orwell 1984

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Presentation by Vittorio Canale, Alessandro Carfagna, Marco Colasanti, Chiara Falchetti

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Page 1: Orwell 1984
Page 2: Orwell 1984

BIOGRAPHY

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. He was born in 1903 in Bengal, India and had studied to Eton (England), but refused to go either Oxford and Cambridge and decided to enroll instead Indian Imperial Police. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense, revolutionary opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language and a belief in democratic socialism. Considered perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture, as well as fiction and polemical journalism, Orwell wrote literary criticism and poetry. He is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the satirical novella Animal Farm (1945). His Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences as a volunteer on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, and his numerous essays are also widely acclaimed. Orwell's influence on culture, popular and political, continues. Several of his neologisms, along with the term Orwellian, now a byword for any draconian or manipulative social phenomenon or concept inimical to a free society, have entered the vernacular. He died in 1950.

Page 3: Orwell 1984

MAIN WORKS

NOVELS

• Burmese Days (1934)• A Clergyman's Daughter (1935)• Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)• Coming Up for Air (1939)• Animal Farm (1945)• Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

Page 4: Orwell 1984

BOOKS BASED ON PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

• Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), in which describes the period when he left his upper-class life and start with casual labour in restaurant kitchens before begin unemployed

• The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), an account of his life and work with the miners of North of England

after the Great Depression

• Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences as a volunteer on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War

• The English People (1947)

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The story of Winston Smith presents the world in the year 1984, after a global atomic war, via his perception of life in Airstrip One (England or Britain), a province of Oceania, one of the world's three superstates; his intellectual rebellion against the Party and illicit romance with Julia; and his consequent imprisonment, interrogation, torture, and re-education by the Thinkpol in the Miniluy.

Page 7: Orwell 1984

CHARACTERS• Winston Smith — the protagonist is a phlegmatic everyman.• Julia — Winston's lover is a covert "rebel from the waist downwards" who espouses

Party doctrines whilst living contrarily.• Big Brother — the dark-eyed, mustachioed embodiment of the Party governing

Oceania (a quote of Josef Stalin), whom few people have seen, if anyone. There is doubt as to whether he exists.

• O'Brien — the antagonist, a member of the Inner Party who deceives Winston and Julia that he is of the Brotherhood resistance.

• Emmanuel Goldstein — a former Party leader, bespectacled and with a goatee beard like the Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky (an original leader of the Bolshevik Revolution who, after losing to Stalin in the struggle for power was deported from the USSR and was eventually murdered). Goldstein's persona is as an enemy of the state - the national nemesis used to ideologically unite Oceanians with the Party, purported author of "the book" (The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism), and leader of the Brotherhood. The Book was actually created and collaborated on by O'Brien. Goldstein allows the Party to encourage Two Minutes Hate and other fear mongering.

• Note that the physical existence of Big Brother and Emmanuel Goldstein is never made clear.

Page 8: Orwell 1984

THEMES

NATIONALISM • Nineteen Eighty-Four expands upon the subjects summarized in the essay Notes on

Nationalism (1945) about the lack of vocabulary needed to explain the unrecognized phenomena behind certain political forces. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Party's artificial, minimalist language 'Newspeak' addresses the matter.

• Positive nationalism: Oceanians' perpetual love for Big Brother, who may be long dead or even non-existent from the beginning; Celtic Nationalism, Neo-Toryism and British Israelism are (as Orwell argues) defined by love.

• Negative nationalism: Oceanians' perpetual hatred for Emmanuel Goldstein, who like Big Brother may not exist; Stalinism, Anti-Semitism and Anglophobia are defined by hatred.

• Transferred nationalism: In mid-sentence an orator changes the enemy of Oceania; the crowd instantly transfers their hatred to the new enemy. Transferred nationalism swiftly redirects emotions from one power unit to another (e.g., Communism, Pacifism, Colour Feeling and Class Feeling).

• O'Brien conclusively describes: "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

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SEXUAL REPRESSION

With the Junior Anti-Sex-League, the Party imposes antisexualism upon its members to eliminate the personal sexual attachments that diminish political loyalty. Julia describes Party fanaticism as "sex gone sour"; except during the love affair with Julia, Winston suffers recurring ankle inflammation, an Oedipal allusion to sexual repression. In Part III, O'Brien tells Winston that neurologists are working to extinguish the orgasm; the mental energy required for prolonged worship requires authoritarian suppression of the libido, a vital instinct.

Page 10: Orwell 1984

FUTOROLOGY• In the book, Inner Party member O'Brien describes the Party's vision of future:• There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always

— do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.

• —Part III, Chapter III, Nineteen Eighty-Four• This contrasts the essay "England Your England" (1941) with the essay "The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the

English Genius" (1941):• The intellectuals who hope to see it Russianised or Germanised will be disappointed. The gentleness, the hypocrisy,

the thoughtlessness, the reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms will remain, along with the suet puddings and the misty skies. It needs some very great disaster, such as prolonged subjugation by a foreign enemy, to destroy a national culture. The Stock Exchange will be pulled down, the horse plough will give way to the tractor, the country houses will be turned into children's holiday camps, the Eton and Harrow match will be forgotten, but England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same.

• The geopolitical climate of Nineteen Eighty-Four resembles the précis of James Burnham's ideas in the essay "James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution" (1946):

• These people will eliminate the old capitalist class, crush the working class, and so organize society that all power and economic privilege remain in their own hands. Private property rights will be abolished, but common ownership will not be established. The new ‘managerial' societies will not consist of a patchwork of small, independent states, but of great super-states grouped round the main industrial centres in Europe, Asia, and America. These super-states will fight among themselves for possession of the remaining uncaptured portions of the earth, but will probably be unable to conquer one another completely. Internally, each society will be hierarchical, with an aristocracy of talent at the top and a mass of semi-slaves at the bottom.

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CENSORSHIP

• A major theme of Nineteen Eighty-Four is censorship, which is displayed especially in the Ministry of Truth, where photographs are doctored and public archives rewritten to rid them of "unpersons". In the telescreens, figures for all types of production are grossly exaggerated (or simply invented) to indicate an ever-growing economy, when in reality there is stagnation, if not loss.

• An excellent example of this is when Winston is charged with the task of eliminating reference to an unperson in a newspaper article. He proceeds to write an article about Comrade Ogilvy, a fictional party member, who displayed great heroism by leaping into the sea from a helicopter so that the dispatches he was carrying would not fall into enemy hands.

Page 12: Orwell 1984

COMPARISON WITH HUXLEY These two book are very similar in many ways. Even each Utopian society takes pace differently from

each other there are more similarities in these two books that should be compare and contrast. Like I said earlier that the book has similarities. Its similarity is share through one character from each

book. The characters are name Lenina and Julia. These characters show a resemblance of one another. Lenina is a from Brave New World while Julia exist in 1984. The two are no different when it comes to sex, Julia and Lenina would use their bodies for sex with multiple partners and they find it enjoyable. Another known similarities are that they both are attractive people and any man wouldn't hesitate to sleep with them and they both play an important part in the book. Both author must of seen them as a whore.

Though there are similar things about Lenina and Julia. There is also difference that separates them from one another. Lenina for one is mentally condition from birth to encourage and enjoy sex with other men. While for Julia, even though she is an anti-sex type of person she only uses and enjoy sex as a rebellious act against a powerful political party. When it comes to a though situation Julia out beats Lenina because of Julia's ability to be smart, sharp, and avoids conflict. Lenina on the other hand escapes problems by taking an anti-depressant drug called Soma that causes a person to escape reality.

Aldous Huxley and George Orwell had reasons for writing their books. The similar thing about it is that, both of the author's books were a prediction of the future that they believed would soon become. Huxley showed us a world where science and technology ruled the world. For example characters in Brave New World were developed in an incubator and mentally condition to follow orders. As for Orwell he created a world society where Government and political power played a role of world domination. Though different in their sight of the future one thing is clear about their intention to show the world. Both authors wrote the book to warn people about the fast growing of science and technology or how much power government and political parties are gaining.

Page 13: Orwell 1984

• Vittorio Canale

• Alessandro Carfagna

• Chiara Falchetti

• Marco Colasanti