1984 By George Orwell (1903 – 1950) Essay, Research Paper

Written in 1948 and published the year

following, 1984 (the year-numbers were transposed) has provoked discussion

and controversy ever since. Though a world war had just been fought to

squelch the tyranny of a Totalitarian regime, Orwell warned that the world

was yet heading towards just such a political system. He found it especially

ironic that the champions of thought should become the chief instruments

of its suppression.

Orwell’s novel was intended as an urgent

warning that political decisions in the near future could create a brutally

stifled society of “Newspeak” (where words are so abstracted from events

and actions that they take on their exact opposite meaning) and “Doublethink”

(the power to hold two contradictory ideas simultaneously). “Big Brother”

and “Room 101 ” – and many other graphic coinages from its pages – remain

as standard references in our language, years after 1984 has come and gone,

an indication of the book’s refound social influence