G. Orwell

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Data:	02.06.2000
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di Nicola Pantaleo
"I pericoli inerenti alla macchina sono ancora insiti in essa", si legge in una pagina del trattato politico di Emmanuel Goldstein, il Grande Antagonista del Grande Fratello, incorporato nella seconda parte1 di Millenovecentottantaquattro, il libro che Orwell dette alle stampe nel 1949, quasi in puncto mortis, e che ne incrementò la notorietà internazionale già acquisita con La fattoria degli animali e, prima ancora, con il dolente affresco sulla guerra civile in Spagna Omaggio alla Catalogna.
Una siffatta affermazione parrebbe pienamente in linea con la robusta tradizione antimeccanica che attraversa la letteratura di fantascienza fiorita nell'ultimo secolo
in area anglo-americana e che ha le sue tappe più significative in Notizie da Nessun Luogo del socialista tardo-ottocentesco William Morris, nel quale gli uomini si ribellano contro i macchinari industriali distruggendoli, in un libro minore di Forster La macchina si ferma, dove, al contrario, il deterioramento del mostruoso meccanismo che condiziona la vita dell'intero pianeta rischia di compromettere ogni forma di sopravvivenza umana, e la lucida profezia di Kurt Vonnegut Player Piano sull'incombente avvento dell'era elettronica in un'America dominata dai networks dell'IBM, dove l'uomo è un inutile relitto permanentemente inoperoso e frustrato.
Ma l'apparentamento è solo superficiale, come osserva finemente Franco Selleri, noto fisico barese e intellettuale impegnato contro gli armamenti, in uno studio recente dal titolo Scienza e potere in "1984": in vari suoi scritti sull'argomento, infatti, Orwell mostra di nutrire "una piena fiducia almeno nelle potenzialità liberatorie delle macchine" nel quadro di "una visione schematicamente positiva della scienza" che appare ignorare la "frustrazione" di tutte le branche dei sapere scientifico in filoni antagonistici, soprattutto a partire dagli anni Trenta2. In realtà, egli non sembra stimare gran ché, nel romanzo in oggetto, i presunti benefici del progresso scientifico, che classifica tra gli inganni del potere, e d'altra parte tiene in grave sospetto gli slanci ingenui e infecondi di un'immaginazione indisciplinata che pretende di risolvere i problemi del presente volgendosi ad un passato mitologicamente idealizzato.
Antiromantico per eccellenza, era un realista che poco concedeva alle velleità rivoluzionarie che non fossero radicate in una concezione rigorosamente morale e permeata da spirito pratico e senso comune. Una visione così aliena da manicheismi ideologici spiega, ad esempio, la scelta di un'atmosfera da lugubre Inquisizione cattolica, con la sua enfasi sul riscatto dei 'perduti' attraverso il plagio, la costrizione ed il supplizio, che pervade le vicende conclusive dell' "ultimo Uomo" d'Europa3. Una visione, peraltro, profondamente diversa nelle sue implicazioni ideali, pur se non tali nella sostanza di disperata premonizione, dall'altra grande utopia negativa, Il Mondo Nuovo di Aldous Huxley. In un celebre dibattito a distanza con l'autore di Millenovecentottantaquattro, Huxley difende invero la sua intuizione utopica sostenendo nel saggio-racconto Ritorno al Nuovo Mondo che l'incubo del futuro che si approssima prevedibilmente nello stolto cammino dell'umanità è certo più vicino all' "ingegneria della felicità" da lui prefigurata che non alla demoniaca raffigurazione di Orwell, posto che il terrore non è in definitiva la forma di controllo più duratura ed efficiente in un mondo sempre più tecnicamente raffinato e non presumibilmente incline ad un imbarbarimento. Termini estremi questi, di un discorso quanto mai aperto e controverso nell'odierna letteratura di fantascienza.
Ma per tornare al libro di Orwell, molte cose diverse si possono dire di questa possente parabola della mortificazione e disgregazione dell'identità individuale. Si può, ad esempio, affermare che la 'distopia' orwelliana ha caratteri e natura essenzialmente fantapolitici, in quanto indulge nella rappresentazione analitica di un regime totalitario che, pur mostrando le stimmate di ogni dispotismo del passato e del presente, ha di originale che consente e persino favorisce il formarsi di un'ambigua prospettiva rivoluzionaria (l'inefficiente e astratto slogan "l'unica speranza risiede nei prolet" posto sulle labbra dell'incauto ribelle), nonché l'equivocità di uno zelo terroristico antiregime che auspica ed intende perpetrare delitti e nefandezze non dissimili da quelli compiuti dagli uomini del Grande Fratello contro cui esso intende lottare4. E' possibile però ravvisarvi, con altrettale legittimità, una parodia dell'idealismo filosofico che assegna alla mente collettiva del partito la facoltà di sovvertire ogni evidenza oggettiva ("Il nostro controllo della materia è già assoluto e totale", "Non esiste nulla se non nella mente dell'uomo")5. L'escatologia del potere che ne consegue si configura in termini perentori e dogmatici ("Il dominio dei Partito è per sempre")6 e si sposa con la predizione agghiacciante di una civiltà snaturata nella quale l'idea dei progresso ha smarrito ogni connotazione positiva:
Riesci a vedere, ora, quale tipo di mondo stiamo creando?... Un mondo di paura, di tradimenti e di torture, un mondo di gente che calpesta e di gente che è calpestata, un mondo che diverrà non meno, ma più spietato, man mano che si perfezionerà. Il progresso, nel nostro mondo, vorrà dire soltanto il progresso della sofferenza7.
E più avanti il gran sacerdote ed inquisitore di Oceania O'Brien dirà ironicamente alla sua vittima: "Questo è il mondo che stiamo preparando, Winston... Comincio a pensare che fu stai per intuire come sarà il mondo futuro"8. Ma è altrettanto corposo lo spessore fantascientifico che l'autore, quanto mai renitente od ammetterlo tuttavia, introduce nella vicenda di orrore e di morte che coinvolge Winston Smith, Julia e il loro persecutore O'Brien. Qui c'è da distinguere tra lo stato dell'evoluzione tecnologica che accompagna la condizione del vivere in Oceania e la concezione ideologica che della scienza come ricerca di leggi oggettive e studio rigoroso dei fenomeni naturali fa scempio e ludibrio. Nella sezione C dei dizionario di quella felicissima invenzione orwelliana che è la Neolingua non v'è posto per il concetto-vocabolo "scienza" poiché, come l'autore ha cura di informare nell'Appendice al romanzo dal titolo "Principi della Neolingua":
"non c'era alcun vocabolario che esprimesse la funzione della Scienza come abito mentale. Non c'era infatti alcuna parola per Scienza perché tutti i significati che avrebbe potuto avere erano già a sufficienza nella parola Socing (abbreviazione in Neolingua di Socialismo inglese, la dottrina fascistica dominante, n.d.t.)9.
Ciò consente ad O'Brien di proclamare imperturbabilmente:
"il potere sulla materia, quello che tu chiami realtà esterna, non è importante. Il nostro controllo della materia è già assoluto e totale... Non c'è nulla che noi non possiamo fare. Invisibilità, levitazione... tutto! Io potrei librarmi su questo pavimento come una bolla di sapone, se volessi.. Devi mettere da parte, devi liberarti di quelle tali cognizioni ottocentesche attorno alle leggi di natura. Le facciamo noi, le leggi di natura10 .
L'apoteosi di questo delirio antiscientifico è raggiunto quando l'inquisitore con un impressionante balzo regressivo tipico dei regimi reazionari, ignoranti e infantili, di fronte ad un Winston stremato dalla tortura, eppure tenacemente polemico, si spinge ad affermare: "La terra è il centro dell'universo. Il sole e le stelle ci girano ottorno"11. La cruda asserzione del potere che si giustifica con il potere offusca, con la sua incredibile tautologia, ogni altra considerazione, ma non fino al punto da passare sotto silenzio taluni aspetti significativi dell'apparato tecnologico. Vi è subito da osservare a questo proposito che i ritrovati della ricerca scientifica presentano, nella visione che ne offre Orwell, soltanto negatività e pericolosità per la vita dell'uomo: dai "telescreen" piazzati strategicamente in tutti gli angoli del paese per controllare ogni gesto e parola (e v'è da riflettere sull'enorme dispendio di risorse e di "spioni" che ciò doveva comportare per il regime di Big Brother) - un'ingenuità non risolta dall'autore, pur se lodata da Eco come la vera grande innovazione tecnologica in una società così pesantemente involuta - agli speak-write (o dittografo), uno realizzazione che da tempo inseguiamo come obiettivo di prestigio, il cui fine è di automatizzare il passaggio dalla dettatura alla trascrizione, ma il cui uso originario è finalizzato alla manipolazione sistematica dei fatti, alle macchine infine capaci di comporre poesia e racconti destinati al consumo indiscriminato delle masse incolte dei "Prolet", incentivo alla preservazione di bassi livelli di acculturazione e, al tempo stesso, un efficace disincentivo alla presa di coscienza politica (funzione non molto dissimile da quella adempiuta da serials e telenovele di matrice americana).
Se poi si abbandona il terreno dell'organizzazione civile e si considera l'apparato militare, la percezione di uno stravolgimento del progresso tecnologico rispetto all'ovvia finalizzazione al benessere individuale e collettivo appare programmatica e totale. Il perpetuo stato di guerra che Oceania mantiene con le altre due superpotenze, Eurasia ed Estasia (un'anticipazione straordinariamente accurata dell'odierna concordata divisione in zone d'influenza), è il frutto di una diabolica intesa tacita fra identici dispotismi per ridurre e mantenere in soggezione, attraverso i meccanismi degradanti del fanatismo nazionalistico e della menzognera psicosi dell'accerchiamento, le rispettive popolazioni; con in aggiunta il calcolo raffinatamente machiavellico che la schiavitù ideologica è meglio perpetrabile se il livello di vita di mera sussistenza viene ulteriormente depauperato dalle spese militari. Un gigantesco inganno, dunque, ordito da menti neppure eccelse che è alla base dell'assoluta dipendenza di quella trascurabile entità che è l'individuo dall'ambiguo carisma del Grande Fratello, che sorride e ammonisce da schermi e manifesti, paterno e terribile: stereotipi del tiranno e dei tiranneggiati a cui pure Orwell sa conferire tratti indimenticabili di orrore e angoscia.
Ma per non turbare la tesa sequenza del racconto, anche se poi ciò avviene inevitabilmente, l'autore ricorre all'espediente dei "libro nel libro" (come in Shakespeare vi è teatro nel teatro): il libro, Teoria e pratica dell'oligarchia collettivistica, è una summa dell'ideologia del regime, segretamente redatta dagli uomini del Partito e attribuite, a fini propagandistici, al fantomatico capo dell'opposizione clandestino. Di esso vengono forniti ampi stralci (fatto alquanto raro nella letteratura di fantascienza) che Winston legge avidamente nel corso della sua ingannevole iniziazione alla Fratellanza. Così, con dovizia di particolari tecnici, si documentano caratteri e finalità della ricerca militare:
Nei vasti laboratori dei Ministero della Pace, nelle stazioni sperimentali nascoste nelle foreste brasiliane, o nel deserto australiano o nelle inaccessibili isole antartiche, squadre di esperti sono occupate in un lavoro indefesso. Talune sono impiegate soltanto nello studio dei piani logistici per le guerre del futuro; altri progettano bombe-razzo di dimensioni sempre più grandi e di portata sempre più vasta e impressionante, ovvero nuovi tipi di formidabili esplosivi, o di impenetrabili materiali di protezione, altri ricercano formule per gas sempre più potenti e micidiali, o per veleni in soluzione capaci di essere prodotti in tale vastissima misura da distruggere la vegetazione di interi continenti, o per colture di germi di malattie garantiti contro ogni possibile immunizzazione e antidoto...12 .
Nonostante l'impiego nei precedenti decenni degli arsenali atomici, la tecnologia bellica nel 1984 appare tuttavia cristallizzata su forme di armamenti tradizionali che così vengono descritte:
Gli elicotteri sono ora usati più di quanto non lo fossero prima... il carro armato, il sommergibile, la torpediniera, il fucile mitragliatore, e persino il fucile e la bomba a mano sono ancora in uso13.
Sotto questa luce, la fisionomia fantascientifica di 1984 appare alquanto deludente, se la si paragono ad esempio al Mondo Nuovo di Huxley, con le sue lambiccate e ironiche invenzioni dei soma, l'innocua droga "perfetta", del processo Boganovsky, del servizio eutanasico, dei progetti Manhattan e del culto del dio Ford. Ma occorre rammentare che questa è la sorte di vari altri testi dichiaratamente antiutopistici della letteratura classica di lingua inglese. Cosi, in Noi dell'ingegnere russo Zamjatin e in Buio a Mezzogiorno dell'ungherese Koestler, la critica al totalitarismo si traduce nel rifiuto globale della scienza e della tecnica, mentre la fantasticheria scientifica ripiega su se stessa e s'immiserisce nel proposito didascalico e nel brontolamento ideologico.
Non v'è dunque, in 1984, il sapore dell'avventura, dell'ingresso in un mondo dalla struttura misteriosa e degna d'essere esplorata. E vi è assente quell'equilibrio tra elucubrazioni tecniche e fervidi voli immaginativi che è sempre stato l'espressione più peculiare della science fiction. Fin dall'inizio, infatti, si viene calati in un'atmosfera di routine, grigiore e privazioni che non ci è più molto familiare, eppure è suscettibile di riproporre ai dopo-quarantenni vaghe emozioni. Winston si muove tra squallori di caserma e terrori da gestapo: i rapporti umani sono irrimediabilmente deteriorati; il sesso, formidabile motore degli impulsi e della emotività, langue o è totalmente represso, né vi è più coesione familiare, di ceto, di gruppo, di colleganza. Non c'è neppure speranza di una modificazione, se non di un vero e proprio ribaltamento: "Il Partito è per sempre!"
In questa visione di radicale pessimismo, in cui il futuro è in realtà l'esasperazione delle esperienze del passato e dei terrori del presente, l'unica accensione fantastica degna di questo nome consiste in quella antica passione intellettuale di Orwell per la lingua intesa come veicolo di pensiero ma anche come strumento di manipolazione ideologica, che è alla fonte del discorso sul Newspeak. Il potenziale scientifico di tale discorso non si rivela tanto nell'accuratezza, pur se vissuta in chiave paradossale, dell'analisi storico-linguistica che trapela dal rigore delle classificazioni e della esaustività delle esemplificazioni, in modo tale che si opera nel lettore una coleridgiana "sospensione dell'incredulità", quanto piuttosto nell'abilissima 'riciclatura' di vecchi schemi illuministici (la lingua universale) e nuove proposizioni curricolari (la lingua essenziale: l'inglese in ottocento parole) in un contesto di riflessione filosofica sull'impoverimento del pensiero creativo per opera di un'omologazione materialistica che procede dal progressivo restringimento degli atti comunicativi. E ciò assume il sapore di un'anticipazione, di una profezia sulle devastanti fasi terminali di processi ormai in corso: la standardizzazione della cultura operata congiuntamente dai media, dal martellamento dei messaggi pubblicitari, dall'avvento delle macchine pensanti, di cui Orwell non avevo mai visto l'alba ma aveva avuto lucido sentore.
NOTE
1 Si fa qui e in seguito riferimento alla versione italiana di Nineteen Eighty-Four, a cura di Gabriele Baldini, Mondadori.
2 Il saggio di Franco Selleri è incluso nel volume a cura di Nicola Pantaleo, Ideologia linguaggio potere: 1984 di G. Orwell, Adriatica, Bari, che raccoglie i contributi di un Convegno svoltosi a Bari nel maggio 1984.
3 Così suona il titolo originario di Milienovecentottantaquattro, modificato poi in quello attuale più sinistramente e sibillinamente profetico.
4 G.Orwell, 1984, cit., p.200.
NICOLA PANTALEO è Professore Associato di Storia della lingua inglese alla Facoltà di lingue e letterature straniere e Professore Incaricato di lingua inglese presso il Corso di laurea in Scienze dell'informazione, Facoltà di Scienze, Università di Bari. Su Orwell ha pubblicato: Antiromanticismo, ideologia dell'ordinario e trasgressività nella poetica di George Orwell, in "Annali della Facoltà di Lingue di Bari", III, 1, 1982; Antiutopia come antiromunzo: 1984 di George Orwell, in Romanzo/antíromanzo, a cura di M.T.Lanza, "Annali della Facoltà di Lingue di Bari", IV, 2, 198"; Ideologia, linguaggio, potere: 1984 di George Orwell, a cura di N. Pantaleo, Bari, Adriatica, 1984; Corporeità e psichicità in Orwell, in Il corpo narrato, a cura di P.Calefato, "Annali della Facoltà di Lingue di Bari", VI, 2, 1985; Satira e profezia in 1984 di George Orwell, "Nuovi Orientamenti", VII, 2, 1985; Un caso di scrittura pluridiscorsiva: 1984 di George Orwell, in La perfomance del testo a cura di F.Marucci e A.Bruttini, Siena, Ticci e Grubbi, 1986; Huxley, Asimov e altri: fantascienza come letteratura, letteratura come verità, "Nuovi Orientamenti", VIII, 1-2, 1986.
* E' originariamente apparso su "THX 1138", 3, dicembre 1985, pp.51-57.

George Orwell, 1984
L'autore
George Orwell, pseudonimo per Eric Arthur Blair, nacque a Motihari in India il 25 giugno 1903. A quel tempo l'India era una colonia dell'Impero Britannico e la famiglia Blair era una di quelle famiglie Inglesi relativamente privilegiate in quella zona. Nel 1907, all'età di sette anni, tornò in Inghilterra per vivere a Henley sebbene il padre fosse rimasto in India fino al 1912. Con un po' di sforzi da parte della famiglia riuscì ad andare a una scuola privata finché prese una borsa di studio per andare a Wellington a tredici anni e subito dopo a Eaton, la famosa scuola pubblica. Orwell volle avere una vita d'azione e di viaggi e rinunciò a Oxford e Cambridge per arruolarsi nella "Indian Imperial Police" in Birmania fino al 1927 quando l'abbandonò. Questo per due ragioni: primo quella vita da poliziotto non era quello che voleva fare ossia lo scrittore e secondo perché facendo quel lavoro sosteneva un sistema politico che lui non sosteneva più. Voleva "fuggire da ogni forma di dominio dell'uomo sull'uomo" come scrisse nel La strada di Wigan Pier (1937). Egli voleva cambiare vita e così. Ritornato dalla Birmania andò a vivere per sei mesi tra la povertà di Londra poiché provava disgusto per la sua classe sociale. Andò successivamente a vivere a Parigi dove lavorò come lava piatti e anche lì esaminò la povertà in alcuni quartieri Parigini. Tornato in Inghilterra nel 1929 visse un po' come barbone per poi lavorare in una libreria e fare giornalismo. Senza un soldo a Parigi e a Londra (1933) racconta appunto la sua esperienza e con questo libro vuole far capire alla borghesia, a cui egli stesso appartiene, che il loro benessere è troppo contrastante con la carestia che hanno sotto i loro occhi. Trasferitosi a Wallington fu commissionato dal Left Book Club per scrivere un libro che parli della depressione economica. Dopo essere stato nel '36 tra i minatori dell'Inghilterra settentrionale pubblicherà il risultato della sua esperienza: La strada di Wigan Pier. Tuttavia il Left Book Club non fu soddisfatto dell'opera perché nella sua seconda parte criticava il socialismo Inglese e sosteneva che tutti i suoi membri erano solamente della classe media, cosa ingiusta ai suoi occhi. Andò successivamente in Spagna con l'idea di scrivere articoli sulla Rivoluzione. A Barcellona si sottoscrisse nel P.O.U.M. (Partito Operaio d'Unificazione Marxista) ma colpito al fronte da un cecchino rientrò a Barcellona. Orwell dovette lasciare la Spagna quasi clandestinamente. Nel 1938 si ammalò di tubercolosi e si trasferì in Marocco. Mentre scriveva Una boccata d'aria, scoppiò lo scontro tra l'Inghilterra e la Germania. Egli volle andare a combattere come aveva fatto in Spagna ma lo ritenerono non in condizioni adatte per la guerra. Durante la guerra fece il corrispondente per vari giornali. Cominciò a scrivere nel '43 La fattoria degli animali che fu pubblicato nel '45. Nel '45 si spostò all'isola di Jura in Scozia e, affetto da una grave tisi, incominciò a scrivere 1984. Egli stesso dichiarò che se non fosse stato così male il libro non sarebbe stato così malinconico. Morì a Londra il 21 gennaio 1950
La società del 1984
Il mondo politico
Il mondo è diviso in tre grandissimi stati: l'Oceania, l'Eurasia e l'Estasia. Essi sono sempre in guerra tra di loro ma non per vincere (la loro vastità garantisce che nessuno di loro può essere sconfitto e in più non ci sarebbe alcuna ragione per combattere: infatti le dispute sui mercati sono inesistenti -ogni stato ha un suo mercato interno pianificato -, e ogni stato ha materie prime sufficienti nei propri confini.) ma per distruggersi l'un l'altro le ricchezze prodotte. Infatti se non fosse così, le ricchezze prodotte farebbero arricchire tutta la popolazione creando così una situazione dove tutti sarebbero alla pari economicamente ma una piccola maggioranza privilegiata governerebbe. Il proletariato imparerebbe a leggere e a scrivere e si renderebbe conto della sua situazione d'inferiorità: una situazione instabile politicamente (vi sarebbero ribellioni, colpi di stato). Le guerre si svolgono per cercare di conquistare due aree del globo (mai insidiando il cuore di uno stato), le quali cambiano continuamente bandiera troppo frequentemente per essere sfruttate da chicchessia: il quadrilatero tra Tangeri, Brazzaville, Darwin e Hong Kong dove vi abita circa 1/5 della popolazione terrestre e che offre mano d'opera a buon mercato, e le regioni glaciali nordiche dove si potrebbe produrre, grazie alla temperatura, gomma artificialmente. La società del 1984 ha solamente visto miglioramenti tecnologici nel campo bellico (ci sono addirittura fortezze galleggianti) i quali prodotti però vengono continuamente distrutti in guerra.
La società
Il protagonista del libro, Winston Smith vive a Londra, la città principale di Pista Prima (Inghilterra) che era la terza più popolosa provincia dell'Oceania. Il governo ha le sue basi ideologiche nel Socing (Socialismo Inglese). La piramide sociale è la seguente.
- In cima c'è il Grande Fratello onnipotente e immortale. Egli è una figura misteriosa che tutti devono adorare come una divinità. Tutte le buone azioni del Partito si dice che siano avvenute grazie a lui.
- I membri del Partito Interno possono essere considerati i ricchi. Sono circa il 2% della popolazione (cioè 6 milioni). Essi sono il "cervello dello stato" e hanno molti privilegi.
- I membri del Partito Esterno, la classe media (ne fa parte Winston).
- Infine, trattati come animali e costretti a vivere pietosamente in sobborghi, c'è la gente del proletariato, i prolet che costituiscono l'85% della popolazione.
Il Partito professa che la gerarchia non passa da padre a figlio ma la realtà è diversa. Anche gli spostamenti dal Partito Esterno all'Interno sono assai rari. All'età di sedici anni i giovani fanno un esame per entrare in una classe sociale. Tuttavia anche se vi fosse un prolet che potrebbe diventare membro del Partito, egli verrebbe subito vaporizzato (ucciso) dalla psicopolizia.
Il fatto più sorprendente è che non c'è legge scritta. Anche se apparentemente si può fare tutto quello che pare, le cose non stanno così. Ogni atto fuori dal consueto (da quello che suggerisce il partito e che fanno tutti), eterodosso, è sconsigliabile poiché potrebbe insospettire la psicopolizia. Non c'è legge che vieta ad un membro del partito di andare in un pub dei prolet e parlare con uno di questi ma tale atto è sospetto agli occhi della psicopolizia. Ormai infatti la polizia normale non esiste più, vi è la psicopolizia che controlla le persone senza che esse se ne accorgano per mezzo di agenti speciali, elicotteri che spiano i camerati dalle finestre e con l'aiuto dei teleschermi (ogni camera infatti ha installato un teleschermo che oltre ad emettere musica, annunci dal Grande Fratello e bollettini di guerra è capace anche di fungere come occhio di quest'ultima) e di microfoni nei parchi. Ogni gesto inconsueto potrebbe sembrare alla polizia un atto contro il Partito che incoraggia una severa ortodossia tra tutti i membri del Partito. Centinaia di persone vengono arrestate dalla psicopolizia durante la notte, quando meno se l'aspettano, per essere poi torturate e fatte confessare reati che non hanno mai commesso contro il Partito.
Il Partito è diviso come segue:
Ministero dell'Amore che si occupa di torturare gli arrestati dalla psicopolizia, farli confessare anche reati che non hanno commesso, convertirli al Socing (non vogliono creare martiri come avevano fatto in passato l'Inquisizione, i Nazi, i Russi) per poi fucilarli.
Ministero della Pace che si occupa della Guerra.
Ministero dell'Abbondanza che si occupa della carestia.
Ministero della Verità che si occupa della menzogna. Infatti una delle idee fondamentali del Socing è che il passato non è immutabile. Il Partito infatti fa ri-redigere tutti gli articoli del passato quando lo ritiene opportuno. Ad esempio, se viene portata a termine una strepitosa vittoria, fa riscrivere nel Times di qualche tempo fa un articolo dove si dimostri che il Grande Fratello l'aveva preveduta.
I motti del Partito sono: la guerra è pace (che diviene cosa vera quando la guerra è perpetua), la libertà è schiavitù (significa che un individuo morirà mentre se si è in un gruppo si è immortali -ci sarà eternamente il Partito mentre gli oppositori individuali come lo sarà Winston prima o poi dovranno morire) e infine l'ignoranza è forza (l'idea che se il Partito riesce a tenere tutta la gente ignorante (i prolet) non si renderanno mai conto della vera situazione in cui stanno vivendo -es. non hanno nessun confronto con altre popolazioni dato che le frontiere sono chiuse quindi non si rendono conto della loro disastrosa situazione e accettano questa realtà come unica-).
La Lingua
L'Oceania ha come lingua ufficiale la Neolingua mentre per lingua franca l'Archelingua, l'Inglese. La Neolingua non viene ancora usata frequentemente nel 1984, solamente per gli articoli del Times e per le comunicazioni dai Ministero; la data prevista per la sua completa sostituzione all'Inglese è il 2050.Tuttavia si è già arrivati all'undicesima edizione del suo dizionario. La Neolingua è stata concepita per raggiungere gli scopi del Socing. Infatti ogni nuova edizione presenta sempre meno voci. Sono stati cancellati tutti i sinonimi e i contrari di una parola eliminando tutte le varie sfumature di significato che aveva la vecchia lingua. La grammatica è stata ricostruita con delle regole uguali per tutte le parole (salvo rare eccezioni): es. per rendere da una parola un'altra contraria si aggiunge il prefisso s: buono ¹ sbuono (non esistono altri sinonimi e contrari di buono). Tutte le parole come libertà, scienza non esistono più. Si potrà sempre dire il Grande Fratello è sbuono ma non ci saranno parole per giustificarlo. La Neolingua vuole parole corte e facili da pronunciare per il solo scopo di far elaborare una frase ad una persona in laringe e non in cervello facendola ragionare. Infatti con l'Inglese c'erano così tante parole e sfumature che una persona doveva ragionare con la propria testa per scegliere le parole adatte mentre con il poco lessico disponibile non ci sarà più da pensare, si potrà usare solo quelle parole per esprimere un concetto e verrà istintivo dirle subito senza dunque ragionare.
La storia
La storia, come suggerisce il titolo, ha luogo nel 1984 a Londra dove il protagonista, Winston Smith, incomincia ad avere dubbi sul Partito chiedendosi se il mondo attuale è meglio o peggio di quello che era prima della Rivoluzione che lo ha portato al potere. Allora (commettendo un atto contro il Partito, un psicoreato) incomincia a scrivere, nascosto dal teleschermo che è nella sua camera, un diario dove manifesta il suo odio per il Partito che secondo lui toglie libertà agli uomini. Egli sa di commettere un psicoreato, infatti il solo dubitare sull'esistenza del Grande Fratello è considerato tale, ma continua a scrivere pensando che un giorno qualcuno lo potrà leggere. Frattanto la sua vita quotidiana continua: ogni giorno va al Ministero della Verità per svolgere il suo lavoro che è di ri-redigere vecchi articoli del Times rendendoli come vuole il Partito. Un giorno una ragazza bruna ch'egli aveva creduto essere un agente della psicopolizia o una spia amatore, gli lascia in mano, dopo aver simulato una caduta, un fogliettino con scritto sopra: Ti amo. Passa una settimana prima che i due si incontrino finché, senza essere notati dal teleschermo (l'incontrarsi di due persone era molto pericoloso: poteva essere visto dalla psicopolizia che gli avrebbe d'allora tenuti sotto controllo) nella mensa del Ministero della Verità, riescono a fissare un appuntamento in campagna. In un luogo remoto, dove non c'erano certamente teleschermi, i due finalmente riescono a conoscersi bene e ad amarsi. Winston scopre che si chiama Julia e per lei vuole continuare a vivere. Entrambi sono ostili al Partito e amandosi fanno uno psicoreato. Winston condivide con Julia la sua opinione che O'Brien, un membro del Partito Interno, anch'egli trami contro il partito. La sua vaga opinione un giorno si concreta quando O'Brien si avvicina a Winston chiedendogli di venire a giudicare l'XI Edizione del Dizionario di Neolingua a casa sua (espediente per parlare d'altro). A casa di O'Brien, Winston, accompagnato da Julia. si rende conto che la Fratellanza, l'insieme di persone contro il partito, esiste realmente come il suo capo, Goldstein. O'Brien fa giurare i due lealtà alla Fratellanza e nei giorni successivi si impegna a far arrivare il libro, manifesto contro il Partito scritto da Goldstein, a Winston. Ma Winston non ha il tempo di leggere più di un capitolo che la psicopolizia lo arresta con Julia dopo averli scovati nel loro covo segreto in un quartiere dei prolet (probabilmente chi glielo aveva affittato era una spia). I due sono divisi immediatamente ed entrambi sono portati al Ministero dell'Amore. Winston,. dolente ed affamato, viene sbattuto in una cella dove aspetta il suo turno di chiamata. Dentro la cella scopre che anche il poeta Ampleforth come il suo vicino di casa Parsons sono stati arrestati. Il primo perché aveva completato una rima in "Dio" e il secondo era stato denunciato dalla sua figliola di sette anni poiché l'aveva sentito parlare contro il Grande Fratello nel sonno. Ma il colpo di scena è l'entrata di O'Brien in cella. Winston gli domanda cosa mai ci faceva lui in quel luogo. O'Brien rispose che l'avevano preso da molto tempo. Fatto svenire da un colpo dato da una guardia, Winston si risveglia su un letto totalmente immobilizzato. Lo scopo del Ministero dell'Amore è di far cambiare idee agli eretici che hanno commesso gli psicoreati: questo è compito di O'Brien per Winston. O'Brien alza quattro dita della mano e chiede a Winston quante sono. Egli risponde quattro. Ma O'Brien gli dice quante dita sono queste se il Partito dice che sono cinque. Winston risponde sempre quattro. Allora O'Brien aziona una tortura per mezzo di una levetta su un quadrante che diventerà sempre più intensa. Lo scopo di quest'ultimo non è di far mentire Winston per far smettere la sofferenza ma di fargli effettivamente vedere cinque dita cosa che alla fine, dopo continue torture, iniezioni e lavaggi di cervello, Winston vede! Questo è solo il primo passo dei tre che Winston deve fare per diventare un buon membro. Ora Winston ha appreso la filosofia del Partito ma deve ancora comprendere ed accettare. O'Brien quindi gli spiega come non ci sarà più libertà per l'uomo, che il Patito è immortale e che la presente situazione non cambierà mai. Resterà sempre un "mondo di paura, di tradimenti e di torture, un mondo di gente che calpesta e che è calpestata, un mondo che diventerà non meno, ma più spietato, man mano che si perfezionerà", fondato sull'odio e non sull'amore senza alcuna espressione letteraria. O'Brien aggiunge che è come uno stivale che calpesterà sempre il volto umano. Quando Winston dice che sarà impossibile e che l'uomo si ribellerà, O'Brien dice ch'egli è l'ultimo uomo rimasto sulla terra, una specie estinta, e gli fa vedere il suo corpo denudato a uno specchio. Winston, vedendosi un relitto scheletrico, puzzolente, sdentato e ormai glabro, si arrende e dà ragione a O'Brien. Prima di passare all'ultimo stadio Winston viene ben nutrito e gli viene data la possibilità di lavarsi e di fumare. Egli viene poi condotto alla stanza 101 di cui egli aveva già sentito parlare in modo terrificante. Entrato, viene legato ad un muro e capisce subito che dovrà subire una tortura estrema. Per lui la cosa peggiore al mondo sono i topi. O'Brien gli si avvicina con una maschera, simile a quelle usate per la scherma, contenete due topi per fissargliela in testa. O'Brien avverte Winston che i topi usualmente incominciano a rodere via gli occhi, poi il naso ma anche gli zigomi per arrivare prima alla lingua. Winston in un bagno di sudore appena incomincia a sentire il tanfo rivoltevole dei topi urla: "Fatelo a Julia! Non a me!". Era proprio quello che O'Brien voleva: Winston ha tradito anche colei che amava di più. Winston viene rilasciato presto e gli viene dato un lavoro di poca importanza in una sottocommissione del Ministero della Verità. Egli vedrà Julia ancora una volta ma i due avvertono solo l'altro del loro tradimento. Non si amano più dopo la vicenda della camera 101 (obiettivo del Partito raggiunto). Winston cercherà di seguirla finché una torma li dividerà ed egli non oppone resistenza e torna sulle sue orme verso il bar "Il Castagno" dove da quel giorno in avanti ha trascorso maggior parte della sua vita giocando a scacchi. Il libro termina con lui seduto ad un tavolo al bar che attende il bollettino dove dovrebbe venire comunicato l'esito di una battaglia cruciale. Giocando a scacchi gli viene in mente una strategia vincente con cui l'Oceania potrebbe vincere il nemico. Quando il bollettino viene comunicato egli scopre che il Grande Fratello ha adottato la sua stessa strategia. L'Oceania ha conquistato l'intera Africa e alla fine Winston, pensando che non c'era ragione di resistere al Partito, ama realmente il Grande Fratello.
personaggio: Winston Smith
Winston Smith è un trentanovenne impiegato al Ministero della Verità a riscrivere articoli del Times. Egli è uno dei pochi tipi eccentrici della società del 1984. Questo perché incomincia a domandarsi il perché delle cose. Come egli stesso scrisse nel suo diario: "Capisco COME ma non capisco PERCHÉ". Winston teorizza che il Partito può cambiare la Storia ma non quello che rimane nella memoria di una persona, i ricordi. Questo a noi sembrerebbe vero, come un assioma, ma ironicamente nel 1984 sembra che nessuno non si ricordi nulla. Ovvero meglio dire che se qualcuno si ricorda qualcosa che contraddice il Partito testimoniando la sua falsità, si convince di ricordarsi male e che ciò è solamente un fatto che ha sognato (questo procedimento viene chiamato bispensiero ed è proprio quello che il Partito vuole). Ma Winston non ragiona come tutti gli altri ed è sicuro di ricordarsi bene le cose. Ad esempio un giorno mentre Winston era seduto alla mensa, il teleschermo annunciò che c'erano state manifestazioni di ringraziamento al Grande Fratello perché aveva aumentato la razione di cioccolata a 20 grammi alla settimana. Ma Winston si rende subito conto della falsità dell'informazione: infatti il giorno prima c'era stata una comunicazione che era stata ridotta a 20 grammi. Tuttavia solo lui se ne rende conto mentre gli altri stolti festeggiano. Del passato ha ricordi vaghi. Tuttavia ricorda il suo egoismo nei confronti della stremata madre e della sorellina ammalata e morente di fame: voleva sempre una razione maggiore di cibo considerandosi l'uomo di famiglia e talvolta si impadroniva pure di quella della sorellina. Ora ricordandosi la sua cattiveria soprattutto nei confronti della madre, che si sacrificava sempre per lui, ne rimpiange l'affetto (la madre con la sorellina era stata presa dalla psicopolizia).
Camminando per i sobborghi di Londra, gli viene in mente che se c'è una speranza per rovesciare il Partito, questa risiede nei prolet. Tuttavia Winston pensa che i prolet siano troppo ingnoranti per rendersi conto della loro "forza" e della loro situazione disastrosa. Allora, sconfortato per questa considerazione, pensa ulteriormente che l'unica maniera per avere libertà è il suicidio. Tuttavia Winston dimostra che non sarebbe mai capace di fare una cosa simile: anche se c'è un'ora da vivere in più anche in cella lui la vuole vivere. Con Julia si rende conto che alla fine l'unica maniera per contrastare il Partito è di trasgredirlo. Egli infatti è una persona coraggiosissima e sebbene sappia che un giorno verrà preso dalla psicopolizia, continua nelle sue trasgressioni: il diario, le scappatelle con Julia, il passare tra i quartieri dei prolet, il fatto di essere andato accompagnato da O'Brien. Tutte queste cose rendono Winston l'eroe del 1984 anche se egli alla fine verrà sconfitto dalla potenza del Partito al quale non si può far resistenza.
commento
Mi è piaciuta tantissimo l'ironia che Orwell ha utilizzato nello scrivere 1984. Egli ha stravolto l'idea del socialismo scrivendo questo divertentissimo libro che consiglierei a tutti la lettura. Sebbene il 1984 sia già passato, l'URSS, che era l'esempio per il socialismo, sia crollato e quindi un mondo come quello descritto da Orwell ora è impensabile,
molti aspetti di quella società sono comunque da tenere in considerazione e da temere. Ad esempio la psicopolizia sembrerebbe una cosa assurda ai nostri occhi come il fatto di venire uccisi per quello che si pensa ma ci sono ancora governi autoritari tutt'oggi che perseguitano coloro che la pensano diversamente da loro. Ma il particolare descritto che mi ha colpito di più è quello sulla Neolingua e sul suo dizionario che andrà a sostituire l'Archelingua. Forse ci stiamo anche noi dirigendo verso quello che la Neolingua suggerisce: la diminuzione dei vocaboli. E' un fatto che la conoscenza di vocaboli presso la gente in generale rispetto a quanti ne raccoglie il nostro vocabolario è bassissima. E se un giorno a un tale venisse in mente di togliere tutti quei vocaboli che nessuno mai adopera più? Sarebbe l'inizio della Neolingua! Come già detto non penso che arriveremo mai alla pari della società di Orwell ma dobbiamo stare sempre attenti a usufruire delle nostre libertà come quella di parola per la quale Winston ha così tanto lottato nel 1984.

Il racconto illustra l'ingranaggio di un governo totalitario. L'azione si svolge in un futuro prossimo del mondo (l'anno 1984) in cui il potere si concentra in tre immensi superstati: Oceania, Eurasia ed Estasia. Londra è la città principale di Oceania. Al vertice del potere politico in Oceania c'è il Grande Fratello, onnisciente e infallibile, che nessuno ha visto di persona. Sotto di lui c'è il Partito interno, quello esterno e la gran massa dei sudditi. Ovunque sono visibili grandi manifesti con il volto del Grande Fratello. Gli slogan politici ricorrenti solo: "La pace è guerra", "La libertà è schiavitù", "L'ignoranza è forza".
Il Ministero della Verità, nel quale lavora il personaggio principale, Winston Smith, ha il compito di censurare libri e giornali non in linea con la politica ufficiale, di alterare la storia e di ridurre le possibilità espressive della lingua. Per quanto sia tenuto sotto controllo da telecamere, Smith comincia a condurre un'esistenza ispirata a principi opposti a quelli inculcati dal regime: tiene un diario segreto, ricostruisce il passato, si innamora di una collega di lavoro, Julia, e dà sempre più spazio a sentimenti individuali.
Insieme con un compagno di lavoro, O'Brien, Smith e Julia iniziano a collaborare con un'organizzazione clandestina, detta Lega della Fratellanza. Non sanno tuttavia che O'Brien è una spia che fa il doppio gioco ed è ormai sul punto di intrappolarli. Smith viene arrestato, sottoposto a torture e a un indicibile processo di degradazione. Alla fine di questo trattamento è costretto a denunciare Julia.
Infine O'Brien rivela a Smith che non è sufficiente confessare e sottomettersi: il Grande Fratello vuole avere per sé l'anima e il cuore di ogni suddito prima di metterlo a morte.
.
La discussione su questo libro si è sviluppata
qualche tempo fa in un newsgroup di letteratura
al quale aderisco: riporto qui di seguito
i commenti più significativi (facendone una sintesi)
In 1984, George Orwell interpreta la dittatura come l'assenza di libertà per
tutti gli individui. Nessuno escluso. Nemmeno i funzionari più alti del "partito"
al potere, infatti, godono di alcun privilegio; anzi, sono i primi e i più convinti fautori dell'autolimitazione della libertà personale. Esemplare è l'interrogatorio finale condotto dal funzionario ai danni del protagonista, in cui il primo dimostra tutto il proprio fervore ideologico difendendo la pratica del bis-pensiero (artificio che limita, mediante la sottrazione di termini atti a esprimerli, i concetti a disposizione dei cittadini) e praticandola egli stesso con assoluta convinzione.
Forse, il motivo per cui 1984 è uno dei romanzi più inquietanti della storia della letteratura è proprio questo: la dittatura ipotizzata da Orwell è disumana: non abbiamo nemmeno il conforto (inconscio) che ci potrebbe derivare dal constatare l'umana "corruzione del privilegio" che, sotto sotto, ci aspetteremmo dalla classe al potere, quale che essa sia. La dittatura immaginata da Orwell è una dittatura mentale, non fisica; viene imposta con il lavaggio del cervello, con le sparizioni improvvise, senza alcun clamore, senza alcuna violenza apparente.
Nel libro quel funzionario lascia intravedere una realtà ancora più inquietante: la disumanizzazione del potere è rappresentata proprio dalla scelta di rendere immortale il Grande Fratello. In realtà Orwell estremizza una tendenza comunissima di tutte le dittature, la deificazione del capo, ma il risultato è comunque terrificante. L'uomo di Orwell sceglie il potere come fine supremo, e non come mezzo per acquisire la "libertà" di dominare, diventando egli stesso schiavo del meccanismo che ha creato. Ricordo una frase di Fromm, se non mi sbaglio in "Psicanalisi dell'amore". Egli si chiedeva se era più libero il carcerato o il suo guardiano, concludendo che entrambi erano prigionieri di un "meccanismo" che non permette all'uomo di raggiungere il suo vero fine, coltivare la propria umanità. Gli impiegati del partito interno godono di piccoli privilegi, quale l'ereditarietà della loro condizione e razioni più abbondanti, ma sono essi stessi schiavi dell'idolo che hanno creato.
Quello che spaventa, in Orwell, è la Folla: questa massa di persone omologate, istigate a comando a scatenare gli istinti violenti nel corso delle sessioni appositamente inscenate nelle aziende enormi e spersonalizzate, che si comportano tutte allo stesso modo, che accettano tutte con passiva convinzione l'ideologia imposta dal Grande Fratello. E non c'è ribellione, non c'è resistenza: a ribellarsi è un singolo, smarrito nella marea degli omologati, e per questo è condannato sin dall'inizio. Il lettore lo sa, lo sa bene, e quindi l'angoscia non lo abbandona mai.
L'elemento più inquietante del libro è proprio il "salto di qualità" che il Grande Fratello aveva fatto compiere alla dittatura. Egli non solo pretende obbedienza assoluta, ma anche la spontanea condivisione del sogno. E' significativo che i dissidenti vengano giustiziati soltanto dopo la loro "spontanea" adesione al regime, quando sono convinti dell' "equità" della loro pena.
L'ultimo passo del Grande Fratello è la prevenzione dell'opposizione, mediante la limitazione della capacità di pensiero ottenuta tramite una lingua in cui non è possibile più esprimere il proprio pensiero (la prima ribellione del protagonista è consistita proprio nello scrivere su di un quaderno: "Odio il Grande Fratello"). Se l'uomo non ha la capacita' di identificare in maniera razionale il motivo della sua sofferenza, poiché non ha parole per esprimerlo e per rifletterci, allora non può neanche definire la causa della propria sofferenza e l'oggetto del proprio odio.
Tutto quel che rimane è soltanto un rancore indefinito, che può essere
spazzato via attraverso le sedute di "odio collettivo".
La relazione tra linguaggio e capacita' critica e' estremamente interessante. Come impostare un ragionamento logico-deduttivo se nella propria lingua non esiste il periodo ipotetico? Le capacità di astrazione sono influenzate dal linguaggio utilizzato se l'uomo non è in grado o non può, nel caso prospettato in 1984, modificare la propria lingua?
In quest'ottica, credo che l'impoverimento del linguaggio a cui assistiamo
attualmente sia preoccupante. Che cosa ne pensate della scomparsa del congiuntivo dalla televisione?
Credo che 1984 sia uno di quei libri che "avvelena" l'anima, e che per questo non possa essere messo da parte senza ragionarci a lungo.
Altro spunto di discussione: il ruolo della guerra, interna ed esterna,
nell'economia di una dittatura. Credo che nello sviluppo di questo tema si
riconoscono le basi culturali socialiste di Orwell.
La dittatura ipotizzata da Orwell usa e sviluppa la tecnologia, e sembrerebbe che il fine sia quello di vincere la guerra contro Estasia e/o Eurasia. In realta' questa e' il solo modo per mantenere la disciplina interna, in quanto le esigenze di produzione bellica non permettono l'aumento della produzione per il consumo, e quindi il miglioramento delle condizioni di vita della popolazione. La maggior parte degli storici "materialisti" individua proprio nel miglioramento delle condizioni di vita dei "sottoposti" uno dei fattori più forti di destabililizzazione del potere. I gruppi che non devono preoccuparsi della propria sopravvivenza materiale, solitamente chiedono la partecipazione alla gestione del potere. Ecco perché la guerra è una condizione permanente per la dittatura orwelliana, la cui necessarietà viene compresa, soltanto alla fine, dal protagonista.
E' difficile rendere avvincente un trattato politico, eppure Orwell c'è riuscito benissimo, creando un mondo verosimile in cui l'uomo è un semplice, sostituibile ingranaggio della macchina della dittatura.
Inoltre credo che 1984 sia così inquietante perché identifica ed estremizza alcui aspetti del potere che possono essere ritrovati non solo nella dittatura stalinista alla quale Orwell si è ispirato, ma anche nella nostra democrazia, come ad esempio la relazione tra potere e strumenti di comunicazione (Tv, radio, giornali), oppure potere e storia (Kundera ha scritto in uno dei suoi romanzi che i potenti si impadroniscono delle stanze in cui si scrive la storia per controllare il futuro).
Associo questo libro a Fareneith 451 di Bradbury, che pur essendo molto bello, trovo molto meno inquietante a confronto.
Soprattutto la dittatura in 1984 nasce grazie al continuo revisionismo storico, all'aggiornamento quotidiano della "Verità". Infatti, quando si combatte un nuovo nemico, si eliminano o si correggono tutti i precedenti articoli, libri, riferimenti al vecchio nemico. (Il mondo era diviso in tre imperi). Alla fine, è lecito (e viene detto) dubitare addirittua che la guerra esista.
Questa, come è già stato detto da altri, è una prassi comune (seppur non in
modo tanto palese e sistematico come nel romanzo di Orwell) a tutte le
dittature: i libri di testo, soprattutto, vengono alterati a seconda di ciò che conviene alla classe dominante. Ma il revisionismo si estende anche a altri campi.
Orwell porta questo procedimento all'estremo, ma quello che più colpisce non è tanto l'operazione di revisione continua effettuata dalla classe dominante, quando altri due elementi: la passività con cui la cittadinanza accetta come "verità" qualcosa che sa benissimo non essere vera; e la presenza di un vero e proprio "ministero" dove gli impiegati, quotidianamente, hanno il compito di riscrivere i giornali e i libri di storia per adeguarli alla situazione attuale. Ma, ancora più inquietante, forse, è il fatto che i libri e i giornali "originali" vengano sistematicamente distrutti, contribuendo così alla creazione di un mondo fasullo a cui anche gli stessi membri della classe al potere non possono fare a meno di credere.

'1984': un titolo asciutto e sferzante come una frustata, una semplice data, per il romanzo antiutopico forse più noto, almeno a grandi linee, e al quale si sono ispirati due film non particolarmente riusciti, il vecchissimo Nel duemila non sorge il sole, ed il più recente omonimo 1984, con Richard Burton.
Ritengo superfluo riassumere qui la trama e l'argomento di quest'opera, che quasi tutti conosciamo, anche se non mi è possibile fugare il sospetto che la fama di cui essa gode sia di gran lunga superiore all'effettiva comprensione ed approfondimento da parte del pubblico: in effetti, non poche volte è accaduto, almeno a me, di avere di fronte interlocutori apparentemente molto informati, ma che davano l'impressione di aver letto più ponderosi tomi di critiche e commenti in proposito che non la narrazione in sé. Credo quindi più stimolante per il potenziale lettore il tentare qui un parallelo tra l'antiutopia del romanzo e la realtà odierna.
Siamo ormai nel 1999, e sono già passati quindici anni dal fatidico 1984, data scelta peraltro da Orwell in modo puramente simbolico invertendo le ultime due cifre dell'anno in cui scrisse il romanzo: e, ad un'osservazione superficiale, il mondo e la società che ci circondano non si sono evoluti nel senso da lui immaginato. Ma è proprio così?
E' vero, non vi sono, nelle nostre case, telecamere nascoste che spiino continuamente ogni nostra azione e la condizionino: ma esiste un qualcosa chiamato 'audience', che verifica e controlla subdolamente i nostri gusti e le nostre tendenze, e a sua volta li indirizza e modifica in modo inoperante. Siamo liberi di esprimere la nostra volontà con il voto: ma siamo anche pressati da sondaggi di opinione e da 'exit-poll' più o meno onesti e manipolati, capaci di influenzarne pesantemente l'autonoma espressione. Non esistono, nella nostra società, un 'Grande Fratello' che determini forzatamente il nostro agire, o un 'Ministero dell'amore' con il preciso compito di impedirne la manifestazione sia psichica che fisica. I mass-media ci tengono informati, in tempo reale, di quanto avviene in ogni parte del mondo: ma mai come ora, al termine dell'ennesimo inconcludente dibattito televisivo, siamo coscienti del fatto che una bugia ripetuta un numero sufficientemente elevato di volte diventa, proprio come nel romanzo, una indiscutibile verità. E paradossalmente, con il progredire della tecnologia ed il perfezionarsi dei mezzi di comunicazione, siamo sempre meno certi di venire correttamente informati: sullo schermo appare il servizio sull'ultimo conflitto, appena scoppiato da qualche parte, ed in basso scorrono lentamente le parole 'immagini di repertorio', riprese chissà quando e chissà dove.
L'antiutopia di Orwell non si è realizzata nel modo cupo ed in fin dei conti scoperto che viene descritto nel romanzo, ma forse procede in modo inapparente, morbido, 'soft', con un sorriso accattivante sulle labbra, e non è affatto giunta al suo termine, ma sta ancora avanzando e progredendo proprio ora, mentre io scrivo queste parole.
In definitiva, credo che 1984 di George Orwell sia, nonostante le apparenze, un'opera più attuale che mai, e che sarebbe una cosa buona se ciascuno di noi dedicasse un minimo di tempo a rileggerla con attenzione, ed a rimeditarla.
Giuliano Giachino

1984 - George Orwell
Probably the most important thing to remember while reading 1984 is that Orwell never intended the book to be a prediction of the future. It was more or less a satire of political fiction, however, I believe Orwell was on the right track concerning future possibilities of a New World Order, or total government control. An interesting quotation from the book is from the "thought police" when they say "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." I believe Orwell's hope in writing the book was to warn people of political warning signs he saw.
Another interesting characteristic I noticed about the book, was the fact that he only revealed to the reader the full names of only three characters in the book. The book features the main character, Winston Smith, who is a man in his late 30's and a member of the 'outer party' - the lower of the two classes. Winston Smith works for the government in one of the four main government buildings called the Ministry of Truth where his job is to rewrite history books in order for people not to learn what the past used to be like (the slogan of 'the party' is "who controls the past, controls the future."). As the book is beginning, Winston begins to contemplate setting himself against Big Brother and the Party, but of course is reluctant, knowing that even thinking about such a thing could easily result in his death. The three sentences sum up what the party stands for, and they are:
"War is Peace"
"Freedom is Slavery"
"Ignorance is Strength"
All appear to be oxymoron's, but make some sense once the reader has progressed through the book, for example, the term "War is Peace" has a simple, but somewhat complex explanation.
The society in 1984 revolves around 3 'superstates' which are Eurasia, Eastasia, and Oceania. All of these states are in a constant state of war with one another, yet all are self contained, and require no trade with one another, and therefor do not require war as a means of economical necessity. However, it is their feeling that as long as a constant state of war is prevailing, the people will be too preoccupied with the war effort to worry about whether or not the present political system is working. The government constantly reminds the people that when they win the war, Oceania will rule the world, and life will be better. So therefor, as long as the war is going (as it always will be), peace within the states can prevail.
Big Brother becomes suspicious of Winston, and he is therefore watched by O'Brien, an intelligent executive at the Ministry of Truth who is a member of the Inner Party (the upper class). After a bit of casual conversation at the workplace, he is invited to O'Brien's house where he denounces to him his thoughts and ideas about the Brotherhood. O'Brien mentions a gentleman named Emmanuel Goldstein whom he claims to know heads an organization for such the same purposes of which Winston spoke. O'Brien promises to help Winston, and promises him a copy of Goldstein's book.
Julia is the third and final main character of the book. She is an attractive young female who works with Winston at the Ministry of Truth. She is a member of the Outer Party. They fall in love, but never marry because of existing laws in 1984. Julia eventually learns of Winstons plans, and even helps him. However, unlike O'Brien, she does not betray him.
Eventually, Winston is caught and taken to a place "where there is no darkness" which are bright underground rooms where criminals are taken to be interrogated. He is tortured, and mentally murdered so badly that by the end of the book he loves Big Brother, and cannot think a single thought without the permission of the party. Winston is tortured on several different occasions, and on all occasions it is done by his "teacher" - O'Brien. Almost the entire last 1/3 of the book is devoted to the dialogue that takes place during these torture sessions between O'Brien and Winston.
Winston turns out to be a textbook case of a person reformed by the party. By the end of the book, Winston is completely mentally dead. He cannot think or act for himself, and he is merely a toy of the party. He is useless to anyone (including the party), and may as well be put to death, but is kept alive, probably as a trophy to Big Brother.

George Orwell (1903-1950) - pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair
English novelist, essayist and critic, famous for his novels ANIMAL FARM (1945) and NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949), classics of political satire. Although Orwell expressed leftist views, he remained to the end of his life an uncompromising individualist and political idealist, and was called by his contemporaries the conscience of his age.
"The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, than one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push ascetism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals." ( from 'Reflections on Gandhi', in Shooting an Elephant, 1949)
George Orwell was born in Motihari, Bengal, India, as the second child of Richard Walmesley Blair and Ida Mabel Limonzin. His father was a civil servant in the opium department and his mother came from a family of old Burma hands. In 1904 Orwell moved with his mother and sister to England. He attended Eton, where the old-fashioned British flogging was in use.Orwell published his first writings in college periodicals. During these years Orwell developed his antipathy towards the English class systems. Also Orwell's years at St Cyprian's Preparatory School were not happy. His bitter essay dealing with this period, SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS, was not published until 1968.
Orwell failed to win a scholarship to university and in 1922 he went to Burma to serve in the Indian Imperial Police (1922-27) as an assistant superintendent. Eventually Orwell's mounting dislike of imperialism led to his resignation. His revelations of the behaviour of the colonial officers appeared in SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT (1950) and in his early essay A Hanging (1931).
Orwell returned to Europe and lived as a tramp and beggar, working low paid jobs in England and France (1928-29). He had decided in 1928 to become a writer. Orwell's account of his experiences in poverty gave material for DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON (1933). From 1930 Orwell contributed regularly to the New Adelphi and in 1933 he assumed the pseudonym by which he would sign all his publications. Unable to support himself with his writings, Orwell took up a teaching post at a private school, where he finished his first novel, BURMESE DAYS (1934). In 1936 Orwell married Eileen O'Shaugnessy. KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING, the story of a young bookseller's assistant, appeared in 1936. From 1936 to 1940 Orwell worked as a shopkeeper in Wallingford, Hertfordshire. In 1936 Orwell was commissioned by the publisher Victor Gollancz to produce a documentary account of unemployment in the North of England for the Left Book Club. The result, THE ROAD TO WIGAN'S PEER, is considered a milestone in modernliterary journalism.
In the1930s Orwell had adopted socialistic views and travelled to Spain to report on the Civil War. He fought alongside the United Workers Marxist Party militia and was wounded in the neck. The war made him a strong opposer of communism and an advocate of the English brand of socialism. Orwell's book on Spain, HOMAGE TO CATALONIA, appeared in 1938.
During World War II Orwell served as a sergeant in the Home Guard and worked as a journalist for the BBC, Observer and Tribune, where he was literary editor from 1943 to 1945. Toward the end of the war he wrote Animal Farm, which depicted the betrayal of a revolution. After the war Orwell lived mostly in Jura in the Western Isles of Scotland.
The biting satire of Communist ideology in The Animal Farm made Orwell for the first time prosperous. His other world wide success was Nineteen Eighty-Four, one of the classical works of science fiction along with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and H.G. Wells novels Time Machine, War of The World and Invisible Man. 1984 was a bitter protest against the nightmarish direction in which the author believed the modern world was moving. In the story, Britania has become Airstrip One in the superstate Oceania, which is ruled by the head of the Party, Big Brother. The Party's agents constantly rewrite history. The official language is Newspeak, and the society is dominated by such slogans as "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", "Ignorance is Strenght." Orwell shows that the destruction of language is part of all other destrucive social aims. The hero, Winston Smith, a minor Party operative, keeps a secret diary and has a brief love affair with a girl named Julia. He is arrested by the Thought Police, tortured and brainwashed. His spirit broken, Winston finally learns to love Big Brother. Some critics have related Smith's sufferings to those the author underwent at preparatory school. Orwel has said that the book was written "to alter other people's idea of the kind of society they should strive after."
Orwell's wife died in 1945 and in 1949 he married Sonia Browell. Orwell died from tuberculosis in London on January 21, 1950, soon after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 1998 Martin Seymour-Smith listed Orwell's dystopia among 100 most influential books ever written. Orwell himself implicitly acknowledge his debt to Evgeny Zamyatin's (1884-1937) novel We (in Russia My), which was written in 1920 and translated into English 1924.
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power." (from Nineteen Eighty-Four)
Although Orwell is best-known as a novelist, his essays are among the finest of the 20th-century. He also produced newspaper articles and reviews, which were written for money, but he carefully crafted his other essays for such journals as Partisan Review, Adelphi and Horizon. Orwell united political purpose and literary ambitions into a sharp analysis of bureauctatic institutions and cultural elite. Without hesititon he accused that Yeats is a fascist. H.G. Wells was out of touch with reality, Salvador Dali he found decadent, but defended P.G. Wodehouse and rehabilitated Kilping. In 'Why Write?' and 'Politics and the English Language' (1948) Orwell argued that writers have an obligtion of fighting social injustice, oppression, and the power of totalitarian regimes. Orwell's view of the class bounded language has had a deep effect on the political discourse of our time.
For further reading: George Orwell by L. Brander (1954); The Crystal Spirit by G. Woodcock (1966); Orwell by Raymond Williams (1971); The Unknown Orwell by Peter Stansky (1972); Road to Miniluv by C. Small (1975); A Reader's Guide to George Orwell, ed. by Jeffrey Meyers (1975); George Orwell: A Life by B. Crick (1981); A George Orwell Companion by J.R. Hammond (1982); George Orwell: The Critical Heritage, ed. by Jeffrey Meyers; The Language of 1984 by W.F. Bolton (1984); Orwell by Michel Shelden (1991) - See also: Franz Kafka - OTHER WRITERS WITTNESSING THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR: Ernest Hemingway, Federico Garcia Lorca, André Malraux, Langston Hughes
Animal Farm (1945) - satirical allegory of the Russian Revolution, particularly directed against Stalin's Russia. Led by the pigs, the Animals on Mr Jones's farm revolt against their human masters. After their victory they decide to run the farm themselves on egalitarian principles. Inspired by the example of Boxer, the hard-working horse, the cooperation prosper. The pigs become corrupted by power and a new tyranny is established under Napoleon (Stalin). 'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.' Snowball (Trotsky), an idealist, is driven out. The final betrayal is made when the pigs engineer a rapproachement with Mr Jones. The book was originally rejected for publication by T.S. Eliot in 1944, but has gained since its appearance in 1945 a status of a classic. - Film adaptation from 1955 was a faithful rendition of Orwell's original work, but watered in the end the satire, and presented a socialist viewpoint: the system is good, but the individuals are corruptible.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four was first published by Martin Secker & Warburg, London, in 1949.The first paperback edition was published by Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, in 1954. Since then it has been reprinted in the Penguin edition twenty-six times.
INDEX
Summary (below)
Characters - Winston Smith | Julia | O'Brien | Big Brother
Plot
Political System - Party | Proles | Newspeak | Doublethink
Symbolism
Summary
The Story starts, as the title tells us, in the year of 1984, and it takes place in England or how it is called at that time, Airstrip One. Airstrip One itself is the mainland of a huge country, called Oceania, which consists of North America, South Africa, and Australia. The country is ruled by the Party, which is led by a figure called Big Brother. The population of Oceania is divided into three parts:
1.The Inner Party (app. 1% of the population)
2.The Outer Party (app. 18% of the population)
3.The Proles
The narrator of the book is 'Third Person Limited'. The protagonist is Winston Smith, a member of the OuterParty, working in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, rewriting and altering records, such as newspaper-articles, of the past. The action starts when Winston develops critic thoughts against the ruling dictatorship of the party, for the first time. Doing so he buys himself a book, a rare thing these days, to use it as a diary. As individual expression was forbidden by the Party, having a diary was a crime, which could even be punished with death. There were so-called telescreens in each room, showing propaganda and political pamphlets, which had a built in camera and microphone, in order to spy on the people. Therefore keeping a secret book was not only forbidden, but also very dangerous. When Winston makes the first entry in the diary ,he thinks about an experience he has made during the Two Minutes Hate, a propaganda film, that was repeated each day. During this Film he caught the eye of O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party, of whom he thought that he might alos stand critic to the regime, or that at least there is a bond of some kind between them. After the reflection, he finds that he has written the sentence :"Down with Big Brother" all over the page. In the same night Winston dreams about, his mother and sister, who had starved to death in the war, because he had been so greedy. Then he dreams of having sex with a girl he has seen in the Records Department, during the Two Minute Hate. Early in the morning Winston is waken up by the harsh voice from the telescreen. During the performance of the exercises, Winston's thoughts move back to his childhood. The last thing he remembers clearly, is the World War. After the WW the party has taken control of the country, and from then on it was difficult to remember anything, because the party changed the history permanently to their own benefit (see Doublethink - Political System).After the exercises Winston goes to work, to the Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), where his job is to alter records, and once altered, to throw them into the Memory Hole where they are burnt. For example B.B. (Big Brother) has promised that there will be no reduction of the chocolate ration, but there has been one, so Winston has to rewrite an old article, where the speech of B.B. is written down. At dinner Winston Smith meets Syme, a philologist, who is working on the 11 th edition of The Newspeak Dictionary (see Newspeak - Political System), Syme explains the main character of their work on this dictionary. During their conversation the telescreen announces that the chocolate ration has been risen to 20 g a week, whereas yesterday it was cut down to 20 g a week.Winston wonders whether he's the only person with memory, that isn't inflicted by Doublethink. As he looks around in the dining room he catches the eye of the dark-haired girl he had dreamed the same night. Back home again he makes an entry into his diary about his meeting with a prostitute three years ago. He rememberes her ugliness, but nevertheless he had sex with her. Winston had a wife, but she was very stupid and just following the orders of the Party, which said that there may only be Sex to produce "new material" for the Party, and that sex for the personal pleasure is a crime. Then Winston thinks about the Party, and believes that the only hope lies in the Proles who pose over 80% of Oceanias population. Later he remembers another fact of his past, Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford, the last three survivors of the original leaders of the Revolution. They were arrested in 1965, and confessed all kind of sabotage on trial, they were pardoned, reinstated but not long after were arrested again, and executed. During the brief period Winston has seen them in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. In the same year a half page torn out of The Times came to Winston trough the transport tube in the Minitrue. This page of The Times showed the three men in Eastasia on a certain day. But Winston remembered clearly that they have confessed being in Eurasia on that day (At this time Eurasia was at war with Oceania, and Eastasia was an allied). So Winston could proof that the confessions were lies. But Winston had sent this paper down to the Memory Hole (a kind of paper basket) The last entry Winston writes in his diary is that freedom is to say that two and two makes four. If this is granted everything else follows. The next day Winston decides not to participate in the community actions, but to take a walk in the quarters of the Proles, around St Pancras station. During the walk a Rocket-Bomb explodes nearby. After a while Winston finds himself in front of the junk-shop, where he has bought the diary. There he sees an old man just entering a pub. He decides to follow the man, and to ask him about the time before the revolution, but the old man has already forgotten nearly everything about this time, except for some useless personal things. Winston leaves the pub and goes to the Shop, where he finds a pink piece of glass with apiece of coral inside which he buys. Mr Carrington, the owner of the shop leads him upstairs to show him an old fashioned room. W. Smith likes the room because of its warmth and of course because there are no telescreens. When Winston leaves the shop he suddenly meets the dark-haired girl in the street. He now believes that this girl is an amateur spy or even a member of the Thought Police, spying on him. The next morning he meets the girl in the Ministry of Truth, and in the moment she passes, she falls down and cries out in pain. When Winston helps her up, she has presses a piece of paper into his hand. At the first opportunity he opens it and finds the startling message: "I love you" written on it. For a week he waits for an opportunity to speak with her. Finally he is successful, and he meets her in the canteen where they fix a meeting. Some time later they meet on the fixed place, there the girl gives Winston precise instructions how to get to a secret place on Sunday. It is Sunday and Winston is following the girl's directions. On the way he picks some bluebells for her. And then finally she comes up behind him, telling him to be quiet because there might be some microphones hidden somewhere. They kiss and he learns her name: Julia. She leads him to another place where they cannot be observed. Before she takes off her blue party-overall, Julia tells Winston that she is attracted to him by something in his face which showes that he is against the party. Winston is surprised and asks Julia if she has done such a thing before. To his delight she tells him that she has done it scores of times, which fills him with a great hope. Evidence of corruption and abandon always gives him with hope. Perhaps the whole system is rotten, and will simply crumb to pieces one day. The more men she had, the more he loves her, and later as he looks at her sleeping body, he thinks that now even sex is a political act, a blow against the falseness of the Party. Winston and Julia arrange to meet again. Winston rents the room above Mr Carringtons junk shop, a place where they can meet and talk without the fear of being observed. It is summer and the preparations for "Hate Week", an enormous propaganda event, are well forthcoming, and in this time Winston meets Julia more often than ever before. Julia makes him feel more alive, she makes him feel healthier, and he even puts on weight. One day O'Brien speaks to Winston in the Ministry of Truth. He refers, obliquely to Syme, the philologist, who has vanished a couple of days before, and is now, as it is called in Newspeak an unperson. In doing so O'Brien is committing a little act of thoughtcrime. O'Brien invites Winston to his flat, to see the latest edition of the Newspeak dictionary. Winston now feels sure that the conspiracy against the Party he had longed to know about - the Brotherhood, as it is called - does exist, and that in the encounter with O'Brien he has come into contact with its outer edge. He knows that he has embarked on a course of action which will lead , in one way or another, to the cells of the Ministry of Love. Some days later Winston and Julia meet each other to go to the flat of O'Brien, which lies in the district of the Inner Party. They are admitted to a richly furnitured room by a servant. To their astonishment O'Brien switches off the Telescreen in the room.(Normally it is impossible to turn it off) Winston blurts out why they have come: they want to work against the Party, they believe in the existence of the Brotherhood, and that O'Brien is involved with it. Martin, O'Brien's servant brings real red wine, and they drink a toast to Emanuel Goldstein, the leader of the Brotherhood. O'Brien asks them a series of questions about their willingness to commit various atrocities on behalf of the Brotherhood and gets their assent. They leave, and some days later Winston gets a copy of "The Book", a book written by Emanuel Goldstein, about his political ideas. Now it is Hate Week and suddenly the war with Eurasia stopps, and a war with Eastasia starts. This of course meant a lot of work for Winston. He had to change dozens of articles about the war with Eurasia. Nevertheless Winston finds time to read the book. The book has three chapters titled, "War is Peace", "Ignorance is Strength" and "Freedom is Slavery", which were also the main phrases of the party. The main ideas of the book are:
1: War is important for consuming the products of human labour, if this work would be used to increase the standard of living, the control of the party over the people would decrease. War is the economy basis for a hierarchical society.
2: There is an emotional need to believe in the ultimate victory of Big Brother.
3: In becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The continuity of the war guarantees the permanence of the current order. In other words "War is Peace"
4: There have always been three main grades of society; the High, the Middle and the Low, and no change has brought human equality a millimetre nearer.
5: Collectivism doesn't lead to socialism. In the event the wealth now belongs to the new "high-class", the bureaucrats and administrators. Collectivism has ensured the permanence of economic inequality.
6: Wealth is not inherited from person to person, but it is kept within the ruling group.
7: The masses (proles) are given freedom of thought, because they don't think! A Party member is not allowed the slightest deviation of thought, and there is an elaborate mental training to ensure this, a training that can be summarised in the concept of doublethink.
So far the book analyses how the Party works. It has not yet attempted to deal with why the Party has arisen. Before continuing with the next chapter Winston turns to Julia, and finds her asleep. He also falls asleep. The next morning when he awakes the sun is shining, and down in the yard a prole women is singing and working. Winston is again filled with the conviction that the future lies with the proles, that they will overthrow the greyness of the Party. But suddenly reality crashes in. "We are the DEAD", he says to Julia. An iron voice behind them repeats the phrase, the picture on the wall falls to bits to reveal a telescreen behind it. Uniformed man thunder into the room and they carry Winston and Julia out.Winston is in a cell in what he presumes is the Ministry of Love. He is sick with hunger and fear, and when he makes a movement or a sound, a harsh voice will bawl at him from the four telescreens. A prisoner who is dying of starvation is brought in, his face is skull-like. Later the man is brought to "Room 101" after screaming and struggling, and even offering his children's sacrifices in his stead. O'Brien enters. Winston thinks that they must have got him too, but O'Brien says that they got him long time ago. A guard hits Winston, and he becomes unconscious. When he wakes up he is tied down to a kind of bed. O'Brien stands beside the bed, and Winston feels that O'Brien, who is the torturer, is also somehow a friend. The aim of O'Brien is to teach Winston the technique of Doublethink, and he does it by inflicting pain in ever-increasing intensity. He reminds Winston that he wrote the sentence:" Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four". O'Brien holds up four fingers of his left hand, and he asks Winston how many there are. Winston answers four a couple of times, and each time the pain increases (this is not done to make Winston lie, but to make him really see five fingers instead of four). At the end of the session, under heavy influence of drugs and agony, Winston really seas five fingers. Now Winston is ready to enter the second stage of his integration (1. Learning, 2. Understanding, 3. Acceptance). O'Brien now explains why the Party works. The image he gives of the future is that of a boot stamping on a human face - for ever. Winston protests, because he thinks that there is something in the human nature that will not allow this, he calls it "The Spirit of Man". O'Brien points out that Winston is the last humanist, he is the last guardian of the human spirit. Then O'Brien gets Winston to look at himself in the mirror, Winston is horrified what he sees. The unknown time of torture has changed him into a shapeless and battered wreck. This is what the last humanist looks like. The only degradation that Winston has not been trough, is that he has not betrayed Julia. He has said anything under torture, but inside he has remained true to her. Winston is much better now. For some time he has not been beaten and tortured, he has been fed quite well and allowed to wash. Winston realises that he now accepts all the lies of the Party, that for example Oceania was always at war with Eastasia, and that he never had the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford that disproved their guilty. Even gravity could be nonsense. But nevertheless Winston has some unorthodox thoughts that he cannot suppress. But now it is time for the last of the three steps, reintegration. Winston is taken to Room 101. O'Brien says that the room 101 is the worst thing in the world. For each person it is his own personal hell. For some it is death by fire or burial alive. For Winston it is a cage containing two rats, with a fixture like a fencing mask attached, into which the face of the victim is strapped. Then there is a lever, that opens the cage ,so that the rats can get to the face. O'Brien is approaching nearer with the cage ,and Winston gets the bad smell of the rats. He screams. The only way to get out of this is to put someone else between him and the horror."Do it to Julia", he screams in a final betrayal of himself. Winston is released, and he is often sitting in the Chestnut Tree Café, drinking Victory Gin and playing chess. He now has a job in a sub-committee , that is made up for others like himself. On a cold winter day he meets Julia, they speak briefly, but have little to say to each other, except that they have betrayed each other. A memory of a day in his childhood comes to Winstons' mind; It is false, he is often troubled by false memories. He looks forward to the bullet, they will kill him some day. Now he realises how pointless it was to resist. He loves Big Brother!
Characters
Winston Smith
Orwell named his hero after Winston Churchill, England's great leader during World War II. He added a common last name: Smith. The action of this novel is built around the main person, Winston Smith, and therefore the understanding of his personality, and his character is important for the understanding of the whole book. Winston was born before the Second World War. During the War, there was a lack of food, and Winston has taken nearly all of the food that was allocated to the family, although his younger sister was starving to death. In 1984 Winston often dreams of this time, and he often remembers how he once has stolen the whole chocolate, that was given to the family. I think that Winston now (1984) somehow regrets his egoistic behaviour. He also sees a kind of link between his behaviour, and the behaviour of the children that are educated by the Party. These children prosecute their own family (Parsons). He finally realises his and the Party's guilt. To my mind Winston is a sort of hero, because he is aware of the danger that he has encountered. So for example he knew it from the very beginning that his diary would be found. And as one can see the things that are written in this book (that freedom is to say that two and two makes four) are used against him later . He also knew that his illegal love affair was an act of revolution, would be disclosed by the Thought Police. But nevertheless he is some kind of naive. He has opened his mind to O'Brien before he was sure that he was also against the Party.
Julia
Julia is a women around 25, and she works in a special department of the Minitrue, producing cheap Pornography for the proles. She had already a couple of illegal love affairs. Unlike Winston, she is basically a simple woman, something of a lightweight who loves her man and uses sex for fun as well as for rebellion. She is perfectly willing to accept the overnight changes in Oceania's history and doesn't trouble her pretty head about it. If Big Brother says black is white, fine. If he says two and two make five, no problem. She may not buy the Party line, but it doesn't trouble her. She falls asleep over Winston's reading of the treasured book by Goldstein. Orwell draws Winston's love object lovingly. Julia is all woman, sharp and funny as she is attractive, but she may also be a reflection of the author's somewhat limited view of the opposite sex.
O'Brien
Probably the most interesting thing about O'Brien is that we have only Winston's opinion of him. This burly but sophisticated leader of the Inner Party is supposed to be the head of the secret Brotherhood dedicated to the overthrow of Big Brother. In his black overall, he haunts both Winston's dreams and his waking moments to the very end of the novel. Another very interesting thing about O'Brien is that the reader doesn't precisely know if he is a friend or an enemy of Winston. Yet even Winston himself doesn't know it . I would say that O'Brien, the powerful and mighty Party member, is a kind of father for Winston. Before Winston's capture, O'Brien "helps" Winston to make contact with the Brotherhood, and he teaches him about the Ideology and the rules of this secret Organisation. After the capture O'Brien gives Winston the feeling, that he is somehow protecting him. The relation between O'Brien and Winston has all attributes of a typical relation between a father and a child: The father is all-knowing, all-mighty; he teaches, punishes and educates his child, and he is protecting it, from anything that could harm the child. But I think that O'Brien is only playing his role, due to reintegrate Winston.
Big Brother
Big Brother is not a real person. All-present as he is, all-powerful and forever watching, he is only seen on TV. Although his picture glares out from huge posters that shout, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, nobody sees Big Brother in person. Orwell had several things in mind when he created Big Brother. He was certainly thinking of Russian leader Joseph Stalin; the pictures of Big Brother even look like him. He was also thinking of Nazi leader Adolph Hitler and Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Big Brother stands for all dictators everywhere. Orwell may have been thinking about figures in certain religious faiths when he drew Big Brother. The mysterious, powerful, God-like figure who sees and knows everything- but never appears in person. For Inner Party members, Big Brother is a leader, a bogeyman they can use to scare the people, and their authorisation for doing whatever they want. If anybody asks, they can say they are under orders from Big Brother. For the unthinking proles, Big Brother is a distant authority figure. For Winston, Big Brother is an inspiration. Big Brother excites and energises Winston, who hates him. He is also fascinated by Big Brother and drawn to him in some of the same ways that he is drawn to O'Brien, developing a love-hate response to both of them that leads to his downfall.
Plot
The plot has three main movements, corresponding to the division of the book in three parts. The first part, the first eight chapters, creates the world of 1984, a totalitarian world where the Party tries to control everything, even thought and emotion. In this part Winston develops his first unorthodox thoughts. The second part of the novel deals with the development of his love to Julia, someone with whom he can share his private emotions. For a short time they create a small world of feeling for themselves. They are betrayed however. O'Brien, whom Winston thought being a rebel like himself, is in reality a chief inquisitor of the Inner Party. The third part of the novel deals with Winstons punishment. Finally he comes to love Big Brother. Generally the plot is very simple: a rebel, a love affair with a like-minded, capture, torture, and finally the capitulation. Apart from Julia, O'Brien, and of course Winston, there are no important characters; there is no attempt to create a range of social behaviour, and the complex personal interactions therein, all traditional concerns of the novel. Indeed one of Orwell's points is that life in 1984 has become totally uniform. So the traditional novel would be unthinkable. In fact Winston is the only character worth writing about; all the other characters are half-robots already. So one could say that the plot was built around Winstons mind and life. This gave Orwell the opportunity to focus on the reaction of the individual to totalitarianism, love, and cruelty.
Political System
Party
The Party of Oceania poses about 19% of the whole population of Oceanias mainland. Generally one could divide the Party into the Inner Party, which is comparable to the communistic Nomenclature, and the Outer Party. Winston Smith himself is a member of the Outer Party. The members of the Inner Party hold high posts in the administration of the country. They earn comparable much money, and there isn't a lack of anything in their homes, which looked like palaces. The people of the Outer Party live in dull grey and old flats. Because of the war there is often a lack of the most essential things. The life of the Outer Party is dictated by the Party, even their spare time is used by the Party. There are so-called community hikes, community games and all sort of other activities. And refusing the participation at this activities is even dangerous. The life of a Party member is dictated from his birth to his death. The Party even takes children away from their parents to educate them in the sense of Ingsoc. (you can find this also in the Communist future plans)The children are taught in school, to report it to the police (Thoughtpolice) when their parents have unorthodox thoughts, so-called "Thoughtcrimes". After the education the Party members start to work mainly for one of the four Ministries (Minipax, Minitrue, Miniluv, Miniplenty). The further life of the "comrades" continues under the watchful eyes of the Party. Everything the people do is targeted by the telescreens. Even in their homes people have telescreens. Each unorthodox action is then punished by "joycamps" (Newspeak word for forced labour camps").
Proles
The proles make about 81% of the population of Oceania. The Party itself is only interested in their labour power, because the proles are mainly employed in the industry and in the farms. Without their Labour force Oceania would break down. Despite this fact the Party completely ignores this social caste. The curious thing about this behaviour is, that the Party calls itself a Socialistic Party, and generally socialism (at least at the beginning and middle of this century) is a movement of the proletariat. So one could say that the Party abuses the word "Ingsoc". Orwell again had pointed at an other regime, the Nazis, who had put "socialism" into their name. One of the main phrases of the Party is "Proles and animals are free". In Oceania the proles live in very desolate and poor quarters. Compared to the districts where the members of the Party live, there are much fewer telescreens, and policemen. And as long as the proles don't commit a crime (crime in our sense / not in the sense of the party - Thoughtcrime) they don't have any contact with the state. Therefore in the districts of the proletarians one can find things that are abolished and forbidden for the Party members. E.g. old books, old furniture, prostitution and alcohol (mainly beer) Except "Victory Gin" all of these things are not available for the Party-members. The proletarians don't participate in the technical development. They live like they used to do many years ago. To my mind the Party ignores the Proles, because they pose no danger to their rule. The working class is too uneducated and too unorganised to pose a real threat. So there is not really a need to change the political attitudes of this class.
Newspeak
Newspeak is the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984, there is nobody, who really uses Newspeak in speech nor in writing. Only the leading articles are written in this "language". But it is generally assumed that in the year 2050 Newspeak would superset Oldspeak, or common English. The purpose of Newspeak is not only to provide medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other methods of thought impossible. Another reason for developing Newspeak is, to make old books, or books which were written before the era of the Party, unreadable. With Newspeak ,Doublethink would be even easier. Its vocabulary is so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This is done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings whatever. Generally Newspeak words are divided into three groups: the A,B(also called compound words) and the C Vocabulary.
A-Vocabulary: The A-Vocabulary consist of the words needed in business and everyday life, for such things as drinking, working, and the like. The words of this group are nearly entirely composed of Oldspeak words, but in comparison, their number is very small. Nevertheless the meaning of this words is much more defined, and it allows no other interpretation.
B-Vocabulary: The B-Vocabulary consist of words which have been deliberately constructed for political purpose. Without the full understanding of the principles of Ingsoc it is very difficult to use and understand this words correctly.The B-Vocabulary are in all cases compound words, and they consisted of two or more words, merged together in an easy pronounceable form. Example: goodthink - Goodthink means very roughly orthodoxy, or if it is regarded as a verb "to think in a good manner". The infected as follows: noun-verb goodthink; past tense and past participle, goodthinked; present participle, goodthinking; adjective, goodthinkful; adverb, goodthinkwise; verbal noun, goodthinker. The B-Words are not constructed on any etymological plan. The words of which they are made up can be placed in any order mutilated in any way which makes them easy to pronounce (e.g. thoughtcrime, crimethink thinkpol, thought police). Many of the B-Words are euphemisms. Such words for instance as joycamp (forced labour camp) or Minipax (Ministry of Peace in charge of the army ), mean almost exact opposite of what they appear to mean. Again some words are ambivalent, having the connotation good when applied to the party, and bad when applied to its enemies. Generally the name of any organisation, building, and so on is cut down to a minimum number of syllables and to a minimum of length, in an easy pronounceable way. This isn't only in Newspeak, already other, especially totalitarian systems, tended to used abbreviations for political purpose (Nazi, Comintern, Gestapo, ....). But the difference is that only in Newspeak this instrument is used with consciousness. The Party intended to cut down the possibility of associations with other words.
C-Vocabulary: The C-Words are consisting of technical and scientific terms.
From the foregoing account it is very easy to see that in Newspeak the expression of unorthodox opinions, above a very low level, is impossible. It is only possible to say "Big Brother is ungood". But this statement can't be sustained by reasoned arguments, because the necessary words are not available. Ideas inimical to Ingsoc can only be entertained in a very vague and wordless form, and can only be named in very broad terms. One could in fact only use Newspeak for political unorthodoxy, by illegitimately translating some of the words back into Oldspeak. For example "All mans are equal" was a possible Newspeak sentence, but only in the same sense in which "All man have the same weight" is a possible Oldspeak sentence. It did not contain a grammatical error, but it expressed a palpable untruth i.e. that all man have the same size, weight ..... The concept of political equality no longer existed. In 1984, when Oldspeak is still the normal mean of communication, the danger theoretically exists that in using Newspeak words one might remember their original meanings. In practice it is not difficult for a person well grounded in Doublethink to avoid doing this, but within a couple of generation even the possibility of such a lapse would have vanished. A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no more know that equal had once had the secondary meaning of "politically equal" (also free,....). There would be many crimes and errors which would be beyond of the power to commit, simply because there were nameless and therefore unimaginable. It is to be foreseen that with the passage of time Newspeak words would become fewer and fewer, their meanings more and more and more rigid, and the chance to put them to improper uses always diminished. So when Oldspeak had been once and for all superseded the last link with the past would have been severed.
Doublethink
Doublethink is a kind of manipulation of the mind. Generally one could say that Doublethink makes people accept contradictions, and it makes them also believe, that, the party is the only institution that distinguishes between right and wrong. This manipulation is mainly done by the Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), where Winston Smith works. When a person that is well grounded in Doublethink recognizes a contradiction or a lie of the Party, then the person thinks that he is remembering a false fact. The use of the word Doublethink involves doublethink. With the help of the Minitrue it is not only possible to change written facts, but also facts that are remembered by the people. So complete control of the country and it's citizens is provided. The fact of faking the history had already been used by the Nazis, who told the people that already German Knights believed in the principles of National Socialism.
Symbolism
In "Nineteen Eighty-Four" Orwell draws a picture of a totalitarian future. Although the action deals in the future, there are a couple of elements and symbols, taken from the present and past. So for example Emanuel Goldstein, the main enemy of Oceania, is, as one can see in the name, a Jew. Orwell draws a link to other totalitarian systems of our century, like the Nazis and the Communists, who had anti-Semitic ideas, and who used Jews as so-called scapegoats, who were responsible for all bad and evil things in the country. This fact also shows that totalitarian systems want to arbitrate their perfection. Emanuel Goldstein somehow also stands for Trotsky, a leader of the Revolution, who was later declared as an enemy. Another symbol that can be found in Nineteen Eighty-Four is the fact that Orwell divides the fictional superstates in the book according to the division that can be found in the Cold War. So Oceania stands for the United States of America , Eurasia for Russia and Eastasia for China. The fact that the two socialistic countries Eastasia and Eurasia ( in our case Russia and China ) are at war with each other, corresponds to our history (Usuri river). Other, non-historical symbols can be found. One of these symbols is the paperweight that Winston buys in the old junk-shop. It stands for the fragile little world that Winston and Julia have made for each other. They are the coral inside of it. As Orwell wrote: "It is a little chunk of history, that they have forgotten to alter". The "Golden Country" is another symbol. It stands for the old European pastoral landscape. The place where Winston and Julia meet for the first time to make love to each other, is exactly like the "Golden Country" of Winstons dreams.
It's like 1984 all over again.
"Smith!" yelled a voice from the telescreen. "6079 Smith
W! Hands out of pockets in the cells!" -1984

In 1948 Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell, wrote a book with chilling insights into the future, 1984. This book did quite a number on the literate world. People who have read this book have had mixed reactions, from fear to hatred of our governmental system. However, 1984 came and went, and no signs of the tales told in the book were realized by the mass- population. There is no Ingsoc, there are no helicopters looking into windows. Most people have written this book off as a good science fiction work. However, this book should NOT be written off, for it has been realized, and is far worse and more subtle than Orwell could ever have imagined.
Modern technology is great, however in the wrong hands it can be a dangerous weapon of mass destruction, and worse yet, mass control. In 1984 Orwell showed a world in which the people are under the control of the government through surveillance. Thought Police watch the people through telescreens, microphones and helicopters. Many people do not believe this will come true because they do not see it happening. However, if you look at the current state of technology you will easily see that it is being used, and that it is easier than ever. Many private companies are using these systems to watch both their property and their employees. Surveillance devices have become so small that it is now possible to make a camera and a microphone fit into a very small hole in the wall. Some companies are selling cameras disguised as smoke detectors. Police admittedly use small microphones as 'wires' to get confessions in undercover operations. It is entirely conceivable that the government could be watching us now. Perhaps, though only on a small scale.
The "Internet" is the newest buzz word running around, and with it comes new controversies over online surveillance. The people watching probably would not go directly into your account, that would be as illegal as entering your private room without a warrant. However, they could easily watch the packets of information running through their systems and rebuild the your private E-mail, or newsgroup transactions. This must be put to a stop. The telephone company is not allowed to listen in on your conversations just because the information travels through their systems. The United States Postal Service is not allowed to open your mail and read the contents because they deliver it. So what is the difference when you are using an Internet Service Provider, be it a direct monthly pay system or a school? This sort of destruction of privacy MUST be put to an end and quickly before we are all watched by Big Brother.
In order to change the future and the present you do not need to own a time machine. You simply have to control the past. In 1984 the government, or "The Party," controlled the past. They were able to destroy all proof that something did or did not happen. If at the beginning of the year "The Party" published an estimate that 10 million shoes would be produced that year, and only 5 million were produced they would destroy all evidence of them ever having estimated 10 million. They would find all of the newspapers with this and destroy it. The Ministry of Truth (MiniTrue in NEWSPEAK) would have someone change the estimate to something like 3 million shoes. Then the next newspaper article would state that they actually over-filled their quota. This is a very scary thought. "The Party" in the book was able to destroy all of the references that something, even a person, ever existed. Although you KNEW he had, you could never find proof that it was true. The really scary part about this is that we could do this with even greater ease today. Since most information is now kept ondisk, and backed up onto even more magnetic media, one could simply destroy all areas where the data said that someone had existed. The only problem would be finding the newspapers and other references, which could be taken care of by agents of the government.
Our government is taking steps towards this type of Orwellian society all the time. It first started with the advent of the Social Security System. We now are required to receive serial numbers before a certain age so that we can be catalogued for this service, which I might add we will probably never receive. This seemingly innocent indexing of people has turned into a major privacy crisis. Our Social Security number is now used for everything. When one goes to college they use their number there. When you apply for a credit card or any service like this you use this number. We now have problems with people looking up our credit history using this one number. They do not even need our permission. This shows how our government can pull one over on us without us even realizing. At the time it seemed like a great idea. Which is probably how we will be duped in the future. Beware the mark of the beast. Another seemingly innocent attack on our privacy is the use of credit card like identification cards to keep track of us. President Clinton was thinking about making an American identification card to act as proof that we belong here. It is as if it has become so bad, that we must be contained by plastic. In colleges we are given an ID card which allows us to do all of our necessities, get into dorms, eat, and so on. It wouldn't take very much for them to log when we eat, and when we go into our dorms. They must be doing some sort of communication to a main computer to show that we have eaten a certain amount of times that week. It would certainly take very little effort to log us entering in these transactions.
If it isn't bad enough that they admit they want to catalogue their citizens, our government basically admits that they need to watch them as well. There was a bill sent through Congress which would force telecommunication companies to place a chip called the Clipper Chip into all of their products. This chip would allow the government, with two electronic keys, to watch our telecommunication transactions. We have many people to thank for this being stopped in its tracks. However, as if that isn't bad enough, they passed an act called Digital Telephony. This bill states that the government will give a certain amount of money to large telecommunication providers (telephone mostly) to rework their networks so that the government's men can attach themselves and listen to our private conversations. Let me repeat myself here, they are using OUR money to watch us. (I am unsure if this is finally law or if it was just passed through one of the houses.) One of the saddest commentaries to come from this disgusting use of tax dollars was that many of the groups which were set up to support privacy sold their souls and supported this retched bill. This just goes to show what a little money and power can do. Yet another attempt to censor us came with the idea of the V-Chip, a chip Clinton decided would be a great idea. To allow parents to decide what their children can and cannot watch. This seems innocent enough, however, if it is possible for the parents to decide, why not make it possible for the government to decide what we can and cannot see. It's certainly possible.
There is a new type of warfare which has been shown to the U.S. citizenry. Apparently during the Haitian ordeal in order to get the citizens to be on the side we, the U.S., wanted them on, we flew a plain over the island and jammed their signals. We intercepted them, morphed them and sent them back down. We made their leaders say things which the people would surely disagree with. If this doesn't scare you, I do not know what will. If our government can do this during wartime and make the citizenry revolt, I will leave it to your imagination what else they are capable of.
Finally, one of the major problems within America has to do with both class and racial differences. In the book 1984 there were three different social classes. The Inner Party, or the rich, The Outer Party, or the middle class, and the Proles, the poor. Throughout history there has always been this structure. The rich would get fat and out of touch. The middle class would resent the upper class and revolt becoming the upper class and leaving a new middle class. The poor would despise both of them and want to be rid of all such classifications. "The Party" simply channeled that property. They made all of the classes hate each other, keeping all of the classes apart and busy with this left "The Party" free to pull the wool over their eyes. This is how the surveillance was made possible. We in the U.S. are too busy arguing politics, and hating each other because of race that the government is pulling the wool over our eyes. They are working towards ways to keep us in line. I don't know if there is a great conspiracy against us. All I know is that we are being taken as suckers, and pretty soon we will have no privacy to think of. We must work to stop the evolution of these and other destructions of privacy. We cannot allow ourselves to lose what little freedom we have left, and most of all we must always be able to say that 2+2=4.
The Dangers of Economic Globalisation
In many ways, Orwell’s view of the future has come true. Although we do not live in a world dominated by Communist super-powers, there are many aspects of our society that are prophesied in the book.
Take, for example, the three land masses used in Nineteen Eighty-Four. There is Oceania, which encompasses the Americas and Great Britain, Eurasia, which is Europe and the Near East, and Eastasia, which is the rest of Asia and Australia. These enormous blocks of land could now be said to exist, if not by borders, then by economic boundaries. The North America has free trade policies, as does the European union. These make North America and Europe the most powerful economic centres on Earth. However, the emergence of the Far Eastern economies shows that the world is slowly being divided into the lines that Orwell set.
However, the more that we grow apart, the closer that we come together. The Far East is said to be, “Westernising”, in that it is taking Western (i.e. Europe and the USA) ideas about economics, and putting them into practice. The success of this can be seen by how much fluctuations in, for example, the South Korean stock exchange affect the markets in the USA and Europe.
This global integration means that we are heading down a dangerous road. Unlike Orwell’s vision of a one-party dictatorship controlling hundreds of millions, we get instead the world being controlled by the stock markets, and fluctuations in currencies. This is extremely dangerous, as it means that huge multi-national financiers, such as Soros can make or break a countries economy. An example of this is the events of black Monday, when trading led by Soros’ company effectively brought about the collapse of the Pound, and heralded the start of a long recession in the UK. There is too much power being put into the hands of men such as these, and un-scrupulous they can be too. For an example of this, one only has to look to Nick Leeson single-handedly bringing down one of Great Britain’s largest and most important banks in just two months.
Despite this power concentration, there are still calls by those in the financial sector for more power. I think that instead of giving more power to these people, we should give government, which for all its failings is at least democratically elected, more regulatory control.
This brings me back to the question of globalisation. It is all very well putting safety nets in place in stable democracies such as we have in the Western world, but how can we let so much economic power be given to the Far Eastern countries, such as Indonesia, which have very unstable governmental systems? The Indonesian stock market is very important in world economics, and the government was, until recently, a single-party dictatorship.
Of course, I do not advocate having one global stock-exchange. This would mean huge beaurocracy, and even more power concentrated in a few hands. Any future attempt at stabilising world markets should not be based on the premise of linking economies, at least not globally.
It is for this reason, therefore, that I suggest a world organisation, similar to the United Nations, that controls and regulates the stock markets of the World. If we do this, then every country still has its own market, where prices fluctuate, but we will not have the situation where the fate of a nation can be decided by one person or corporation. Also, this would help stabilise the economies of the Far East, and help protect them from the disastrous crashes that we have seen in the past few years.
The Media - Manipulated and Manipulative
In 1984, George Orwell describes in detail how the government of Oceania whipped up the people into regular frezies of hatred against their enemies, by the manipulation of the media. This is one of the best described incidents of mass hysteria that I have ever read, and what is more worring is how the descriptions could easily become truth.
Telescreens were the major form of media communication in Oceania, and they desiminated 'news' to the populace. However, as with all real dictatorships, this news was almost all false. Despite this, it was reverently believed by the vast majority of the population simply because of where the information comes from. An example of this happening in recent history is the case of Gulf War propoganda. All the major allied governments started the propoganda war very subtley. They showed special documentaries on news programs showing the Iraqi army as being strong and well organised. When the Allied armies made very quick progres through Kuwait and Iraq, therefore, it seemed like far more of a victory. The Iraqi army, as was proved towards the end of the war, was actually very badly organised, and only very small sections of it (for example the Republican Guard) had any up to date weapons. The vast technical supperiority of the Allies was obvious from the outset, and much was made of the fact that cruise missiles were incredibly accurate. So why did one miss by quite a way, and hit a civilian bunker, creating good propoganda for Hussien? The reason is simple. The missiles were good, but far from perfect. Thus, the Allies had made what was a good victory into a heroic, against all the odds one. This is an example of how media is manipulated, but what is more interesting is the un-intentional manipulation carried out today.
The most obvious example of this was the death of Princess Diana. What was a tragic death suddenly turned into a mass near worship of Diana. The reason why this happened was not so much that people were deperate to praise her, but more that the media did, and the people followed. In the UK there are two main broadcasters, and everyone with a TV picks them up. There are not the proliferation of cable and satillite TV's that there is in America. This means that even a major news event, such as the falling of the Berlin Wall, receive perhaps 10 minutes of live broadcast, breaking into programs, and then receive main coverage on the scheduled news programs. However, on the morning and afternoon of August 31st, 1997, the British people had two channels out of 4 giving blanket coverage of events, meaning over 15 hours a channel devoted to one issue. I think it is that sort of coverage, more than natural mourning which produced the reaction seen, mainly in Britain, but also across the world.
The media today is both manipulated and manipulative, and when this sort of power over people is exerted by governments and a select group of media moguls, it must be dangerous. If Rupert Murdoch can bring down governments in Britain, then there is something wrong with our democracy. Let us hope he never makes a mistake.

Animal Farm
Animal Farm was first published in 1945. Animal Farm is a satire on Stalinism and the Russian revolution. As Russia was an allied of England in 1945, Orwell had a hard time publishing it.
INDEX
Summary (below)
Symbolism / Interpretation
Summary
The story takes place on a farm somewhere in England. The story is told by an all-knowing narrator in the third person. The action of this novel starts when the oldest pig on the farm, Old Major, calls all animals to a secret meeting. He tells them about his dream of a revolution against the cruel Mr. Jones. Three days later Major dies, but the speech gives the more intelligent animals a new outlook on life. The pigs, who are considered the most intelligent animals, instruct the other ones. During the period of preparation two pigs can distinguish themselves, Napoleon and Snowball. Napoleon is big, and although he isn't a good speaker, he can assert himself. Snowball is a better speaker, he has a lot of ideas and he is very vivid. Together with another pig called Squealer, who is a very good speaker, they work out the theory of "Animalism". The rebellion starts some months later,when Mr Jones comes home drunken one night , and forgets to feed the animals. They break out of the barns and run to the house, where the food is stored. When Mr Jones recognises this he takes out his shotgun, but it is to late for him, all the animals fall over him and drive him off the farm. The animals destroy all whips nose rings, reins, and all other instruments that have been used to suppress them. The same day the animals celebrate their victory with an extra ration of food. The pigs made up the seven commandments, and they writte them above the door of the big barn.
They run thus:
1.: Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2.: Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings is a friend.
3.: No animal shall wear clothes.
4.: No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5.: No animal shall drink alcohol.
6.: No animal shall kill another animal.
7.: All animals are equal.
The animals also agree that no animal shall ever enter the farmhouse, and that no animal shall have contact with humans. This commandments are summarised in the simple phrase: "Four legs good, two legs bad". After some time Jones comes back with some other men from the village to recapture the farm. The animals fight brave, and they manage to defend the farm. Snowball and Boxer receive medals of honour for defending the farm so bravely. Also Napoleon who had not fought at all takes a medal. This is the reason why the two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, often argue. When Snowball presents his idea to build a windmill, to produce electricity to the other animals, Napoleon calls nine strong dogs. The dogs drive Snowball from the farm, and Napoleon explains that Snowball was in fact co-operating with Mr Jones. He also explains that Snowball in reality never had a medal of honour, that Snowball was always trying to cover up that he was fighting at the side of Mr Jones. The animals then start building the windmill, and as time passes on the working-time goes up, whereas the food ration declined. Although the "common" animals have not enough food, the pigs grow fatter and fatter. They tell the other animals that they need more food, for they are managing the whole farm. Some time later the pigs explain to the other animals that they have to trade with the neighbour farms. The common animals are very upset, because after the revolution, there has been a resolution that no animal shall make trade with a human. But the pigs ensured that there never has been such a resolution, and that this was an evil lie of Snowball. Short after this decision the pigs move to the farm house. The other animals remember that there has been a commandment that forbids sleeping in beds, and so they go to the big barn to look at the commandments. When they arrive there they can't believe their eyes, the 4th commandment has been changed to: "No animal shall sleep in bed with sheets". And the other commandments were also changed: "No animal shall kill another animal without reason", or "No animal shall drink alcohol in excess". Some months there is a heavy storm which destroys the windmill, that is nearly finished. Napoleon accuses Snowball of destroying the mill, and he promises a reward to the animal who gets Snowball. The rebuilding of the mill takes two years. Again Jones attacks the farm, and although the animals defend it, the windmill is once again destroyed. The pigs decide to rebuild the mill again, and they cut down the food ration to a minimum. Some day Boxer breaks down. He is sold to a butcher, whereas Napoleon tells the pigs that Boxer has been brought to a hospital where he has died. Three years later the mill was finally completed. During this time Napoleon deepens the relations with the neighbour farm, and one day Napoleon even invites the owners of this farm for an inspection. They sit inside the farmhouse and celebrate the efficiency of his farm, where the animals work very hard with the minimum of food. During this celebration all the other animals meet at the window of the farm, and when they look inside they can't distinguish between man and animal.
Symbolism/Interpretation
The novel Animal Farm is a satire on the Russian revolution, and therefore full of symbolism. General Orwell associates certain real characters with the characters of the book. Here is a list of the characters and things and their meaning:
Mr Jones: Mr. Jones is Orwell's chief (or at least most obvious) villain in Animal Farm. Of course Napoleon is also the major villain, however much more indirectly. Orwell says that at one time Jones was actually a decent master to his animals. At this time the farm was thriving. But in recent years the farm had fallen on harder times and the opportunity was seen to revolt. The world-wide depression began in the United States when the stock market crashed in October of 1929. The depression spread throughout the world because American exports were so dependent on Europe. The U.S. was also a major contributor to the world market economy. Germany along with the rest of Europe was especially hit hard. The parallels between crop failure of the farm and the depression in the 1930's are clear. Only the leaders and the die-hard followers ate their fill during this time period. Mr. Jones symbolises (in addition to the evils of capitalism) Czar Nicholas II, the leader before Stalin (Napoleon). Jones represents the old government, the last of the Czars. Orwell suggests that Jones (Czar Nicholas II) was losing his "edge". In fact, he and his men had taken up the habit of drinking. Old Major reveals his feelings about Jones and his administration when he says, "Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough , he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving and the rest he keeps for himself". So Jones and the old government are successfully uprooted by the animals. Little do they know, history will repeat itself with Napoleon and the pigs.
Old Major: Old Major is the first major character described by Orwell in Animal Farm. This "pure-bred" of pigs is the kind, grand fatherly philosopher of change an obvious metaphor for Karl Marx. Old Major proposes a solution to the animals desperate plight under the Jones "administration" when he inspires a rebellion of sorts among the animals. Of course the actual time of the revolt is unsaid. It could be the next day or several generations down the road. But Old Major's philosophy is only an ideal. After his death, three days after the barn-yard speech, the socialism he professes is drastically altered when Napoleon and the other pigs begin to dominate. It's interesting that Orwell does not mention Napoleon or Snowball anytime during the great speech of old Major. This shows how distant and out-of-touch they really were; the ideals Old Major proclaimed seemed to not even have been considered when they were establishing their new government after the successful revolt. It almost seems as though the pigs fed off old Major's inspiration and then used it to benefit themselves (an interesting twist of capitalism) instead of following through on the old Major's honest proposal. This could be Orwell's attempt to dig Stalin, who many consider to be someone who totally ignored Marx's political and social theory. Using Old Major's seeming naivety, Orwell concludes that no society is perfect, no pure socialist civilisation can exist, and there is no way to escape the evil grasp of capitalism. (More on this in the Napoleon section.) Unfortunately when Napoleon and Squealer take over, old Major becomes more and more a distant fragment of the past in the minds of the farm animals.
Napoleon: Napoleon is Orwell's chief villain in Animal Farm. The name Napoleon is very coincidental since Napoleon, the dictator of France, was thought by many to be the Anti-Christ. Napoleon, the pig, is really the central character on the farm. Obviously a metaphor for Stalin, Comrade Napoleon represents the human frailties of any revolution. Orwell believed that although socialism is good as an ideal, it can never be successfully adopted due to uncontrollable sins of human nature. For example, although Napoleon seems at first to be a good leader, he is eventually overcome by greed and soon becomes power-hungry. Of course Stalin did too in Russia, leaving the original equality of socialism behind, giving himself all the power and living in luxury while the common peasant suffered. Thus, while his national and international status blossomed, the welfare of Russia remained unchanged. Orwell explains, "Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer--except, of course for the pigs and the dogs." The true side of Napoleon becomes evident after he slaughters so many animals for plotting against him. He even hires a pig to sample his food for him to make certain that no one is trying to poison him. Stalin, too, was a cruel dictator in Russia. After suspecting many people in his empire to be supporters of Trotsky (Orwell's Snowball), Stalin systematically murders many. At the end of the book, Napoleon doesn't even pretend to lead a socialist state. After renaming it a Republic and instituting his own version of the commandments and the Beasts of England, Comrade Napoleon quickly becomes more or less a dictator who of course has never even been elected by the animals.
Squealer: Squealer is an intriguing character in Orwell's Animal Farm. He's first described as a manipulator and persuader. Orwell narrates, "He could turn black into white." Many critics correlate Squealer with the Pravda, the Russian newspaper of the 1930's. Propaganda was a key to many publications, and since their was no television or radio, the newspaper was the primary source of media information. So the monopoly of the Pravda was seized by Stalin and his new Bolshevik regime. In Animal Farm, Squealer, like the newspaper, is the link between Napoleon and other animals. When Squealer masks an evil intention of the pigs, the intentions of the communists can be carried out with little resistance and without political disarray. Squealer is also thought by some to represent Goebbels, who was the minister of propaganda for Germany. This would seem inconsistent with Orwell's satire, however, which was supposed to metaphor characters in Russia.
Snowball: Orwell describes Snowball as a pig very similar to Napoleon at least in the early stages. Both pigs wanted a leadership position in the "new" economic and political system (which is actually counterdictory to the whole supposed system of equality). But as time goes on, both eventually realise that one of them will have to step down. Orwell says that the two were always arguing. "Snowball and Napoleon were by far the most active in the debates. But it was noticed that these two were never in agreement: whatever suggestion either of them made, the other could be counted to oppose it." Later, Orwell makes the case stronger. "These two disagreed at every point disagreement was possible." Soon the differences, like whether or not to build a windmill, become to great to deal with, so Napoleon decides that Snowball must be eliminated. It might seem that this was a spontaneous reaction, but a careful look tells otherwise. Napoleon was setting the stage for his own domination long before he really began "dishing it out" to Snowball. For example, he took the puppies away from their mothers in efforts to establish a private police force. These dogs would later be used to eliminate Snowball, his arch-rival. Snowball represents Leo Dawidowitsch Trotsky, the arch-rival of Stalin in Russia. The parallels between Trotsky and Snowball are uncanny. Trotsky too, was exiled, not from the farm, but to Mexico, where he spoke out against Stalin. Stalin was very weary of Trotsky, and feared that Trotsky supporters might try to assassinate him. The dictator of Russia tried hard to kill Trotsky, for the fear of losing leadership was very great in the crazy man's mind. Trotsky also believed in Communism, but he thought he could run Russia better than Stalin. Trotsky was murdered in Mexico by the Russian internal police, the NKVD-the pre-organisation of the KGB. Trotsky was found with a pick axe in his head at his villa in Mexico.
Boxer: The name Boxer is cleverly used by Orwell as a metaphor for the Boxer Rebellion in China in the early twentieth century. It was this rebellion which signalled the beginning of communism in red China. This communism, much like the distorted Stalin view of socialism, is still present today in the oppressive social government in China. Boxer and Clover are used by Orwell to represent the proletariat, or unskilled labour class in Russian society. This lower class is naturally drawn to Stalin (Napoleon) because it seems as though they will benefit most from his new system. Since Boxer and the other low animals are not accustomed to the "good life," they can't really compare Napoleon's government to the life they had before under the czars (Jones). Also, since usually the lowest class has the lowest intelligence, it is not difficult to persuade them into thinking they are getting a good deal. The proletariat is also quite good at convincing each other that communism is a good idea. Orwell supports this contention when he narrates, "Their most faithful disciples were the two carthorses, Boxer and Clover. Those two had great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves, but having once accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments." Later, the importance of the proletariat is shown when Boxer suddenly falls and there is suddenly a drastic decrease in work productivity. But still he is taken for granted by the pigs, who send him away in a glue truck. Truly Boxer is the biggest poster-child for gullibility.
Pigs: Orwell uses the pigs to surround and support Napoleon. They symbolise the communist party loyalists and the friends of Stalin, as well as perhaps the Duma, or Russian parliament. The pigs, unlike other animals, live in luxury and enjoy the benefits of the society they help to control. The inequality and true hypocrisy of communism is expressed here by Orwell, who criticised Marx's oversimplified view of a socialist, "utopian" society. Obviously George Orwell doesn't believe such a society can exist. Toward the end of the book, Orwell emphasises, "Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer except, of course, the pigs and the dogs."
Dogs: Orwell uses the dogs in his book, Animal Farm, to represent the KGB or perhaps more accurately, the bodyguards of Stalin. The dogs are the arch-defenders of Napoleon and the pigs, and although they don't speak, they are definitely a force the other animals have to contend with. Orwell almost speaks of the dogs as mindless robots, so dedicated to Napoleon that they can't really speak for themselves. This contention is supported as Orwell describes Napoleon's early and suspicious removal of six puppies from their mother. The reader is left in the dark for a while, but later is enlightened when Orwell describes the chase of Snowball. Napoleon uses his "secret dogs" for the first time here; before Snowball has a chance to stand up and give a counter-argument to Napoleon's disapproval of the windmill, the dogs viciously attack the pig, forcing him to flee, never to return again. Orwell narrates, "Silent and terrified, the animals crept back into the barn. In a moment the dogs came bounding back. At first no one had been able to imagine where these creatures came from, but the problem was soon solved: they were the puppies whom Napoleon had taken away from their mothers and reared privately. Though not yet full-grown, they were huge dogs, and as fierce-looking as wolves. They kept close to Napoleon. It was noticed that they wagged their tails to him in the same way as the other dogs had been used to do to Mr. Jones." The use of the dogs begins the evil use of force which helps Napoleon maintain power. Later, the dogs do even more dastardly things when they are instructed to kill the animals labelled "disloyal." Stalin, too, had his own special force of "helpers". Really there are followers loyal to any politician or government leader, but Stalin in particular needed a special police force to eliminate his opponents. This is how Trotsky was killed.
Mollie: Mollie is one of Orwell's minor characters, but she represents something very important. Mollie is one of the animal who is most opposed to the new government under Napoleon. She doesn't care much about the politics of the whole situation; she just wants to tie her hair with ribbons and eat sugar, things her social status won't allow. Many animals consider her a trader when she is seen being petted by a human from a neighbouring farm. Soon Mollie is confronted by the "dedicated" animals, and she quietly leaves the farm. Mollie characterises the typical middle-class skilled worker who suffers from this new communism concept. No longer will she get her sugar (nice salary) because she is now just as low as the other animals, like Boxer and Clover. Orwell uses Mollie to characterise the people after any rebellion who aren't too receptive to new leaders and new economics. There are always those resistant to change. This continues to dispel the believe Orwell hated that basically all animals act the same. The naivety of Marxism is criticised socialism is not perfect and it doesn't work for everyone.
Moses: Moses is perhaps Orwell's most intriguing character in Animal Farm. This raven, first described as the "especial pet" of Mr. Jones, is the only animal who doesn't work. He's also the only character who doesn't listen to Old Major's speech of rebellion. Orwell narrates, "The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the lies put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr. Jones's especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place.". Moses represents Orwell's view of the Church. To Orwell, the Church is just used as a tool by dictatorships to keep the working class of people hopeful and productive. Orwell uses Moses to criticize Marx's belief that the Church will just go away after the rebellion. Jones first used Moses to keep the animals working, and he was successful in many ways before the rebellion. The pigs had a real hard time getting rid of Moses, since the lies about Heaven they thought would only lead the animals away from the equality of socialism. But as the pigs led by Napoleon become more and more like Mr. Jones, Moses finds his place again. After being away for several years, he suddenly returns and picks up right where he left off. The pigs don't mind this time because the animals have already realised that the "equality" of the revolt is a farce. So Napoleon feeds Moses with beer, and the full-circle is complete. Orwell seems to offer a very cynical and harsh view of the Church. This proves that Animal Farm is not simply an anti-communist work meant to lead people into capitalism and Christianity. Really Orwell found loop-holes and much hypocrisy in both systems. It's interesting that recently in Russia the government has begun to allow and support religion again. It almost seems that like the pigs, the Kremlin officials of today are trying to keep their people motivated, not in the ideology of communism, but in the "old-fashioned" hope of an after-life.
Muriel: Muriel is a knowledgeable goat who reads the commandments for Clover. Muriel represents the minority of working class people who are educated enough to decide things for themselves and find critical and hypocritical problems with their leaders. Unfortunately for the other animals, Muriel is not charismatic or inspired enough to take action and oppose Napoleon and his pigs.
Old Benjamin Old Benjamin, an elderly donkey, is one of Orwell's most elusive and intriguing characters on Animal Farm. He is described as rather unchanged since the rebellion. He still does his work the same way, never becoming too exited or too disappointed about anything that has passed. Benjamin explains, "Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey." Although there is no clear metaphoric relationship between Benjamin and Orwell's critique of communism, it makes sense that during any rebellion there or those who never totally embrace the revolution those so cynical they no longer look to their leaders for help. Benjamin symbolises the older generation, the critics of any new rebellion. Really this old donkey is the only animal who seems as though he couldn't care less about Napoleon and Animal Farm. It's almost as if he can see into the future, knowing that the revolt is only a temporary change, and will flop in the end. Benjamin is the only animal who doesn't seem to have expected anything positive from the revolution. He almost seems on a whole different maturity lever compared to the other animals. He is not sucked in by Napoleon's propaganda like the others. The only time he seems to care about the others at all is when Boxer is carried off in the glue truck. It's almost as if the old donkey finally comes out of his shell, his perfectly fitted demeanour, when he tries to warn the others of Boxer's fate. And the animals do try to rescue Boxer, but it's too late. Benjamin seems to be finally confronting Napoleon and revealing his knowledge of the pigs' hypocrisy, although before he had been completely independent. After the animals have forgotten Jones and their past lives, Benjamin still remembers everything. Orwell states, "Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life."
Rats & Rabbits: The rats and the rabbits, who are regarded as wild animals, somehow represent the socialist movement, the so-called "Menscheviki". In the very beginning of the book the animals vote if rats and rabbits should be comrades.
Pigeons: The pigeons symbolise Soviet propaganda, not to Russia, but to other countries, like Germany, England, France, and even the United States. Russia had created an iron curtain even before WWII. The Communist government raved about its achievements and its advanced technology, but it never allowed experts or scientists from outside the country to check on its validity. Orwell mentions the fact that the other farmers became suspicious and worried when their animals began to sing Beasts of England. Many Western governments have gone through a similar problem with their people in this century. There was a huge "Red Scare" in the United States in the 20's. In the 1950's in the United States, Joseph McCarthy was a legislative member of the government from Wisconsin. He accused hundreds of people of supporting the Communist regime, from famous actors in Hollywood to middle-class common people. The fear of communism became a phobia in America and anyone speaking out against the government was a suspect.
Farm buildings: The farm stands for the Kremlin. In the early days of the USSR there were sightseeing tours trough the Kremlin. Later it became the residence of Stalin;
Windmill: The Windmill for example stands for the Russian industry, that has been build up by the working-class (Clover...)
Fredericks: Stands for Hitler. There also has been an arrangement and secret deals. (allusion to Fritz)
Foxwood: Foxwood farm is representing England.
Pinchfield: Pinchfield symbolises Germany.
Destruction of the Windmill: This destruction is a symbol for the failure of the Five Year Plan.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four was written by Erich Arthur Blair under the pen name George Orwell. He was a man of great political conviction who hated many things very strongly, including intellectuals (although one himself,) lying, and cruelty, along with totalitarianism about which he wrote this novel (Nineteen Eighty-Four) and the anti-totalitarian fable Animal Farm, both written in the 1940s. He has also written other books including an autobiography, Down and Out in Paris and London in 1933. Born in Bengal, India in 1903, Orwell was an English journalist, critic, and novelist whose writings were generally politically based and relevant to his lifetime, up to the middle of the 20th Century. This novel carries the same general theme or mood as two other books, Brave New World (1932), by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), about the 25th Century and We by Zamyatin.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith is the main character, caught in a futuristic totalitarian society. This society is dominated by "Big Brother" which controls the thoughts and actions of all humans in it. It commands control through large television-like devices called "telescreens." These telescreens are in most rooms including in people’s own houses. Not only can the telescreens broadcast the governmental propaganda loaded media, but they also provide a means of aural and visual monitoring of the room in which they were located. Through these telescreens, Big Brother and "the Party," with the help of the "Thought Police," could retain its control over everyone, especially directed toward the working class. Once control was gained over the people, those in power did not want to lose it. They were like slaves of Big Brother.
Throughout the novel, Winston tries to avoid the control of Big Brother. He frequently acts in ways in which are not necessarily illegal, but if he is caught doing them (e.g.: keeping a diary or sneaking around with a 27-year old woman, Julia) he would most likely be punished by death. He works in one of the four Ministries, the Ministry of Truth (the others are the Ministries of Peace, Love, and Plenty. His work is to change historical documents into the new language, Newspeak, and destroy any documents that do not conform to Big Brother’s way of life.
In his work he meets a young woman Julia, from the Fiction Department. He falls in love with her and gets her to join in his work against Big Brother. Soon Winston finds out from O’Brien, his only trusted friend before Julia, about an "underground" group known as the "Brotherhood," supposedly led by Emmanuel Goldstein who is displayed on the telescreens as someone against the Party and is to be "put down." He continues his fight against Big Brother and is eventually captured, in a room above the antique shop in which he purchased his diary, along with Julia, and tortured by his "friend" O’Brien. He was later released; Winston had "won the victory over himself." In the end, "He loved Big Brother."
Nineteen Eighty-Four contains a warning about "the future" – the year 1984 (a transposition of the last two digits of the year it was completed). Though not specifically about computers, since it was finished in 1948, "Big Brother" can be viewed as playing the role of the computer in the novel. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, "Big Brother" has ultimately harmed society. Its ability to allow the monitoring of almost everything that is said and done has let a dictatorship, the Party, to take over the lives of humans. Using the monitoring system, the Party is able to control not only the actions of the people, but also their thoughts. When people do not speak or act as expected, they are reprimanded by members of the Party called the "thought police."
The way "Big Brother" and the telescreens work can be linked to the computer of today’s society. Computers are "commanding" more and more control of our lives. The number of households with at least one computer is rapidly increasing. With the increasing amount of electronic business and the accelerated expansion of the Internet in recent years (even months), the amount of personal information tracking, storage, and dissemination that is occurring is also quickly getting out of hand. Now, for those who know how to look for it, almost too much information has become available to computer users. Governmental desire for control of the paperless domain may eventually become a threat to society as it tries to monitor users of the Internet and others who do not even currently own a computer.
If a "take-over" of the available information occurs, today’s society may become like the "Big Brother" society of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The year 1984 has come and gone, but the warning remains.
GEORGE ORWELL
b. 1903, Motihari, Bengal, India
d. Jan. 21, 1950, London
pseudonym of ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR English novelist, essayist, and critic famous for his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), the latter a profound anti-Utopian novel that examines the dangers of totalitarian rule.
Born Eric Arthur Blair, Orwell never entirely abandoned his original name, but his first book (Down and Out in Paris and London) appeared as the work of George Orwell (the surname he derived from the beautiful River Orwell in East Anglia). In time his nom de plume became so closely attached to him that few people but relatives knew his real name was Blair. The change in name corresponded to a profound shift in Orwell's life-style, in which he changed from a pillar of the British imperial establishment into a literary and political rebel.
He was born in Bengal, into the class of sahibs. His father was a minor British official in the Indian civil service; his mother, of French extraction, was the daughter of an unsuccessful teak merchant in Burma. Their attitudes were those of the "landless gentry," as Orwell later called lower-middle-class people whose pretensions to social status had little relation to their income. Orwell was thus brought up in an atmosphere of impoverished snobbery. After returning with his parents to England, he was sent in 1911 to a preparatory boarding school on the Sussex coast, where he was distinguished among the other boys by his poverty and his intellectual brilliance. He grew up a morose, withdrawn, eccentric boy, and he was later to tell of the miseries of those years in his posthumously published autobiographical essay, Such, Such Were the Joys (1953).
Orwell won scholarships to two of England's leading schools, Winchester and Eton, and chose the latter. He stayed from 1917 to 1921. Aldous Huxley was one of his masters, and it was at Eton that he published his first writing in college periodicals. Instead of accepting a scholarship to a university, Orwell decided to follow family tradition and, in 1922, went to Burma as assistant district superintendent in the Indian Imperial Police. He served in a number of country stations and at first appeared to be a model imperial servant. Yet from boyhood he had wanted to become a writer, and when he realized how much against their will the Burmese were ruled by the British, he felt increasingly ashamed of his role as a colonial police officer. Later he was to recount his experiences and his reactions to imperial rule in his novel Burmese Days and in two brilliant autobiographical sketches, "Shooting an Elephant" and "A Hanging," classics of expository prose.
In 1927 Orwell, on leave to England, decided not to return to Burma, and on Jan. 1, 1928, he took the decisive step of resigning from the imperial police. Already in the autumn of 1927 he had started on a course of action that was to shape his character as a writer. Having felt guilty that the barriers of race and caste had prevented his mingling with the Burmese, he thought he could expiate some of his guilt by immersing himself in the life of the poor and outcast people of Europe. Donning ragged clothes, he went into the East End of London to live in cheap lodging houses among labourers and beggars; he spent a period in the slums of Paris and worked as a dishwasher in French hotels and restaurants; he tramped the roads of England with professional vagrants and joined the people of the London slums in their annual exodus to work in the Kentish hopfields.
These experiences gave Orwell the material for Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), in which actual incidents are rearranged into something like fiction. The book's publication in 1933 earned him some initial literary recognition. Orwell's first novel, Burmese Days (1934), established the pattern of his subsequent fiction in its portrayal of a sensitive, conscientious, and emotionally isolated individual who is at odds with an oppressive or dishonest social environment. The main character of Burmese Days is a minor administrator who seeks to escape from the dreary and narrow-minded chauvinism of his fellow British colonialists in Burma. His sympathies for the Burmese, however, end in an unforeseen personal tragedy. The protagonist of Orwell's next novel, A Clergyman's Daughter (1935), is an unhappy spinster who achieves a brief and accidental liberation in her experiences among some agricultural labourers. Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) is about a literarily inclined bookseller's assistant who despises the empty commercialism and materialism of middle-class life but who in the end is reconciled to bourgeois prosperity by his forced marriage to the girl he loves.
Orwell's revulsion against imperialism led not only to his personal rejection of the bourgeois life-style but to a political reorientation as well. Immediately after returning from Burma he called himself an anarchist and continued to do so for several years; during the 1930s, however, he began to consider himself a socialist, though he was too libertarian in his thinking ever to take the further step--so common in the period--of declaring himself a communist.
Orwell's first socialist book was an original and unorthodox political treatise entitled The Road to Wigan Pier (1937). It begins by describing his experiences when he went to live among the destitute and unemployed miners of northern England, sharing and observing their lives; it ends in a series of sharp criticisms of existing socialist movements. It combines mordant reporting with a tone of generous anger that was to characterize Orwell's subsequent writing.
By the time The Road to Wigan Pier was in print, Orwell was in Spain; he went to report on the Civil War there and stayed to join the Republican militia, serving on the Aragon and Teruel fronts and rising to the rank of second lieutenant. He was seriously wounded at Teruel, damage to his throat permanently affecting his voice and endowing his speech with a strange, compelling quietness. Later, in May 1937, after having fought in Barcelona against communists who were trying to suppress their political opponents, he was forced to flee Spain in fear of his life. The experience left him with a lifelong dread of communism, first expressed in the vivid account of his Spanish experiences, Homage to Catalonia (1938), which many consider one of his best books.
Returning to England, Orwell showed a paradoxically conservative strain in writing Coming Up for Air (1939), in which he uses the nostalgic recollections of a middle-aged man to examine the decency of a past England and express his fears about a future threatened by war and fascism. When war did come, Orwell was rejected for military service, and instead he headed the Indian service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). He left the BBC in 1943 and became literary editor of the Tribune, a left-wing socialist paper associated with the British Labour leader Aneurin Bevan. At this period Orwell was a prolific journalist, writing many newspaper articles and reviews, together with serious criticism, like his classic essays on Charles Dickens and on boys' weeklies and a number of books about England (notably The Lion and the Unicorn, 1941) that combined patriotic sentiment with the advocacy of a libertarian, decentralist socialism very much unlike that practiced by the British Labour Party.
In 1944 Orwell finished Animal Farm, a political fable based on the story of the Russian Revolution and its betrayal by Joseph Stalin. In this book a group of barnyard animals overthrow and chase off their exploitative human masters and set up an egalitarian society of their own. Eventually the animals' intelligent and power-loving leaders, the pigs, subvert the revolution and form a dictatorship whose bondage is even more oppressive and heartless than that of their former human masters. ("All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.") At first Orwell had difficulty finding a publisher for this small masterpiece, but when it appeared in 1945 Animal Farm made him famous and, for the first time, prosperous.
Animal Farm was one of Orwell's finest works, full of wit and fantasy and admirably written. It has, however, been overshadowed by his last book, Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), a novel he wrote as a warning after years of brooding on the twin menaces of Nazism and Stalinism. The novel is set in an imaginary future in which the world is dominated by three perpetually warring totalitarian police states. The book's hero, the Englishman Winston Smith, is a minor party functionary in one of these states. His longing for truth and decency leads him to secretly rebel against the government, which perpetuates its rule by systematically distorting the truth and continuously rewriting history to suit its own purposes. Smith has a love affair with a like-minded woman, but then they are both arrested by the Thought Police. The ensuing imprisonment, torture, and reeducation of Smith are intended not merely to break him physically or make him submit but to root out his independent mental existence and his spiritual dignity until he can love only the figure he previously most hated: the apparent leader of the party, Big Brother. Smith's surrender to the monstrous brainwashing techniques of his jailers is tragic enough, but the novel gains much of its power from the comprehensive rigour with which it extends the premises of totalitarianism to their logical end: the love of power and domination over others has acquired its perfected expression in the perpetual surveillance and omnipresent dishonesty of an unassailable and irresistible police state under whose rule every human virtue is slowly being suborned and extinguished. Orwell's warning of the potential dangers of totalitarianism made a deep impression on his contemporaries and upon subsequent readers, and the book's title and many of its coined words and phrases ("Big Brother is watching you," "newspeak," "doublethink") became bywords for modern political abuses.
Orwell wrote the last pages of Nineteen Eighty-four in a remote house on the Hebridean island of Jura, which he had bought from the proceeds of Animal Farm. He worked between bouts of hospitalization for tuberculosis, of which he died in a London hospital in January 1950.
utopia
an ideal commonwealth whose inhabitants exist under seemingly perfect conditions. Hence "utopian" and "utopianism" are words used to denote visionary reform that tends to be impossibly idealistic.
The word first occurred in Sir Thomas More's Utopia, published in Latin as Libellus . . . de optimo reipublicae statu, deque nova insula Utopia ("Concerning the highest state of the republic and the new island Utopia"; 1516); it was compounded by More from the Greek words for "not" (ou) and "place" (topos) and thus meant "nowhere." During his embassy to Flanders in 1515, More wrote Book II of Utopia, describing a pagan and communist city-state in which the institutions and policies were entirely governed by reason. The order and dignity of such a state was intended to provide a notable contrast with the unreasonable polity of Christian Europe, divided by self-interest and greed for power and riches, which More then described in Book I, written in England in 1516. The description of Utopia is put in the mouth of a mysterious traveller, Raphael Hythloday, in support of his argument that communism is the only cure against egoism in private and public life. More, in the dialogue, speaks in favour of mitigation of evil rather than cure, human nature being fallible. The reader is thus left guessing as to which parts of the brilliant jeu d'esprit are seriously intended and which are mere paradox.
Written utopias may be practical or satirical, as well as speculative. Utopias are far older than their name. Plato's Republic was the model of many, from More to H.G. Wells. A utopian island occurs in the Sacred History of Euhemerus (flourished 300 BC), and Plutarch's life of Lycurgus describes a utopian Sparta. The legend of Atlantis inspired many utopian myths; but explorations in the 15th century permitted more realistic settings, and Sir Thomas More associated Utopia with Amerigo Vespucci. Other utopias that were similar to More's in Humanist themes were the I mondi (1552) of Antonio Francesco Doni and La città felice (1553) of Francesco Patrizi. An early practical utopia was the comprehensive La città del sole (written c. 1602) of Tommaso Campanella. Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (published 1627) was practical in its scientific program but speculative concerning philosophy and religion. Christian utopian commonwealths were described in Antangil (1616) by "I.D.M.," Christianopolis (1619) by Johann Valentin Andreae, and Novae Solymae libri sex (1648) by Samuel Gott. Puritanism produced many literary utopias, both religious and secular, notably, The Law of Freedom . . . (1652), in which Gerrard Winstanley advocated the principles of the Diggers. The Common-Wealth of Oceana (1656) by James Harrington argued for the distribution of land as the condition of popular independence.
In France such works as Gabriel de Foigny's Terre australe connue (1676) preached liberty. François Fénelon's Télémaque (1699) contained utopian episodes extolling the simple life. L'An 2440 by Louis-Sébastien Mercier (1770; Eng. trans., 1772) anticipated Revolutionary doctrines. G.A. Ellis' New Britain (1820) and Étienne Cabet's Voyage en Icarie (1840) were related to experimental communities in the United States that revealed the limitations of purely economic planning. Consequently, Bulwer-Lytton, in The Coming Race (1871), invented an essence that eliminated economics altogether, and William Morris demonstrated his contempt for economics in News from Nowhere (1890). Two influential utopias, however, had an economic basis: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888) by Edward Bellamy and Freiland (1890; A Visit to Freeland . . . , 1894) by Theodor Herzka. H.G. Wells, in A Modern Utopia (1905), returned to speculation.
Many utopias are satires that ridicule existent conditions rather than offering practical solutions for them. In this class are Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) and Samuel Butler's Erewhon (1872). In the 20th century, when the possibility of a planned society became too imminent, a number of bitterly anti-utopian, or dystopian, novels appeared. Among these are The Iron Heel (1907) by Jack London, My (1924; We, 1925) by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley, and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) by George Orwell. The Story of Utopias (1922) by Lewis Mumford is an excellent survey.
Concurrent with the literature, there have also been many attempts by religious groups and political reformers to establish utopian communities, especially in the Americas. In the two centuries between 1663 (when some Dutch Mennonites established the first such communitarian colony in what is now Lewes, Del.) and 1858, some 138 settlements were begun in North America. The first to outlast the lifetime of its founder was the Ephrata Community established in Pennsylvania in 1732 by some German Pietists. Other German Pietist settlements were founded by George Rapp (Harmony in Pennsylvania, Harmony [or Harmonie] in Indiana, and Economy in Pennsylvania), by the Amana group (in Iowa), and by the Shakers (18 villages in eight states). Some of them pursued celibacy. Other communal religious sects still flourish; among the largest are the Hutterites, chiefly in the United States and Canada but having colonies also in Paraguay and England.
One of the first secular communities was New Harmony, founded in 1825 when the British manufacturer Robert/bcom/eb/article/9/0,5716,59239+1+57793,00.html Owen purchased Harmony, Ind., from the Rappites. It was a cooperative rather than communist society. Although it foundered, it sponsored the first kindergarten, the first trade school, the first free library, and the first community-supported public school in the United States.
The ideas of the French social reformer Charles Fourier had a strong influence upon American reformers in the 1840s, particularly upon the leaders of Brook Farm in Massachusetts. Between 1841 and 1859, about 28 Fourierist colonies were established in the United States. The Icarians, followers of Cabet, established ill-fated communities in Illinois (Nauvoo, formerly settled by Mormons), Missouri, Iowa, and California.
A unique venture was the Oneida Community founded in Putney, Vt., by John Humphrey Noyes in 1841 and moved to Oneida, N.Y., in 1848. The group practiced "complex marriage," in which all husbands and wives were shared. Noyes said that Oneida was the continuation of Brook Farm without its mistakes. He was convinced that socialism was impossible without religion, and that the "extended" family system would dissolve selfishness and demonstrate the practicality of this way of life. Children remained with their mothers until they could walk but were then placed in a common nursery.
After the American Civil War the enthusiasm for secular utopian experiments waned. There were some new settlements in the 1890s, following the publication of such Utopian tracts as Laurence Gronlund's The Coöperative Commonwealth (1884) and Bellamy's Looking Backward, but the impulse had run its course and these latter movements were soon gathered into the fold of political socialism. The creation of utopian religious communities continued into the 20th century, but they too were usually short-lived. The religious colonies, in almost all instances, were established and maintained by a single powerful personality who was believed by his disciples to have a singular gift of prophecy or wisdom. Most of these colonies flourished during the lifetime of the original leader and then declined slowly after his death