Reflection Upon Orwell's 1984

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Set thirty-six years into George Orwell’s future, 1984 could be regarded as his dystopian visualization of the nearby future if the power of the government rose to rule over the lives, thoughts and individualities of the people through manipulation. Written during Orwell’s last remaining years, he explicitly maintained that the book was written with the aim to change other people’s awareness of the kind of society they should strive after. Nevertheless, this apocalyptic satire also internalizes on the inner psychology of humanity and power. In order to fully recognize the concerns upraised in 1984, one must look into George Orwell’s background. Orwell was born to a lower-middle class family and educated as a scholarship student at an esteemed English boarding school. He described himself to be in a “lower-upper-middle class”: he never quite fit in. From early on, Orwell felt oppressed by the authoritative control that the schools he went to used over his life and deeply disliked the capitalist classifications of societies based on wealth. His preference towards democratic socialism and his disgust towards communism and capitalism were developed after having experienced life in the slums of London, as well as in the coal mines of northern England, and after having observed the dangers and abuses of total governmental authority in Spain, Germany and the Soviet Union. These dictatorships inspired Orwell’s growing abhorrence of totalitarianism. 1984 is a political novel with, as mentioned above, the purpose of warning readers of the threats of totalitarian governments. Orwell does this through the portrayal of the perfect totalitarian society: the most extreme recognition of a modern-day government with utter power. The party uses a number of methods to control its citizens: psychological influence, physical control, control of history, technology, language as

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