1984 as a Warning for the Future Essay

George Orwell, the well known journalist, political author and novelist wrote Animal Farm and 1984. Those two novels are famous for his immense use of imagination. 1984 became popular during this time period and Animal Farm as well. 1984 was written in 1948 as a warning to the future of the year 1984. The novellas setting is somewhere in Oceania during the time when Eurasia and Eastasia were feuding. The central problem of the novel has to deal with Winston Smith and the government because Winston has a vision that the government is invading everyones privacy and that the people do not realize what is happening or going on. The government was invading the communitys privacy. There were cameras in bushes, houses, and etc. George Orwells novel 1984 explain a warning to the future through Winston Smiths story as he struggles through the tribulations that have occurred.

In the novel, Winston Smith has problems in life because of the way society is set up by the government. In Oceania, the government has different parties as in the Inner Party, The Brotherhood Party, Anti-Party, Thought Police, and the Junior Spies. Some parties do not agree with other parties, but it is the way Big Brother wants it to be. Anything you do, Big Brother is watching you (Orwell 2). It does not matter what you do, you are not doing it alone. Winston Smith is afraid of getting caught by the Thought Police for writing in a diary that he found. Winston does it anyway, thinking that it is possible to get away with it. He writes in it about things he watched the night before, his ex-wife, and a few other things that were very important to him. Winston has a stalker who looks at him at various times. Her name is Julia and she becomes Winstons lover. She was from the Junior Anti-Sex League, but Winston thought that she was apart of the Thought Police by the way she was presenting her actions. They end up trying to stay together or live together as long as they could, but does not last in the long run.

George Orwells warnings to the future are through out the novel. The reason why he gives them is because the human life would not be normal and lived like it should be. Sooner or later your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand you are alone? (270), the government says this because they basically rule everything and you can not do anything about it if you wanted to. They would have to live with no life or excitement, so basically they are alone in this world because of how strict the government is. If they are able to control you here then, it will happen in a very brutal way, which they can get inside you. What happens to you here happens forever (290). As George Orwell states in the novel War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength (4), which means that it is the opposite of good. War is not a good thing because of the innocent people die over something that is not important. Freedom is the opposite from slavery. Knowledge is strength, no ignorance. The government is leading the states in the wrong direction. Not only that slogan is negatively used except in the governments eyes, but it is also on coins, on covers of books, on stamps, on posters, on the wrapping of cigarette packets, and on banners. Another slogan is Who controls the past, controls the future, Who controls the present, controls the past (35). George Orwell says that it is like a reality control, which is basically changing peoples perception of the past. When Winston writes to the future, he says, To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone- to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink- greetings! (28). Winston wanted to warn the future and tell them that if you do not use your own mind and think for yourself, you would be a waste of a life. They would make them love Big Brother and think that he is a God even though he is not. O Brien, who was part of the Thought Police, will make you believe Freedom is Freedom to say two plus two makes four, if that is granted, all else follows (81). He will make you believe what he wants you to believe. At the end Winston said He loved Big Brother (297), because there was not anything else he could stop or get around the unnecessary rules or laws. Big Brother is a character, but is a character that isnt really there. He is somebody else. The slogans and the things that the government, Big Brother, or OBrien said or did make Winston want to warn the future and let them feel how he feels in his vision. Let the future be able to have a choice on how they want to live.

The way Fitzpatrick comments to the novel, Is that 1984 is told in third person, but the point of view is clearly Winston Smiths (290). There are a few people who have commented on George Orwells novel 1984. One person of the name Patrick Reilly said, The insistence that the book is, above all satire, an essentially comic warning concerning a possible, but inevitable fate(Reilly14). Patrick Reilly thinks that it could be a true book, but not likely to come true. Winston wrote in the diary as if it was going to come true and he is able to help the future. An author named Averil Gardner has a different point of view with this novel. Averil Gardner said whether or not one still concedes Nineteen Eighty- Four a prophecy of future time- the general view when it appeared- it can now be seen as very much a product of its own(Gardner 108). Gardner thinks that this novel can be in a category of something that holds the future or something of its won. He also looks at it as he said Nevertheless, this recognition does not eliminate Winstons fear of OBrien and the readers doubt whether the world of nineteen-Eighty-Four could exist is little protection against the experience created by its fictional expression especially, when Orwell so poignantly embodies, in Winstons memories and in his relationship with Julia, those aspects of decent human life that the existence of such a world would destroy (122). Either the reader doubt it was going to come true or not, the human life would have t come to an end. As Fitzpatrick says, However, over time critics came to realize that Orwell meant the story to be a universal warning about the dangers of totalitarian dictatorship.