first published 1984 (whose working title was The Last Man in Europe) in England in June of 1949

—7 months before his death from tuberculosis.

Author: George Orwell(aka Eric Blair)

Personal Suffering

World Situation

Enhanced fears

about the future

WWI

Great Depression

WWII

Beginnings of the

Cold War

Context

Orwell’s fear = a world where totalitarian dictatorship destroys human freedoms and human kind.

Benito Mussolini’s

Fascism

Adolf Hitler’s

Nazi Germany

Joseph Stalin’s

Communist Soviet Union

Totalitarianism

• absolute authority and central control over all aspects of life by the government

• Opposing political and cultural expression suppressed

• Forceful methods of persuasion used – censorship, terrorism

Collectivism

• Group > Individual

• State ownership of land and means of production

1984 details a future negative utopia, also known in literature as a

DYSTOPIA.

Dystopia

books

film

DYSTOPIA

✓An imaginary place or state, usually set in a future time, in which the condition of life is extremely bad, due to deprivation, oppression, or terror. ✓present trends are carried out to their intensely unpleasant extremes.

WHY?✓to convince readers to avoid any path that might lead to such societal degradation.

1.Propaganda is used to control the citizens

2.Info, independent thought, and freedom restricted

3.A figurehead is worshipped by citizens

4.Citizens are under constant surveillance

5.Citizens have a fear of the outside world

6.Citizens live in a dehumanized state

7.The natural world is banished and distrusted

8.Citizens conform to uniform expectations

9.Individuality and dissent are bad

10.The society is an illusion of a perfect utopia

NARRATOR: omniscient 3rd person

SETTING: London, England Chief city of

Airstrip One 3rd most populous

province of OCEANIA

PROTAGONIST: Winston Smith

THREE

SUPERPOWERS

EURASIA OCEANIA EASTASIA

Big Brother(figurehead of the Party)

INGSOC: English Socialism

Sacred Principles of INGSOC: ✓Newspeak (language)✓Doublethink✓Mutability of the past