1984 - George Orwell

Littérature – fiches de révisions. George Orwell – Nighteen Eighty-Four – 1994 The Author : George Orwell is an English writer born in 1903 in India who died in 1950 in London. His works are marked by his political commitments. He was against the British imperialism and the totalitarianism. He took part in the Spanish Civil War against Franco. Nineteen Eighty-four is his most famous novel in which he created the concept of “Big Brother”. Nineteen Eighty-four : In this novel the message that G.O. wanted to transmit can be discerned in each page because by writing this novel he wanted to denounce the politic problems that he discovered in his life. But the topic was sensitive therefor he wrote his story in an abstract way by transposing it in a futurist and fictive world. The plot Winston Smith lives in London, an important city of Oceania (a fictive country). He lives in a run-down area (=quartié délabré) a bland (=fade) and lonely existence under the permanent surveillance of the government. His job is to modify history textbooks so that they can be congruent with what the government say. But W.S. notices that there is something wrong in the society in which he lives. He decides to write a diary in which he writes down all his reflections/reasonings/cogitations. Then he falls slightly in love with Julia and they decide to join the rebellion but unfortunately they are trapped (=se faire piéger ??), arrested, and tortured. W.S. confesses and he is brainwashed. Later he joins the supporters of Big Brother and he is executed. What type of novel? There a lot of technology in this story and it shows a world which belongs to the future so we can assume that it is a science fiction novel. It does not describe the dictatorship of G.O.’s time and it does not seem to be realistic. But if we look carefully we can see that G.O. talks about parents who are terrified of their own children so it recalls the Hitler Youth. G.O. does not talk directly about his time but there is an obvious link between his story and the reality. He does well to do not talk about communism or nazism because the reader would have some priories about his book. The science-fiction have the advantage of to secede the author’s intentions from the reality in order to make this reality more universal. By being so straddled in his works G.O. describes caricatoonish world to impose a reflection. G.O. displays a mastery of writing because he manages to do not create a ridiculous world but rather a world which recalls something that already happen. The message By reading Nineteen Eighty-four the reader can notice the darkness of the story. W.S. begins in the loneliness, falls in love by chance, joins the rebellion, is immediately arrested, he loses the only person he loves and dies. There is no hope. It is a lost cause from the beginning of the novel to the end. Why this story is so hopeless? G.O. describes a depressive world where people live alone, in small flats, under surveillance, wearing an uniform. Citizens canno...