George Orwell’s 1984

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Originally posted February 7, 2008

Warning

These videos may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

1984 George Orwell (1954)

Emmanuel Goldstein on Sep 26, 2013

BBC Television’s live production of George Orwell’s “1984”. Produced in 1954. Creative Commons license: Public Domain.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic dystopian novel by English author George Orwell. Published in 1949, it is set in the eponymous year and focuses on a repressive, totalitarian regime. The story follows the life of one seemingly insignificant man, Winston Smith, a civil servant assigned the task of falsifying records and political literature, thus effectively perpetuating propaganda, who grows disillusioned with his meagre existence and so begins a rebellion against the system. The novel has become famous for its portrayal of surveillance and society’s increasing encroachment on the rights of the individual. Since its publication the terms Big Brother and Orwellian have entered the popular vernacular.

Orwell, who had “encapsulated the thesis at the heart of his novel” in 1944, wrote most of Nineteen Eighty-Four on the island of Jura, Scotland, during 1947-1948 while critically ill with tuberculosis. He sent the final typescript to his friends Secker and Warburg on 4 December 1948 and the book was published on 8 June 1949.

Nineteen Eighty-Four has been translated into more than 50 languages. The novel’s title, its terms, its language (Newspeak), and its author’s surname are bywords for personal privacy lost to national state security. The adjective “Orwellian” denotes many things. It can refer to totalitarian action or organization, as well as governmental attempts to control or misuse information for the purposes of controlling, pacifying or even subjugating the population. “Orwellian” can also refer generally to twisted language which says the opposite of what it truly means, or specifically governmental propagandizing by the misnaming of things; hence the “Ministry of Peace” in the novel actually deals with war and the “Ministry of Love” actually tortures people. Since the novel’s publication “Orwellian” has in fact become somewhat of a catch-all for any kind of governmental overreach or dishonesty and therefore has multiple meanings and applications. The phrase Big Brother is Watching You specifically connotes pervasive, invasive surveillance.

Although the novel has been banned or challenged in some countries, it is, along with Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Kallocain by Karin Boye and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, among the most famous literary representations of dystopia. In 2005, Time magazine listed it among the hundred best English-language novels published since 1923.

The book has often been misinterpreted as an attack on socialism, and Orwell himself had occasion to refute such claims, both privately and in public. In a letter to Francis A. Henson of the United Automobile Workers, dated 16 June 1949 (seven months before he died), excerpts from which were reproduced in Life (25 July 1949) and the New York Times Book Review (31 July 1949), Orwell stated the following: “My recent novel [1984] is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions … which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism. …The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.”

In his 1946 essay, “Why I Write”, Orwell described himself as a Democratic Socialist. Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in Oceania, one of three intercontinental totalitarian super-states. The story occurs in London, the “chief city of Airstrip One”, itself a province of Oceania that “had once been called England or Britain”. Posters of the ruling Party’s leader, “Big Brother”, bearing the caption BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, dominate the city landscapes, while two-way television (the telescreen) dominates the private and public spaces of the populace. Oceania’s people are in three classes — the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles. The Party government controls the people via the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), the workplace of protagonist Winston Smith, an Outer Party member.

As in the Nazi and Stalinist regimes, propaganda is pervasive; Smith’s job is rewriting historical documents to match the contemporaneous party line, the orthodoxy of which changes daily. It therefore includes destroying evidence, amending newspaper articles, deleting the existence of people identified as “unpersons”.

1984 – 1956 Version

Joel Soihet on Aug 19, 2011

1984 (1984 version)

Nineteen Eighty-Four, also known as 1984, is a 1984 British dystopian drama film written for the screen and directed by Michael Radford, based upon George Orwell’s novel of the same name. Starring John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton, and Cyril Cusack, the film follows the life of Winston Smith in Oceania, a country run by a totalitarian socialist government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four_(1984_film)

No longer available

Here is the trailer:

1984 George Orwell Movie Trailer (1984)

MisterMaxHeadroom on Mar 25, 2008

1984 by George Orwell, Audiobook

Steve Parker Audiobooks on Apr 28, 2022

Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwell’s chilling prophecy about the future. And while the year 1984 has come and gone, Orwell’s narrative is timelier than ever. 1984 presents a startling and haunting vision of the world, so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of multiple generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions. A legacy that seems only to grow with the passage of time.

From the archives:

Chris Hedges: My Goal Is The Utter Destruction Of This Corporate Kleptocracy, interviewed by Joe Sacco

Strutting Fascism And Swaggering Militarism By Gaither Stewart

Edward Snowden: Liberty VS Surveillance

The U.S. Government Has Essentially Created A Ministry of Truth

AT&T Has Been Spying On Americans For Profit With A Secret Plan Called Project Hemisphere

Brave New World (1980)

George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm (must-see film)

‘Warfare’ – 1984 by George Orwell