This is a summary of all the context and critical readings I used when studying and revising 1984 for my A Level English Lit Paper 2. It's thorough and detailed, covering Winston, Julia, community, totalitarianism, language, love and the past. I shared it with my friends who loved it and found it t...
1984 context and critical readings
Context:
Orwell’s work for the BBC during the war on propaganda
His son would have been around Winston’s age in 1984 so the book acts as a warning.
Seems increasingly significant as mass surveillance, incessant propaganda, perpetual
war and the cult of personality surrounding political leaders becomes a widespread
reality.
Orwell followed the Marxist belief that the fall of capitalism was inevitable due to it’s
inherent contradictions so a collectivist society was the natural progression after the fall
of capitalism. As a leftist, he favoured a democratic socialist collectivism but he feared
that oligarchical collectivism would become the reality, especially as the few examples of
collectivist societies up to that point we’re as such e/g Nazi Germany and Communist
Russia.
Collectivism permits the centralisation of power needed to exert total societal control and
Oligarchical Collectivism is a system whereby some elites centralise power using force
and deception, under the guise of a collectivist ideology e/g socialism, communism,
nationalism or fascism.
Orwell feared the rise of hedonism, believing it would weaken people until they were
unable to rebel against fanatical ideologies that desired to rule society. The overt
physical coercion he thought would be needed to enslave society has so far proved
unnecessary as we slowly allow our rights to be stripped away like a frog in boiling water.
Capitalism hasn’t fallen in the way that he expected so collectivism is yet to fully emerge
in the West.
Examples of doublethink in the war: people in favour of standing up to Germany were the
same who were against having enough armaments to make such a stand effective, the
contradictory formation of the U.N.O which is slave to the permanent five members of the
UNSC, and the Russian people being told for years that their standard of living was
higher than those in other countries, when it was in fact the opposite (aided by non-
contact between Soviet citizens and outsiders.
The 1950s Russian interpretation believed the book depicted America with BB and the
thought police symbolising the FBI. Though “Orwell himself invites reading 1984 as a
critique of Stalinism”
1984 is now “at the heart of anti-war protests (against the war in Ukraine), as well as
denunciations from officials who claim the book reflects Western societies” (The Moscow
Times). Draws parallels between1984 and modern Russia’s totalitarian surveillance
whereby ordinary people are imprisoned for calling it a war. Sales of the book in Russia
grew 30% in bookshops and 75% online in March 2022, compared with the previous
year.
“For many years we believed that Orwell described the horrors of totalitarianism. This is
one of the biggest global fakes. He depicted how liberalism would lead humanity to a
dead end” Maria Zakharova (Director of the Information and Press department for the
Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry)
Orwell believed that dominant weapons would become increasingly expensive and
difficult to mean so power would inevitably be held by fewer people, leaving the masses
unable to fight back.
Anne Applebaum coined the term ‘medium sized lies’ to refer to the conspiracy anti-
democratic leaders involve their citizens in in order to maintain power such as Trump
birtherism and distrust of the ‘deep state’.
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