“1984” Essay. The Last Man in Europe

There were written a lot of different “1984” essays, but all of them are about the same - a totalitarian dystopian world.  On our website we present you one of the George Orwell “1984” essay. We are happy to help you to write “1984” analysis essay, or “1984” essay thesis, or any other kind of written work.

George Orwell wrote a really undying novel, in which he describes a totalitarian dystopian world. In this world people really do not know what freedom is, because they always work for the Party like robots or machines. The power of the country tries to suppress people’s thinking by creating hundreds of incomprehensible laws, and everyday propaganda. Citizens stopped thinking themselves, they just listened and obeyed, because they believed that the Party will take care of them. Propaganda always terrorized people, paralyzed their will and thinking and turned them into obedient robots. Of course, there were people, who could not support the ideas of the Party. Winston Smith was one of them.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength – at that time it was a very popular slogan. It demonstrates how people lived. If you want to be strength you should ignore everything and without questions do what the Party says. Of course, such slogan changes the truth, but citizens were sure, that everything they want to have, they already had and other wishes can make them unhappy.

Big Brother was an almighty ruler. Everybody was afraid of him but people should also respect him and obey. The pictures of Big Brother were everywhere! The Party told that everything is okay owing to the wisdom of Big Brother and only he could give peace to the citizens of Oceania. As we can see people always lived in everyday fear and deception. There were no constitution, but laws were everywhere. People could not go for parties or dates, could not fell in love, could not go for a walk wherever they want.

In Oceania was one more thing, which helps to control everybody, everywhere and at every time. It was laundry surveillance. There were television screens in every apartment and even in the streets. You could not turn off this screen. Through these screens the government could know what people are doing every minute.

Main Characters in The Novel

In spite of the huge size of the novel, we can see that there are only a few main characters. They are: Winston Smith, Julia and O’Brien. There are some other characters, whom we meet in different episodes.

Winston Smith is the main character. He is 39 years old man, who was born in London. Smith was named after Winston Churchill, He worked in the Ministry of Truth in the documentation department. His everyday task is to make changes in documents. Winston does not support the ideas of the Party, but for a long time he kept it in a secret. Later Winston and his girl-friend were caught, and after awful tortures, the Smith renounced his beliefs and his love. He became another man, who believes in Party and Big Brother’s ideas.

Julia – is a young 26 years old girl, who felt in love with Winston. She also works in the Ministry of Truth, but in the literature department. She also pretends that support Big Brother’s ideas. In reality Julia and Winston usually offend the laws.

O’Brien – is very handsome and clever man. He is the member of the Party. Sometimes he pretends, that does not respect the ideas of the Party, but in fact he is a real senior member of the Inner Party.

Ministers In The Novel

The government in the Orwell’s world consists of different ministers, where worked thousands of citizens. The ministers have interesting names, which do not describe their functions.

The Ministry of Peace is responsible for the war. Oceania was constantly at war with other countries.

 The Ministry of Love organizes different tortures for the disobedient inhabitants. People, who worked there are cruel, they arrested real and imagined dissidents and then tortured poor people. Everybody knew about the Room 101, where people felt the worth thing in the world.  And only when love for Big Brother becomes first and the only the citizen can be free.

Ministry of Plenty controls all the food and production.

Ministry of Truth is responsible for all kinds of information in the country (even documents and education). As you guessed the task of this ministry was to change all information into a huge lie.

Interesting Facts About The Novel

The novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” takes the 8th place in the list “200 of the the best books on BBC’s version”

A few years ago a world known newspaper “The Times” included the novel “1984” into the list of 60 of the best books, which were published during the last 60 years. And the popular magazine “Newsweek” decided that the novel should be in the second place among 100 best books around the world.

American IT-company Apple has used references to the novel, in their product advertising, filmed by Ridley Scott and launched in 1984 on the eve of release of Macintosh. The video image is represented by Big Brother - producer of IBM computers.

So, we can see that the novel was very popular many years ago, and nowadays it has not lost its value. If you do not read “The Nineteen Eighty-Four” yet, I advise you to do it as soon as you can. It is not easy to read and understand the “1984”, because the book describes unknown world for us. Many critics say that worship Big Brother is very similar to the cult of Stalin. And the politics in Oceania is similar to the politics of the Soviet Union. Who knows, maybe that was the reason, why Orwell’s novel for a long time was banned among the soviet people?