Eric A. Blair
(1903-1950)
distinguished British journalist, essayist, pamphleteer, and novelist

George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903, in Motihari, Bengal, India. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair was a civil servant for the British government. In 1904, Orwell moved with his mother and sister to England where he remained until 1922. He began to write at an early age, and was even published in college periodicals.

After failing to win a university scholarship and losing the opportunity to continue his education, Orwell went to Bruma, India where he served in the administration of the Indian Imperial Police from 1922 to 1927. Due to his growing dislike of British imperialism he resigned. He vocalized this dislike later in his essays A Hanging (1931) and Shooting an Elephant (1950).

After Orwell returned to Europe he was in poor financial condition and worked low paying jobs in England and France. Finally, in 1928, he decided to become a professional writer. Starting in 1930, Orwell became a regular contributor to the New Adelphi. In 1933, he assumed the name "George Orwell" by which he would become famous. For his first novel he used his recent experience with poverty as inspiration and wrote Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). While teaching in a private school he published his second major work, Burmese Days (1934). Two years later Orwell married Eileen O'Shaugnessy.

It was towards the end of World War II that he wrote Animal Farm, the novel that made finally Orwell prosperous. After the end of the war he moved to Scotland. Orwell's other worldwide success novel was Nineteen Eighty-Four, which Orwell said was written "to alter other people's idea of the kind of society they should strive after." Sadly Orwell never lived to see how successful it would become. After the death of his first wife Eileen O'Shaugnessy in 1945, Orwell married Sonia Browell in 1949. He died from tuberculosis 21 Jan 1950 in London.

Even though written in 1949, George Orwell's "1984" is one of the most influential books of the 20th century. An apocalyptic tale set in a nation ruled by Big Brother, where speech is doctored and thoughts are controlled by totalitarian agents.

The concepts of free enterprise and individual freedom no longer exist in 1984. Only three superpowers remain to dominate a world of hatred, isolation, and fear. Eurasia and Eastasia are two of these superpowers. Oceania, the other, is always at war with one of them.

Winston Smith is a 39-year-old employee at the Ministry of Truth, London, located in Oceania. by The Party and its dictator/leader Big Brother, whose face is everywhere on posters captioned “Big Brother Is Watching You”, shaped his world. Big Brother controls life in Oceania through the four ministries of Peace, Love, Plenty, and Truth. Winston’s job at the Ministry of Truth involves revisions of historical documents and rewrites of news stories to reflect the Party’s infallibility.

The Party, which carries out government policies in Oceania, rations food, issues clothing, and selects social activities. Both chocolate and tobacco are in short supply during this latest war. Winston’s clothing, including his tattered pajamas, is government issued, and his evenings are spent in government-sponsored meetings.

In 1984, the insidious order is known as "Big Brother," a personification of the regime that both demands and ensures absolute loyalty and obedience from all of its citizens. One of these citizens is a man named Winston Smith, the protagonist of the novel and a worker in the state's Ministry of Truth. Through following Winston, we see the myriad methods Big Brother employs to keep the populace servile and under its heavy thumb. Winston's work at the Ministry is to help rewrite history so that Big Brother's pronouncements, in retrospect, always appear to be infallible. Just as sinister is the propagation of "Newspeak," an abridged version of English whose eventual adoption, the party members hope, will limit anyone's ability to think or talk in a way that opposes Big Brother. Perhaps the most often-discussed component to Big Brother's control is the use of the telescreens, television-like gadgets installed in every home that act as surveillance devices and keep track of who is obeying and who is not. Winston, skeptical of Big Brother, but unsure of who or what to trust, tries to find ways of resisting the state's coercive power, and asserting his individuality, but Big Brother is watching.

Although 1984 is almost universally hailed as a landmark in twentieth century fiction, critics have been divided as to how we are to read it. Some see it, as Orwell himself described it, as a dire warning about the future. Others view it as a polemic criticizing Stalin's regime, the government that Big Brother most resembles and that Orwell saw as a monstrous perversion of Marxist ideals. Still others consider it a satire of contemporary England, a deliberately exaggerated version of the propaganda, conformity and denial of history that can exist even in a liberal, democratic state. These interpretations are by no means mutually exclusive, of course, and it is a testament to Orwell's genius that his work continues to speak in different ways to students of history, politics, philosophy, and literature alike.

Estimated Reading Time:
1984 is divided into three major sections of approximately equal length, each with separate chapters. Orwell also included an appendix on Newspeak. Thus, in order to maximize understanding, the reader should plan no fewer than four reading sessions.

By reading approximately 30 pages per hour, the reader should be able to complete the entire novel in 8 to 12 hours. He or she should also plan to spend more time on Part I, where Orwell establishes the frameworks of plot, characterization, and theme.

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