1984 context Flashcards
Title
inspired by Yeats’ poem ‘1919’
Alberto Moravia’s ‘1934’ and Anthony Burgess’ ‘1985’.
1948 current events
Russia- taken over Eastern Europe, threatening the west.
Gandhi was assassinated.
Berlin Airlift began.
Count Bernadotte murdered in Palestine
Coup in Czechoslovakia.
Orwell’s predictions
America, Russia & China - 3 hostile superstates.
Vietnam War (fighting not in their homelands)
cultural revolution in China
Pol Pot regime in Cambodia
Khomeini autocracy in Iran.
Portrayal of torture and pain
Nazi extermination camps
his personal experience in sanatoria from 1947-48.
Newspeak
reducing language to reject abstract words and concentrate meaning, received positively after the Great War.
Hemingway- fascinated by language of telegraph cables.
‘Farewell to Arms’ - rejects extravagant language.
‘We are the dead’. echoes Macrae’s poem, ‘In Flanders Fields’.
Newspeak
Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’: criticises confusion resulting from extravagant language.
INSTEAD,
1984: criticises the oversimplification of language as dangerous.
Orwell’s schooling
Attended Eton and despised.
social and political power of headmaster and fear of school life.
West: “to send everybody in England to an enormous Crossgates to be as miserable as he had been”.
1984 details his experiences in ‘Such, Such Were the Joys’.
Orwell’s schooling
complexity of emotions Orwell felt about his school days.
totalitarian oppression replicated in his experiences:
physical discomfort, enforced group activities etc.
physical exercises, banners + drills.
compulsive repetition of ‘down with Big Brother’ recalls the lines written for punishment at school.
Head of Big Brother
replacement of God through the total power and dominance of regime leaders.
image reminiscent of Lord Kitchener and Stalin.
Public themes
Seen in…
Ukraine Famine (1933)
Trotsky (1940)
Great Purge Trials (1936-38)
Non-aggression pact with Russia (Aug 1939)…invasion of Russia (1941).
1984: “the Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed.”
Morality
Orwell condemned Auden for “the necessary murder”.
reflected in Winston’s “yes” to throwing sulphuric acid into a child’s face.
ruling class betraying principles of revolution. (in 1930s and 1984).
Civil War in Spain (36-39)
fascism and communism encountered.
most intellectuals first real experience of politics and warfare.
Orwell only writer who fought as common soldier.
also knew from personal experience being hunted by the secret police.
2 main influences… Marx and Freud.
Marxist-
beliefs appear in ‘The Theory and Practise of Oligarchical Collectivism’.
“if there was hope it lies with the proles”.
lack awareness though in 1984.
Freudian-
Winston’s guilt about death of his mother, foreshadows betrayal of Julia.
Two Minutes Hate - “sex gone sour”.
Parsons, ‘down with BB’ - freudian conscience at work.
Line of children’s poem read out upon catching Julia and Winston - ‘here comes a chopper to chop off your head”.
Political themes of period.
Homosexuality-
intense attachment to O’Brien.
“almost worship flowed out of Winston towards O’Brien”.
“they were intimates” - despite being tortured.
complete degradation unable to break his affinity for O’Brien.
O’Brien
irish name- inspired by first wife’s surname,
O’Shaughnessy.
expressed fears of power, sexual demands of women etc.
O’Shaughnessy family treated Orwell for TB in 1930s.
Latter doctors in 1948 unsuccessful use of streptomycin in 1948.
destruction of body for Winston by O’Brien exactly as doctors did to Orwell.
