1984 Cultural Context 1984 Published in London on

1984 Cultural Context

1984 ØPublished in London on Wednesday, June 8, 1949, and in New York five days later. The world was eager for it. ØWithin 12 months, it had sold around 50, 000 hardbacks in the UK; in the U. S. sales were more than one-third of a million. It became a phenomenon. ØIt has been adapted for radio, stage, television and cinema, has been studied, copied and parodied and, above all, ransacked for its ideas and images. ØRecent sales of George Orwell’s dystopian drama 1984 have soared after Kellyanne Conway, adviser to the reality-TV-star-turned-president, Donald Trump, used the phrase “alternative facts” in an interview. As of January this year, the book was the sixth best-selling book on Amazon.

George Orwell – Early Years • Born 1903, India during time of the British colonial rule. • Went to England with his mother and educated there. • His family were not wealthy, but he had a gift for writing. • Attended Eton College, where he came into contact with liberalist and socialist ideals… his initial political views were formed.

Adult Years • 1922 – moved to Burma to work as Assistant Superintendent of Police. But he resigned due to a dislike for British Imperialism. • 1928 -1936 – lived and worked in Paris then London. Suffered from tuberculosis. • 1936 – Married his wife and moved to Spain to write newspaper articles about the Spanish Civil War. • In Spain, he was enthused by what he saw as a ‘true socialist state’ – he joined the struggle against the Fascist party. • 1939 – returned to England. Worked for the BBC. He was in charge of disseminating propaganda to Brish colonies (India / SE Asia). Orwell disliked this job immensely as it went against his political philosophy. • 1943 – Literary Editor of The Tribune

Literary Success • Wrote two of the most important literary masterpieces of the 20 th Century: Animal Farm (published 1945) and 1984. • His writing sought truth, containing elements of the wars and struggles he witnessed, the terrible nature of politics, and the terrible toll that totalitarianism takes on the human spirit. • Orwell has said that he writes because there is some kind of lie that he has to expose, some fact to which he wants to draw attention.

George Orwell • Died six months after 1984 was published 'My novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is not intended as an attack on socialism, or on the British Labour Party. . . I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe (allowing of course for the fact that the book is a satire) that something resembling it could arrive. 'I believe also that totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere, and I have tried to draw these ideas out to their logical consequences. '

1984 • Distorts the concept of utopia to create a technologically advanced world in which fear is used as a tool for manipulating and controlling individuals who do not conform to the prevailing political orthodoxy. • Orwell aims to educate or warn readers about the consequences of certain political philosophies and the defects of human nature. • He does this by creating a dystopia, a fictional setting in which life is extremely bad from deprivation, oppression, or terror. • In Orwell’s dystopian reality: Ø Humans have no control over their own lives Ø Nearly every positive feeling is quashed Ø People live in misery, fear and repression.

• Relatively modern tradition and is usually a criticism of the time in which the author lives. • These novels are often political statements, as was Orwell’s other dystopian novel, Animal Farm. Dystopian Literary Tradition

Historical Background • Orwell lived during a time in which tyranny was a reality in Spain, Germany, the Soviet Union and other countries. • In these countries, government kept an iron fist (or curtain) around citizens. • There was little, if any freedom. • Hunger, forced labour, mass execution was common. • Orwell supported democratic socialism. • Orwell said that he writes: from the “desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. ” • He expressed his powerful political feelings, which are apparent in the society he creates in 1984.

Francisco Franco Ø The general and dictator Francisco Franco (1892 -1975) ruled over Spain from 1939 until his death. Ø He rose to power during the bloody Spanish Civil War when, with the help of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, his Nationalist forces overthrew the democratically elected Second Republic. Ø Adopting the title of “El Caudillo” (The Leader), Franco persecuted political opponents, repressed the culture and language of Spain’s Basque and Catalan regions, censured the media and otherwise exerted absolute control over the country.

Adolph Hitler Ø Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (1889 -1945) was one of the most powerful and infamous dictators of the 20 th century. Ø After World War I, he rose to power in the National Socialist German Workers Party, taking control of the German government in 1933. Ø His establishment of concentration camps to inter Jews and other groups he believed to be a threat to Aryan supremacy resulted in the death of more than 6 million people in the Holocaust. Ø His attack on Poland in 1939 started World War II, and by 1941 Germany occupied much of Europe and North Africa. The tide of the war turned following an invasion of Russia and the U. S. entry into battle.

Benito Mussolini Ø Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883 -1945) rose to power in the wake of World War I as a leading proponent of Facism. Ø Originally a revolutionary Socialist, he forged the paramilitary Fascist movement in 1919 and became prime minister in 1922. Ø Mussolini’s military expenditures in Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Albania made Italy predominant in the Mediterranean region, though they exhausted his armed forces by the late 1930 s. Ø Mussolini allied himself with Hitler, relying on the German dictator to prop up his leadership during World War II, but he was killed shortly after the German surrender in Italy in 1945.

Joseph Stalin Ø Joseph Stalin (1878 -1953) was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1929 to 1953. Ø Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower. However, he ruled by terror, and millions of his own citizens died during his brutal reign. Ø Born into poverty, Stalin became involved in revolutionary politics, as well as criminal activities, as a young man. After Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin (1870 -1924) died, Stalin outmanoeuvred his rivals for control of the party. Ø Once in power, he collectivized farming and had potential enemies executed or sent to forced labour camps. Ø Stalin aligned with the United States and Britain in World War II (1939 -1945) but afterward engaged in an increasingly tense relationship with the West known as the Cold War (1946 -1991). After his death, the Soviets initiated a de-Stalinization process.

Mao Zedong Ø Mao Zedong led communist forces in China through a long revolution beginning in 1927 and ruled the nation’s communist government from its establishment in 1949. Along with Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, Mao is considered one of the most significant communist figures of the Cold War. Ø The greatest mass murderer of the 20 th century wasn’t Hitler or Stalin. It was Mao Zedong. Ø According to the authoritative “Black Book of Communism, ” an estimated 65 million Chinese died as a result of Mao’s repeated, merciless attempts to create a new “socialist” China. Anyone who got in his way was done away with -- by execution, imprisonment or forced famine. Ø For Mao, the No. 1 enemy was the intellectual. The so-called Great Helmsman reveled in his blood-letting, boasting, “What’s so unusual about Emperor Shih Huang of the China Dynasty? He had buried alive 460 scholars only, but we have buried alive 46, 000 scholars. ” Mao was referring to a major “accomplishment” of the Great Cultural Revolution, which from 1966 -1976 transformed China into a great House of Fear. Ø The most inhumane example of Mao’s contempt for human life came when he ordered the collectivization of China’s agriculture under the ironic slogan, the “Great Leap Forward. ” A deadly combination of lies about grain production, disastrous farming methods (profitable tea plantations, for example, were turned into rice fields), and misdistribution of food produced the worse famine in human history. Ø Deaths from hunger reached more than 50 percent in some Chinese villages. The total number of dead from 1959 to 1961 was between 30 million and 40 million -the population of California.

Political Climate after WWI ØNazism was one of three radical ideologies to appear in Europe in the wake of World War I. ØFascism, often dubbed the ‘older brother’ of Nazism, first appeared in Italy during World War I. Devised largely by Benito Mussolini, fascism rejected socialism and democracy in favour of an authoritarian political and economic system, dominated by a single leader. ØSoviet socialism, a left wing ideology with elements of totalitarianism, emerged after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia. ØNazism had some similarities to both, particularly fascism – but it was also a distinctly national phenomenon, derived from ideas, events and conditions that were peculiar to Germany. Nazi ideology was developed by intense nationalists whose only interests were the future of Germany and German-speaking Aryan people. The Nazis had no interest in starting an international movement, exporting their ideas to other countries or changing the world outside mainland Europe. Their chief concern was the restoration of German economic and military supremacy.

1984 • Orwell’s Oceania is a terrifying society reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. • Complete repression of the human spirit. • Absolute governmental control of daily life. • Constant hunger. • Systematic ‘vaporization’ of individuals who do not, or will not, comply with the government’s values. • Big Brother is a fusing of both Stalin and Hitler, both real and terrifying leaders, though both on opposite sides of the philosophical spectrum.

Context - Capitalism

Context - Socialism

Socialism • Social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view, individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as a whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members.

Context - Communism

1984 positions readers to think about ideas including: 1. The courage displayed by individuals in the face of cruel totalitarian political systems. 2. The inability for human relationships and admirable human qualities to be maintained in the midst of tyranny. 3. People’s need to form connections with other people. 4. How the manipulation of language is possibly the most powerful means of controlling the minds of individuals. 5. Accurate understanding of the past impacts on the consciousness of individuals as well as the wider community. 6. Totalitarian regimes primarily use fear as the chief weapon to control people. 7. Individuals are not always at the mercy of the state. 8. Even in the face of tyranny, admirable human qualities can survive.

The role of the Media • In 1984, Orwell creates a media service that is nothing more than a propaganda machine, mirroring what Orwell, as a writer, experienced during his time in Spain. The group Orwell was associated with when in Spain, were wrongly accused of being a pro. Fascist organization – many believed these lies, including left-wing press in England. • Orwell was disturbed by what he perceived to be the falseness of his work when he worked for the BBC during WWII, when he was restricted about what news could be broadcast. Winston using the Speakwrite

The Setting • Oceania – a giant country comprised of: ØThe Americas ØThe Atlantic Islands, including the British Isles ØAustralia ØThe southern portion of Africa. • Oceania’s mainland is called Air Strip One, formerly England. • Story takes place in London in the year 1984, a terrifying place and time where the human spirit and freedom are all but crushed. • War is constant in the novel.

3 ‘super-states’ or political realms: • Oceania • Eastasia: covers Japan, Korea, China and northern India. • Eurasia: covers Europe and (more or less) the entire Soviet Union ØThese lines were consistent with the political distribution of the Cold War era beginning after WWII. ØEach state is run by a totalitarian government that is constantly warring on multiple fronts. ØBy creating an entire world at war, Orwell creates a terrifying place that is impossible to escape for his main character, Winston. ØOceania’s ideology is Ingsoc (English Socialism), Eurasia’s Neo-Bolshevism and Eastasia’s is the Obliteration of the Self (one imagines some kind of buddhist-inspired fascism. If one can). These ideologies are very similar, but the people are not informed of this.

Winston’s world mirrors the real world • Winston Smith, the main character, was born before WWII and grew up knowing only hunger and political instability. • What Winston experiences in the novel, are exaggerations of real activities in wartime Germany and the Soviet Union. • Orwell based 1984 on the facts as he knew them: hunger, shortages, repression by extreme governmental policies – all of these actually happened around him. • War hysteria, the destruction of the family unit, the persecution of “free thinkers” or those who were “different” or not easily assimilated into the party doctrine, the changing of history to suit party ideals – all of Orwell’s speculation about the future is actually a creative extension of how the masses were treated under Franco, Hitler and Stalin.

Oceania’s Political Structure Divided into 3 segments: 1. The Inner Party – the ultimate ruling class, consisting of less than 2 % of the population 2. The Outer Party – the educated workers, numbering around 1819% of the population. 3. The Proles – the proletariat, the working class.

Lies versus Truth Political language can be “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. George Orwell

Donald Trump and 1984 Video – Doublethink / ‘Alternative Facts’ / Newspeak

Social Media, Surveillance and Social Control • Black Mirror

Popular Culture Big Brother Room 101 Fake News

Reading Focus Questions – Chapter 1 1. How does Orwell position readers to view Winston’s world and place of residence as poverty stricken, bleak and highly surveilled? Find evidence from the text. (p. 3) 2. b) Find the description of Big Brother. Why do you think Orwell has portrayed BB in this way? (p. 3) 3. What physical ailment does Winston suffer from?

Chapter 1 Questions 4. What is a telescreen and how does it function? (p. 4) 5. What does Winston look like? How does his appearance help to develop the bleak environment of 1984? 6. How does the world look to Winston? 7. Which matters more? The police patrols or the Thought Police? (p. 4) 8. What powers did the Thought Police have? (p. 5) 9. Where does Winston work? (p. 5) 10. How does The Ministry of Truth look? Why do you think Orwell has portrayed this building in this way? (p. 5)

Chapter 1 Questions 11. What are three slogans of the Party? (p. 6) 12. What are the 4 Ministries which form the government of Oceania? (p. 6) 13. What are their ‘Newspeak’ names? 14. Which one was the ‘really frightening one’? Why? (p. 6) 15. How much food does Winston have? (p. 7) 16. What does he consume instead of lunch? (p. 7)

Questions 17. How does Orwell describe ‘the book’? (p. 8) 18. What does Winston do that could be punishable by death? (p. 8) 19. Who does Winston write his diary for? (p. 9) 20. What Newspeak word does Winston think of? (p. 9) 21. In his diary, Winston recounts the audience reaction to the war films. Which people applauded the films? Who ‘kicked up a fuss’? Why? (p. 11) 22. Which two people come into the room during the Two Minutes Hate?

Chapter 1 Questions 23. How are the two people described? How does Winston feel about these people? (p. 11 -12) 24. What happens during the Two Minutes Hate? (p. 13) 25. Who is Emmanuel Goldstein? (p. 13 -14) 26. What does Goldstein say about Big Brother and the Party? (p. 1415) 27. What is the Brotherhood? (p. 15) 28. What is ‘the book’? (p. 15) 29. How is ‘the Hate’ described on pages 16 and 17? What are the features of the ‘Hate’?

Chapter 1 Questions 30. Whose eye does Winston catch during the ‘Hate’? (p. 19) 31. What do incidents like this do for Winston? (p. 19) 32. What does Winston write over and over in his diary? (p. 20) 33. What is Thoughtcrime? (p. 21) 34. How was Thoughtcrime punished? (p. 21) Two Minutes Hate