Nineteen eighty-four

Nineteen eighty-four

By: George Orwell

"Big Brother is watching you!" (Orwell, 1984 page 12).

I chose this quote because it is the most known one from the book. Maybe you think of the reality TV-show, Big Brother, but it is from this book written by George Orwell the expression originates from.

George Orwell was born in India 1903 and died England in 1950, only forty-seven years old. In 1936 Orwell fought in the Spanish War and he worked as a BBC correspondant in the Second World War. His most famous works are The Animal Farm, and Down and Out in Paris and London (1933).

George Orwell wrote 1984 book in 1948, and simply reversed the last digits of that year in order to create a utopian, or rather dystopian story. Orwell believed that the world was going to change drastically, and in nineteen eighty-four, whole societies would be supervised with cameras and TV screens that were going to control all human activities.

Winston Smith, the main character in this novel, is living in Oceania, a monitoring society where free will is totally in the hands of Big Brother. He is working as a journalist for Ministry of Truth, where his records facts in the way that his totalitarian powers demand. At the same time, Smith is writing a journal of his own, where he collects proofs of everything that is politically incorrect, along with negative thoughts and opinions about Big Brother Party. This is where the real suspense in this book lies. If Smith is caught with his private journal, it would result in torture by the hand of the Thought Police.

In Orwell's side-story of the love story that Smith has with Julia, it becomes clear for us readers, how impossible it is for any totalitarian government to control its citizens thoughts fully. Julia and Smith are meeting secretly in a room where the loving couple believes there are no cameras. The turn of the plot comes here, of course: there are in fact surveillance, and Big Brother sees everything they are doing. For this they get severly punished.

Winston Smith is a grey man, with short hair and very thin body. His clothes look like all the others': blue and grey pants and jacket. His development is clear throughout the novel, since his criticism against the ruling powers grow from the first page to the last. Along with his attitudes and his love story comes automatically torture, severe torture that tries to crush Smith's rebellious attitude. This torture even gets Smith to confess things he is not guilty of.

There are two possible interpretations of the ending of 1984. Most people find the ending a happy one, because, the main character survives, after all. I think, however, that life would be better in death, given these circumstances. I believe in "living in freedom or dying in chains". Th...