See also: 1984 (homonymy)

1984 (original title: in Nineteen Eighty-Furnace ) is famous a Romance of George Orwell, written in 1948.

It describes a Great Britain, posterior with a nuclear Guerre between the East and the West supposed to have taken place in the Années 1950, where was established a mode of the totalitarian type strongly inspired at the same time by the Stalinisme and certain elements of the Nazisme. Freedom of expression as such does not exist any more. All the thoughts are thoroughly supervised, and of immense posters trônent in the streets, indicating to all that Big Brother looks at you ( “in Big Brother is watching you” ).

The novel was to be called in the beginning in The Last Man in Europe , or 1949 , the year of publication, but Orwell was seen opposing a refusal of its editor.

Characteristics of the world of 1984

The history occurs to London, in 1984. The world, since large the nuclear wars of the years 1950, is divided into three large “blocks”: Océania (Americas, the United Kingdom, Oceania and Africa), Eurasia (Europe and Russia) and Estasia (China, India, Mongolia, Tibet and Japan) which are in perpetual war the ones against the others. These three great powers are directed by various totalitarian modes asserted like such: respectively the Angsoc (or Socialism English ), the néo- Bolchevism , and the worship of dead the (or obliteration of ego ).

Angsoc, mode of Océania, divide the people into three social classes: the interior Left , leading class with the shared capacity, the external Left , hard-working means, and the proletarian , subclass the human ones piling up in the dirty districts. The supreme leader of the Party is Big Brother, face immortal and adulated placarded on the walls of the city. All the members of the Party are constantly supervised by the Police force of the Thought and each gesture, word or glance are analyzed through the large-sized telescreens which sweep the least places. Winston Smith, member of the external Party, occupies a station of correction of information to the police station with the files, in the Ministry for the Truth. Its work consists in removing all the historical traces which do not correspond to the Official story.

The correspondence of Orwell indicates that its project was of launching a warning against the Totalitarisme S, particularly on a British left wing (of which it formed part at least) that it suspected of kindness towards Stalin, as for certain intellectuals like George Bernard Shaw or Herbert George Wells.

Many elements are drawn from the reality of the end of the Années 1940 which inspired Orwell in an obvious way: the description of a decrepit London, with its craters due to “bombs fused”, its queues in front of the stores, its houses victoriennes ruins some, its deprivations of all kinds, strongly evokes the London of the immediate post-war period and its shortages (the ration coupons were a reality until in 1953) without counting the still visible effects of the German bombardments (the V1 and V2). The building which would have inspired the “ministry for the Truth” would be that of the ministry for Information in the district Bloomsbury, Senate House, today property of the Université of London.

Summary

Winston Smith, inhabitant of London in Océania, is charged to rewrite the History within the framework of its work to the Ministry for the Truth. This work consists in destroying or revising (completely or partly) the newspapers of the former time so that the Party is never wrong, whatever its policy changes.

It becomes aware that it does not have thoughts so orthodoxe that he should have some with the eyes of the Party. Likely to be tracked by the Police force of the Thought, it hides its heresies and its hatred of the Party behind a marble face, but implose internally of revolt. It starts to write a newspaper: he wants to leave a trace of last and truth, and to include/understand it why of this dictatorship.

He falls in love with Julia, an young woman of the police station to the novels, member of the league anti-sex. They clandestinely like and make love in an attic rented in the district of the proletarians. They know that they will be condemned, that early or late they will have to pay the price of all these crimes towards the party. They dream however of a rising, of a resistance; they believe in the myth of a Fraternity which would exist some share and would link people like them against the Party. This is why they end up going to the meeting of O' Brien, character intelligent and charismatic, member of the interior Party of which Winston with inward conviction that he is a partisan of Fraternity. O' Brien their fact of arriving “the Book” of Goldstein, the enemy of the people and the Party, object of hatred and the most intense fear in Océania. It is explained there all holding them and the outcomes of the political systems and the psychological handling set up in Océania.

Before the end of their reading, Winston and Julia are stopped by the Police force of the Thought and are brought to the Ministry for the Love. Winston finds there O' Brien itself, which has in fact never be member of Fraternity, quite to the contrary, because it is precisely charged to track the " terrorists by the pensée". O' Brien teaches him that Winston was located as not very reliable good before even does not become aware of it to him .

Winston will be tortured and humiliated during days and weeks until it all its convictions morals and either ready to accept any truth sincerely, also contradictory is loses (2 and 2 make 5), provided that it emanates from the Party .

Its rehabilitation is finished when put in front of its strongest terror (of the rats), it betrays Julia and disavows it .

Do not slacken, Winston is not any more but one wreck empty of feelings and dignity, passing its life with the bar. By chance it re-examines Julia, which she also disavowed it under torture and this mutual treason broke their attachment .

One day, where during the war necessary and ceaseless which opposes the 3 totalitarian blocks, its threatened fatherland magistralement turns over the situation in a brilliant victory, he becomes a happy admiror of Big Brother.

Analyzes

1984 takes as a starting point a work of the Russian writer Ievgueni Zamiatine entitled Us Others and appeared in 1920, him also description of a totalitarian against-Utopia.

Context

Parabola of the modern Despotism, philosophical Conte over the worst 20th century, if the Totalitarisme orwellien operates francs loans with the Nazisme and the Fascisme, it is nevertheless, with its Sole party, its mode of assembly, its confusion of the capacities, its triennial plans of productions, its militarism of patronage, its parades and demonstrations “spontaneous”, its queues, its slogans, its camps of rehabilitation, its public confessions “with the Muscovite” and his giant posters, very clearly inspired by the Soviet system .

Sometimes subsidiarily, supposed being a totalitarian degeneration of a certain “English socialism” (“angsoc”), one wanted to see there only one satire with vitriol (even an excessive lawsuit of intention) against Labor Great Britain of Clement Attlee (1945) and his ambitious programme of nationalization (steel, coal, railroads, bank England, etc) in a country ruined by the war.

Man of the left of an absolute sincerity, Orwell was a Socialist “of ground” which was wary of a certain “left” (cruelly scoffed in one at its first novels: And lives will aspidistra it! , through the character ridiculous of Ravelston) and its distance of the social reality and material of the working world. Orwell hated moreover the Communists, a fortiori “of living room”, and scorned for example Jean-Paul Sartre. Material misery remained for him material misery, that the “Party” is with the capacity or that they are the “capitalists”. There is no doubt thus, as opposed to what one believes sometimes, on his very major socialist convictions, or at least “social-democrats”. Being wary with regard to a certain left, Orwell badly agreed moreover to be recovered by the “line”, which was especially the fact of the North-American reception of 1984.

Certain obvious improbabilities of 1984, they also, are a reflection of concerns of Orwell: in the novel, the United States is supposed to make them also part of Océania (which gathers in fact the Anglo-Saxon countries - to see chart). Orwell saw in the United States, a little with the manner of “modern times” of Chaplin, the quintessence of the technomaniaque modern world which is also one of the warnings of 1984.

In addition, the thesis that Orwell exposes through proclamation of the traitor Emmanuel Goldstein ( Of oligarchical collectivism ) supposes that the capacity can employ misery with fine policies: Goldstein rather allots the shortages prevailing under the “angsoc” to a strategy deliberated on the capacity than to an economic failure.

Before 1984 , Orwell was already a writer of left known for his investigations into the miserable working hearths in the Yorkshire or the unemployed of Middlesbrough ( the Pier of Wigan ). Its mistrust towards the “moral left” satisfied, that he already suspects (through the ridiculous lecturer “anti-Hitler” of Encore a little fresh air ) as of 1938, to make the bed of totalitarianism, was at least equal to its contempt for the conservative right.

All the people who lived under a Stalinist mode, like the former dissident Alexandre Zinoviev, grant to greet the intuition of the political and psychological mechanisms of this type of mode of which made Orwell proof.

Topics of 1984

Many ideas of Orwell in 1984 became prototypes, even commonplaces.

Faking of the History and Propaganda

The Party with the seizure on the files and makes accept its own historical truth by faking it; it practices the Désinformation and the Lavage of brain to sit the mode. It also makes disappear from the people who become to him too cumbersome and modifies their past, or the fact of passing, false witnesses of interested in the support, for traitors, spies or saboteurs. It is the principle of the “mutability of the past”.

“Which holds the past holds the future. ”

A real philosophical question appears behind the action of the Party: the theory of the Party is that the Passé does not exist in oneself. It is only a to remember in the human spirits. The world exists only through the human thought and does not have absolute reality. Thus, if Winston is the only man to remember that Océania was one week earlier in war against Eurasia and not against Estasia, it is him which is insane and not the others. However the fact is real, but only in the memory of Winston. The Party imposes a mental gymnastics to the men (called " doublepensée" in novlangue): all the facts should be assimilated that the Party throws to them, and especially to forget that it was differently. More extremely still, it is necessary to forget the fact of having forgotten…

Large-sized telescreens

With the residence and on the work places of the members of the Party, like in the public places, are laid out of the “large-sized telescreens”, system of Vidéo-surveillance and television which diffuse the messages of the Party permanently. The large-sized telescreens make it possible the police force of the Thought to hear and see what is done in each part where one is some. Only the members of the interior party can stop the large-sized telescreen which is in their residence for one short period.

Destruction of the logical direction

The “logical direction” of the taxable people to the mode is faded. In Novlangue, for example, the same word as “canelangue” can have a laudatory direction if it is applied to a member of the party or Péjoratif if it is applied to an enemy of the Party. It thus becomes impossible to use it to say evil of a member of the Party. The population is watered slogans like:

  • “the war, it is peace. ”
  • “freedom, it is slavery. ”
  • “ignorance, it is the force. ”
  • “2 + 2 = 5” (with this slogan, Winston reacts on its newspaper while declaring: “ freedom, it is the capacity to say that two plus two equalize four. ”)

Scapegoat and demonstrations of collective hatred

The whole of the evils which strike the company is allotted to an opponent, the “Traitor Emmanuel Goldstein”, of which the name and physical description resemble Lev Bronstein much alias Leon Trotsky. This traitor is the object of obligatory meetings of collective hysteria, the “two minutes of hatred”.
This Goldstein can also be considered, just like Big Brother, like a personification of the evil, following the example “Enemy of the People” of which Stalin was useful itself, whose totalitarian mode will have largely inspired the novel as a whole.

Planned impoverishment of the language

The Novlangue is the subject of planned impoverishments of which the goal is to make impossible the expression and the formulation of thoughts subversive. At the time where is supposed to happen the novel, the novlangue still constitutes an innovation, which coexists after a fashion with traditional English.

Enrollment of the children

To have full powers on the families, the children are endoctrinés very young people. One encourages them to denounce their parents with the least symptom of “lack of orthodoxy”.

One could to bring closer this behavior with that to children during Fascism Italian or with Stalin, which rewarded these young people who denounced their parents, and had founded a true national worship around the young informer Pavel Morozov.

Bibliography, studies

Adaptations and references

See also: 1984 (Adaptations and references)

1984 gave place to several film adaptations:

Medias also took as a starting point the book of Orwell to show a futuristic world totalitarian and repressive

  • universe of the clip Ubers Ende der Welt of the German group Tokio Hotel
  • the video game Half Life 2 (appeared in 2004) where the Antagoniste Wallace Breen appears on gigantic Télécrans to water the population of messages exhorting them with the tender
  • In its song Karma Police, the rock group Radiohead takes as a starting point the novel 1984

Notes and references of the article

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