George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on June 25, 1903, in Motihari, India. The Blair¹s were relatively prosperous civil servants, working in India on behalf of the British Empire. Blair would later describe his family¹s socioeconomic status as "lower-upper middle class," on comment on the extraordinary degree to which British citizens in India depended on the Empire for their livelihood; though the Blair were able to live quite comfortably in India, they had none of the physical assets or independent investments that would have been enjoyed by their class in England proper. Despite this factor, Ida Blair moved back to England in 1904 with Eric and his older sister Marjorie so that they could be brought up in a more traditional Christian environment.

In England, Blair entered the public school system, and was admitted to Eton College in 1917. For most students of this era, Eton led directly to higher education at a university, often Oxford or Cambridge. Blair shunned further formal schooling, and after leaving Eton in 1921, returned to India in 1922 to join the Indian Imperial Police. This work gave Blair his first real experiences with the poor and downtrodden whom he would later champion, and unhappy with the his position as the "hand of the oppressor," Blair resigned from the police force in 1927, returning to England that same year.

Upon return to England, Blair lived in the East End district of London, which was filled with paupers and the destitute, whom he saw as the spiritual kin of the Burmese peasants he had encountered as a policeman. In 1928, Blair moved to Paris to become a writer, where he again lived among the poor, and was eventually forced to abandon his writing temporarily and become a dishwasher. He returned to England the next year (1929), and lived as a tramp before finding work as a teacher at a private school. This position gave Blair time to write, and his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, was published in 1933, under the pseudonym George Orwell. The publication of this first work, which was an account of his years living among the poor of Paris and London, marks the beginning of a more stable period for Orwell, in which he taught, opened a bookshop, and continued to write. His first fictional work, Burmese Days, appeared in 1934.

The next few years saw a steady stream of activity for Orwell, who produced A Clergyman¹s Daughter in 1935 and Keep the Aspidistra Flying in 1936. During this period he also met Eileen Maud O¹Shaughnessy, whom he married on June 9, 1936. That same year Orwell received a grant from the Left Book Club to produce a work dealing with the conditions of the poor, which resulted in the publication of The Road to Wigan Pier. In December of 1936, Orwell decided to enlist in the POAM, the Socialist military party in Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. Attracted by the vision of a society without class distinction, Orwell fought for socialism in Spain, but was wounded in the neck and forced to return to England in 1938. His account of his experiences in Spain was published as Homage to Catalonia that same year. Upon his return to England, however, Orwell fell ill with tuberculosis, which he neglected. In 1941, Orwell went to work for the BBC as a broadcaster for India, a post which he resigned to become the literary editor for The Tribune. This position was equally short-lived, however, as Orwell resigned in 1945 to begin work on Animal Farm. Orwell¹s family life experienced significant upheaval during this period, marked by the adoption of a son, Richard, in 1944, and by the death of his wife Eileen during an operation in 1945. Soon after Eileen¹s death, Animal Farm was published, and Orwell becomes "famous overnight". In reaction to the sudden glare of fame, Orwell moved to the island of Jura, off the coast of Scotland, with aggravated his tuberculosis considerably. While at Jura, Orwell wrote his last novel and perhaps most famous novel, 1984, and married Sonia Bromwell. In 1949 Orwell returned to England, but his tuberculosis was by that time painfully advanced. He eventually succumbed to the disease, dying on January 21, 1950.

The book 1984 can be seen as the final distillation of a number of opinions and theories George Orwell had been building over the years of his short life. His stint with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma introduced him to the shameful activities of the British in the Far East. For a few years after his return to Europe, he spent his time investigating the lives of the urban poor, emerging with a vague distrust of machine-age capitalist society.This bloomed into a firm adherence to Socialism in 1936, when Orwell was sent by his publisher to the industrial north of England, where he encountered for the first time "ordinary working class people." Within a year, he had married and relocated to Spain to join the revolutionary Marxist POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista, or Worker's Party of Marxist Unification), the dissident faction of the Spanish Communist party.

However, when the Stalin-backed Communists turned on their far-left anarchist allies and labeled POUM pro-fascist, the Orwells were forced to flee to avoid being thrown into prison and shot. The author's experiences in Spain engendered a lifelong horrified fixation on totalitarianism and a profound abhorrence for Stalinist Communism, both of which emerged in 1984. World War II's introduction of totalitarianism on both sides of the political spectrum‹fascism and communism‹served to solidify Orwell's hatred of authoritarianism and totalitarianism no matter which "wing" it was affiliated with. During the war, he was equally unimpressed by some of what was going on at home. Out of Orwell's work at the BBC from 1940-1943 grew both the nature of Winston's mind-numbingly useless and dishonest job, and, it has been argued, the impetus for Newspeak. (Orwell's interest in the connection between the growth of authoritarianism and the decline of language is explored in his essay "Politics and the English Language.")

Defining authoritarianism and totalitarianism here would be useful to understanding how Orwell shaped his observations and experience into 1984. Broadly speaking, an authoritarian system is one in which society is governed by a dictator or oligarchy not constitutionally responsible to the people. Totalitarianism is something of a sub-category of authoritarianism where the ruling group has complete and total control over every aspect of life, whether personal or public, and the individual is expected to conform.

Totalitarianism is a recent phenomenon, probably because of the technological advances (mostly related to surveillance and the dissemination of information) that have allowed it to develop. A totalitarian system condemns current society as corrupt and problematic, and introduces plans (like the Three-Year or Five-Year Plans) and programs to solve the problems presented. These measures demand complete conformity from the people. Party control is solidified through information control and censorship, a paramilitary secret police organization, and the institution of community groups (such as youth or cultural organizations). Totalitarianism differs from dictatorship or tyranny in its mobilization of political participation, its quest for the complete restructuring of both the individual and society, and its aim for unlimited, not just political, control.

Totalitarianism can be divided into right totalitarianism (fascism and Nazism) and left (communism). The differences lie in the development and support base of the systems. Right totalitarianism has traditionally relied on middle classes seeking to improve their position, tends to be blatantly racist and elitist, rests on hero-worship, and supports private ownership of industrial wealth. Left totalitarianism, on the other hand, appeals to the lower or working classes with the aim of eliminating class distinctions, is theoretically not bigoted, does not rely on a hero cult, and supports collective ownership of industrial wealth. Finally, with right totalitarianism, terror and violence arising from the struggle with the old elite tend to continue and increase, while in left totalitarianism‹arising in comparatively less advanced societies‹violence is prominent at the start during the revolution, but levels off once the governmental system has been restructured.

Rather than landing on one side or another, Orwell's novel is a harsh criticism of totalitarianism of all types. 1984 appears to be set in a society that practices right totalitarianism; but it clearly possesses qualities of left totalitarianism as well (notably in the collective ownership of wealth). The similarities with Josef Stalin's regime cannot go unnoticed. Like Stalin, the Oceanic government embraces characteristics of both fascist and communist authoritarianism: the former glorifies the wisdom of the leader, and the latter, the infallibility of the party. We can see both trends in 1984, where Big Brother (albeit a fictitious person) is worshipped as the wise and loving leader, and the Party is practically structured around its own supposed infallibility. In addition, many of the particulars of the Oceanic system (such as the Three-Year Plans and the forced-labor camps) appear to be thinly veiled allusions to aspects of Stalin's rule. It can even be conjectured that "Big Brother," with his dark, heavy mustache, is actually Stalin.

Orwell wrote 1984 while seriously ill with tuberculosis, and afterward commented that had he not been so ill, the book might not have been so bleak. To his consternation, after its publication, 1984 was used as propaganda itself, especially by western forces in post-World-War-II Germany; although he tried to distance himself from this, he was not very successful.

“He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.”

06.25.05 Post Date