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NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR By George Orwell The anti-utopian fiction, Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell, warns us of the dangers and threats of a totalitarian government, which controls and monitors people’s life using mechanisms like high technology, brainwashing, surveillance and propaganda, with the intention of ensuring people’s loyalty and removing human freedom of feeling, thought or actions. In the novel, the near-future world is set up by three super-states: Oceania (The United States and The British Empire), Eurasia (Europe and Russia),Eastasia (China, Japan, Central Asia, Manchuria and Tibet). Oceania is a state devastated by war and poverty and Big Brother; a powerful and mysterious dictator, and his Party, the Ingsoc (English Socialism) lead it. The protagonist is Winston Smith, an Oceanian middle-aged citizen, member of the Outer Party, who works rewriting the London Times records in order to be consistent with the Party’s policy and in accordance with the new current alliance to show that old alliances never existed. Winston Smith is also a lonely and clever man, who understands the insidious manipulation and deceit perpetrated into the society. He meets Julia, a like-minded woman, and both live an illicit love affair. Besides, he also gets a copy of a banned revolutionary tract written by Goldstein, the representative of the capitalism’s doctrine, in use before the Revolution succeeded. As Winston reads it, he identifies most of his thoughts in it, and it makes him feel a great deal of mental relief. Obsessed by the idea of escaping from this horrible world to a better life, he does not realise that everything is a set-up so Winston becomes a willing victim of the Ingsoc Party. Finally, Winston is arrested and taken to the Ministry of Love, responsible for maintaining law and order. Ministry of Love´s Chamber 101 is dreadful, a place of torture, where one’s worst fears are made real. After a hard and rigid period of re-education and brainwashing, Winston is sent back to society as a new harmless devotee of Big Brother, as all his hopes and dreams of escaping and getting freedom have completely been rejected from his consciousness. |
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© Copyright 1999-2000 Other works by Ana Mullor Galdón. Created and updated on : Jan 20th, 2000 |
