two Minutes Hate' and the country is in a perpetual state of war. The Party has absolute control of communication; language, history and thought are controlled in the interests of the State through the gradual introduction of Newspeak, the official language of Oceania, whose lexis is so limited that people find it impossible to express their own ideas. Any form of rebellion against the rules is punished with prison and torture. The novel reveals the author's acute sense of history and his sympathy with the millions of people persecuted and murdered in the name of the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century. Big brother is watching you This is the beginning of the novel. The following extract gives an insight into the life in London, the capital of Airstrip One in Oceania, a totalitarian State where men have lost control of their inner being. The only person who tries to resist indoctrination is the protagonist of the book, Winston Smith. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him. The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran. Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the Party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended. Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black moustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at street level another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered. Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig- iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer; though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape. This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste - this was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux, occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible. The Ministry of Truth - Minitrue, in Newspeak - was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH