Question: What is George Orwell trying to tell us in his book, Nineteen Eighty Four?
Idea: In his novel , Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell critiques communism throughout.
Point 1: The book is a dystopia because … this is important because it shows the fears of Orwell’s society at the time.
Orwell’s society was very religious- in 1984 there is no religion- this would seem terrifying to many of Orwell’s time
As communism is such a main theme in the book, (many parts of the book can be linked to communism in some form or another) it shows that a great fear of Orwell’s society and indeed Orwell himself was communism- a main thing that makes a dystopia is that the fears of the author’s society are shown in the text.
March 5, 1946: Great Britain Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Missouri, alerting Americans to the division between the Soviet Union and the Western allies.
Point 2: The party, the governing body in the story is based off Soviet Russia.. (reason 1… )(reason 2… )(reason 3….)
Marx described three necessary phases toward achieving his idea of utopia.
- Phase 1: A revolution must take place in order to overthrow the existing government. Marx emphasized the need for total destruction of the existing system in order to move on to Phase 2.
- Phase 2: A dictator or elite leader (or leaders) must gain absolute control over the proletariat. During this phase, the new government exerts absolute control over the common citizen’s personal choices — including his or her education, religion, employment and even marriage. Collectivization of property and wealth must also take place.
- Phase 3: Achievement of utopia. This phase has never been attained because it requires that all non-communists be destroyed in order for the Communist Party to achieve supreme equality. In a Marxist utopia, everyone would happily share property and wealth, free from the restrictions that class-based systems require. The government would control all means of production so that the one-class system would remain constant, with no possibility of any middle class citizens rising back to the top. (You can see the full text of the manifesto at this Web site.)
- both russia and the party started communism with a revolution, both had labour camps and killed many people of thier own country russia having the great purge and 1984 just having the purge
- mid 17th century: from Latin proletarius (from proles ‘offspring’), denoting a person having no wealth in property, who only served the state by producing offspring,
- top level govt officials for commie russia got special treatment, just as they do in 1984-O’Brien
- Secrecy and past destroying are both actions of russia communism and of Ocieania- no information about stalins work camps or killing of millions of russians was recorded in history books, just like they change literature in 1984 to make the party seem better
Point 3:Orwell is pointing out through his portrayal of the party in nineteen eighty four the irony of the fact that communism is based off Marxism, because Marxism believes that a main thing wrong with capitalism is that the rich exploit the poor working class to get richer, and is designed to keep the poor down, when in fact the party, which is communist, and clearly based off Russia, has a top tier of wealthy people who exploit the working class who live in very poor conditions for their own personal gain.
Marx believed that a truly Utopian society must be classless and stateless.