1984: The Message

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UNIVERSIDAD DE LOS ANDES FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES Y EDUCACIÓN ESCUELA DE IDIOMAS MODERNOS CATEDRA DE LENGUA INGLESA 1984: The Message Asignatura: Inglés IV Sección: 03 Profesora: Maria Victoria Moreno Autor (a): Amy Allsop C.I.: 20.254.988 Mérida, febrero 2011 Nineteen eighty four is a famous novel written in 1949 by George Orwell. This novel has been studied and analysed throughout history. Its content may be fiction, but this fictional world is not far from our own real world. There have been extreme totalitarian systems were people have suffered the dejection of death, lack of food, hatred, torture and hopelessness, just like the INGSOC totalitarian system referred in the novel. We can compare the Ingsoc party with two totalitarianism movements and governments, such as Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, or commonly known as The Cultural Revolution, was a social movement that occurred between 1966 and 1976 and it was headed by Mao Zedong. According to historian Patricia Buckley (n.d), the aim of this revolution was “to attack the Four Olds-- old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits--in order to bring the areas of education, art and literature in line with Communist ideology.” However, this movement caused chaos throughout the country. This chaos was caused by Mao’s Red Guards, a group of civilians, mostly youth, who punished those who did not follow the new socialist system; intellectuals, artist and liberals were severely attacked. They also destroyed several mosques, shrines, temples and cultural and historical artefacts. Middle schools and universities also had to close down, for students were sent away to the countryside to live as proletarians and millions of students were, according to Buckley (n.d), “encouraged to attack counterrevolutionaries and to criticise those
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