George Orwell was an author deeply interested in social problems who believed writers had a responsibility to engage with and respond to what was happening around them. His dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, set in a future totalitarian society in 1984, portrayed a frightening vision of a world without freedom, privacy, or independent thought where even language is controlled and distorted to manipulate people. The protagonist Winston Smith tries to rebel against the oppressive dictatorship through love and memory but is ultimately broken physically and mentally by the overwhelming power of the totalitarian state embodied by Big Brother. Orwell aimed to warn readers about the dangers of dictatorship, lack of freedom, and how power could be used to control thought and distort language.

1. Testo
George Orwell
and Nineteen-eighty-four

2. An author deeply
interested in
social problems
Marxist ideas
Social engagement
Social responsibilities

3. Testo
Content is more relevant

4. He believed that writers
couldn't ignore what was
happening around them
They had to act taking their own responsibilities

5. He was not an innovator in novel writing
but he was able to intercept that fear for
future coming out in that period by
portraying a frightening future society
But we still share that fear...

6. Nineteen- eighty-four
It is a dystopian novel written in 1948 but set in 1984
The worst social setting is presented
Life is continuously controlled by telescreens and cameras
following each step the characters take
There's no freedom, no privacy
Even language loses its connotation and sense
The use of slogans, posters, announcements seem to prevail to
allude to the misleading power of advertising

7. The protagonist is Winston Smith, a modern anti-hero
who tries to rebel against this form of dictatorship
through memories of the past, love, secrecy but at the
end he will be annihilated both physically and mentally.
His name reminds the English statesman whereas his
common surname the individual against a social system
whose mechanisms are almost impossible to shatter.
Power embodied by the Big Brother overcomes and
almost submerges him. It has been said that you don't
have only to respect him but to love him.

8. The author wants
to warn against
the evils of
dictatorship
Lack of freedom
Lack of values
Torture
Persecution

9. “Ignorance is strength”.

10. “Slavery is freedom"

11. “Hate is love”.

12. These slogans in the
form of an
oxymoron are the
leit motif of the novel
Language loses its
strength and the author
seems to warn even
against mass media

13. In this sense the writer becomes the silent
consciousness of his times, he makes readers think
and reflect, acquiring a new consciousness of what is
happening around them.

14. Other ingredients of the
novel
Mystification of power
Symbolic allusions to the
present situation
A harsh criticism against
every form of dictatorship
Use of technology as a
form of control