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George Orwell: Life, Themes, and Works

George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903 in India, is known for his anti-totalitarian themes and works like 'Animal Farm' and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. 'Animal Farm' is an allegorical novel that critiques revolutions and human greed, while 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' depicts a dystopian future dominated by oppressive government surveillance and control over truth and individuality. Key concepts in his works include the relationship between language and power, the dangers of totalitarianism, and the psychological manipulation of citizens.

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17 views2 pages

George Orwell: Life, Themes, and Works

George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903 in India, is known for his anti-totalitarian themes and works like 'Animal Farm' and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. 'Animal Farm' is an allegorical novel that critiques revolutions and human greed, while 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' depicts a dystopian future dominated by oppressive government surveillance and control over truth and individuality. Key concepts in his works include the relationship between language and power, the dangers of totalitarianism, and the psychological manipulation of citizens.

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GEORGE ORWELL

LIFE
• born in India in 1903, his real name is Eric Arthur Blair;
• spent his childhood in England;
• he fought in the Spanish Civil War;
• he worked briefly for the BBC and became a literary editor for The Tribune.

THEMES
• anti-totalitarianism: he’s against the mystification of power;
• interest in social and political conditions (that he had observed in his own lifetime);
• independent thinking;
• power and censorship;
• relationship between language and power.

MAIN WORKS

ANIMAL FARM
• 1945.
• An allegorical novel, an anti-Soviet satire in a pastoral setting.
• It’s a representation of the dangers of all kinds of revolutions and denounces the
threat of selfishness and greed that characterises human actions.

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1984)


• Written in 1948 and published in 1949, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel
set in the future, which denounces the dangers of totalitarianism by representing
a world in which human individuality has been cancelled by the actions of an
oppressive government.
• PLOT:
-set in what was once London, now capital of the state of Oceania;
-Winston Smith is the protagonist of the novel, he’s a journalist and his job is to
rewrite history. He rebels against the oppression of the regime.
-Big Brother is at the head of The Party, which governs over the citizens in a
system of constant surveillance, violent policing and psychological conditioning.
-Winston writes a diary where he affirms his belief in the existence of objective
truth;
-He falls in love with Julia, partner in his rebellion, but the affair is discovered by
the Thought Police;
-Winston and Julia are arrested and subjected to merciless torture and
brainwashing: at the end they betray each other and reject their ideals (finally
‘cured’).

• THEMES: Anti-totalitarianism,Consequences of an oppressive government on


people, Power and domination, Future of a world in which there’s no freedom of
thought, Language as an instrument of power.

• STYLE: dystopian novel, clear language, plain prose style.


• WINSTON SMITH:
-His name is highly symbolical: ‘Winston’ as Winston Churchill, ‘Smith’ is the
most common English surname (‘common english man idea’).
-He’s one of the few human being whose humanity has not been completely
cancelled.
-He tries to rebel against the power of The Party.
-At the end, he surrenders in Room 101, becoming a passive and de-personalised
member of The Party.

• BIG BROTHER:
-Is an image present everywhere in the state of Oceania;
-A strong face (Hitler+Stalin) that looks at all citizens from posters and television
screens;
-Slogan: ‘BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU’, reflecting a regime in which all
the citizens can be spied and where even thoughts are not private;
-Love for the B.B., unthinking, orthodoxy of thought and behaviour.

• THE INSTRUMENTS of POWER: NEWSPEAK and DOUBLETHINK :

-NEWSPEAK: a reformed version of the English language (oldspeak). It involves


the elimination of irregular forms and a drastic reduction of vocabulary. It’s aim
is to reduce the possibility to create independent or unorthodox thoughts.

-DOUBLETHINK: the ability of holding two contrasting ideas at the same time,
even when they are contradictory. Represents the cancellation of human conscience
and rationality.

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