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I read Nineteen Eighty-Four , "Brave New World" and "On The Beach" as part of the subject of English in my last year of high school in 1983 and each of these novels left an indelible imprint in my mind. These novels have definitely had an impact on my way of thinking and my fears and hopes for the future of our world.  I cannot recall any of the other novels studied during my years at High School, but these books I shall never forget, that is the impact that they have had on me.  May these novels never come to fruition.  The worrisome thing is however, it appears that there are some aspects of 1984 that have already been implemented or at least are being considered.
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In George Orwell's futuristic novel published in 1949, Nineteen Eighty-Four posits a world wherein the government is totalitarian in word and deed. All mass communications media are subordinate to the government's interpretation of reality. Television, as technology and as communicated content, is the principal means of thought control, buttressed by the press and publishing. Through such, the population — the ruling Party, its government employees, and the proletariat — are controlled through perpetual war and all of its concomitant material and intellectual shortages. According to the government, this life must be endured for the collective good, until the war ends; the war ends when the government says so.

The citizens have no right to a personal life or to personal thought. Leisure and other activities are controlled through a system of strict mores. Sexual pleasure is discouraged; sex is retained only for the purpose of procreation, although artificial insemination (ARTSEM) is more encouraged.

The mysterious head of government is the omniscient, omnipotent, beloved Big Brother, or "B.B.", usually displayed on posters with the slogan "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU" and this phrase refers to invasive surveillance.  It is never made clear whether Big Brother is an actual person or whether he is a fictitious leader created as a focus for the love of the Party. 

The three slogans of the Party, on display everywhere, are:

    * WAR IS PEACE
    * FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
    * IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Each of these is of course either contradictory or the opposite of what is normally believed, and in 1984, the world is in a state of constant war, no one is free, and everyone is ignorant.

The Party can rewrite history with impunity, for "The Party is never wrong." The ultimate aim of the Party is to gain and retain full power over all the people.  The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake… We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

DoubleThink: The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink. Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

The Perpetual War: The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four is built around a never-ending war involving the book's three superstates, with two allied powers fighting against the third. Each superstate is so strong it cannot be defeated even when faced with the combined forces of the other two powers. The allied states occasionally split with each other and new alliances are formed. Each time this happens, history is rewritten to convince the people that the new alliances were always there, using the principles of doublethink. The war itself never takes place in the territories of the three powers; the actual fighting is conducted in the disputed zone.

The war is unwinnable, and that its only purpose is to use up human labor and the fruits of human labour so that each superstate's economy cannot support an equal (and high) standard of living for every citizen.

Living standards for the population are generally very low — everything is in short supply and those goods available are of very poor quality. The Party claims that this is due to the immense sacrifices that must be made for the war effort. They are partially correct, since the point of continuous warfare is to be rid of the surplus of industrial production to prevent the rise of the standard of living and make possible the economic repression of people.  The Inner Party, at the top level of society, enjoys the highest standard of living.

It is not clear to what extent Orwell believed his work was prophetic.

His character O'Brien described his view of the future of the world:  "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 …for ever."

The above dialogue was taken from: Nineteen Eighty-Four

In the shadow of Big Brother

Avril Moore
The Age Monday April 23, 2007

The novel 1984 resonates long after the year has passed.

IT HAS been exactly 30 years since I studied George Orwell's political satire 1984 for my year 12 certificate. In 1976, I was mesmerised but not wholly convinced by the idea that government control, when pushed to its limits, could produce a society such as Winston's Oceania.

And yet the year in question, although long since passed, remains in our lexicon, no longer as an abstract idea but as a perpetual warning on how effortlessly democracy can transform into autocracy if our vigilance is not maintained……………………………..

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Due to the novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" no longer being under copyright it is legally available as a free download at this address: http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/index.html