1984 Study Guide (George Orwell)

George Orwell, born Eric Blair in India in 1903, attended prestigious boarding schools in Europe on scholarship where he never quite fit in because his family was not quite rich enough.

After he graduated from Eton, he made the decision to forego college and instead got a job with the Imperial Police in Burma, which is ironic because he had no respect for the government whatsoever. Having been riddled with illness for his entire life, Orwell was forced to leave the Imperial Police and move back to England where he decided to concentrate on his writing as he was profoundly inspired by such authors as Jack London.

Orwell decides to live in the societies in which he is writing about, so he spends time on the streets of London, among the coal miners in northern England, and in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Throughout these experiences Orwell began to favor a democratic government rather than the capitalism he was used to and decided that he hated the notion of a totalitarian government, which led him to write what is one of his best known novels, “1984”.Historic ContextPlot OverviewCharactersThemesChapter Summaries

“1984” represents a totalitarian society where the ruling party controls the thoughts and actions of those who do not support the cause by watching their every move on television screens.

At the time, the novel was penned, the mid-1940’s, such an idea was unheard of and terrifying, warning the world of the dangers of a totalitarian society. “1984” was one of a slew of novels that were written about dystopian societies as opposed to the perfect utopian society that everyone dreamed of.

A dystopian society represents the worst possible scenario and the people who read “1984” at that time were terrified of the possibility of such a society coming to fruition. Though democracy won over and the totalitarian society never came to fruition, the novel still remains a warning of “what could happen.”