George Orwell's '1984'

Paper Summary:

The writer of this article states that post-9/11 America is an uncomfortably appropriate time to be taking a look at literature like George Orwell's '1984'. Given the current political climate of the United States, the writer notes that Orwell's dark, repressive world hits close to home. Not only does the power of language exist within the pages of Orwell's fictitious dystopia, but the writer points out that there is increasing evidence that the American government is attempting to control and manipulate the masses by hijacking the common language. The writer concludes that with the current war in the Middle East and the actions of the American government smacking uncomfortably like the policies and actions of those in Oceana, now is the time to revisit 1984 and take a good, hard look at what is going on.

From the Paper:

"However, it is the people that offer the control by using the language that is given to them in the first place. Though this is a sound theory, and can, unfortunately, be seen in practice all over the world, the weakness in language that allows this to occur, is ironically the same as the strength that will keep it from taking over completely and pushing society over the edge into the kind of system that is presented in 1984."
"When the year 1984 came and went without the gloomy socialist world of the novel 1984 coming to fruition, the Western world probably sighed a bit of relief. However, as Orwell points out in his appendix entry on Newspeak, the full implementation of Newspeak isn't actually scheduled to occur until around the year 2050. This gives the Western world another 66 years to worry about the predictive nature of Orwell's work. Though in the fictitious 1984, Newspeak was in wide usage already, it has taken until the 21st century to really begin to see this concept implemented in the real world."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Booker, Keith. The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature: Fiction as Social Criticism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.
• Brother, Big. Newspeak Dictionary. http://www.newspeakdictionary.com. Accessed 28 May 2006.
• Dickstein, Morris. "Hope Against Hope: Orwell's Posthumous Novel." American Scholar. 73.2. Spring 2004 pp. 101-114.
• Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Signet Classics, 1950.
• Sisk, David. Transformations of Language in Modern Dystopias. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997.

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