The World Within The Text of George Orwell's 1984

Animal Farm and 1984

The world of 1984

Encyclopedia II

The world described in Nineteen Eighty-Four contains striking and deliberate parallels with the Stalinist Soviet Union and Hitler's Nazi Germany. There are thematic similarities; the betrayed revolution - with which Orwell famously dealt in Animal Farm; the subordination of individuals to "the Party"; the rigorous distinction between inner party, outer party and everyone else. There are also direct parallels of the activities within the society; leader worship whether it be Big Brother, Hitler or Stalin; Joycamps, concentration camps or gulags; Thought police, NKVD or Gestapo; daily exercise reminiscent of Nazi propaganda movies; Youth League, Hitler Youth or Octobrists/Pioneers.

There is also an extensive and institutional use of propaganda; again, this was found in the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Stalin. Orwell may have drawn inspiration from the greatest propagandists of the time, the Nazis; compare the following quotes to how propaganda is used in Nineteen Eighty-Four:
Nazis

• “The broad mass of the nation ... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.” - Adolf Hitler, in his 1925 book Mein Kampf

• “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” - Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels

• “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” - Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Goering, before committing suicide at the Nuremberg Trials

Nineteen Eighty-Four

• “Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think what they have to put up with.”

• “The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the government of Oceania itself, 'just to keep the people frightened'.”

• “The key-word 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.”

• “To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed.”

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The novel does not give a full history of how the world of 1984 came into being. Winston's recollections, and what he reads from "The Book" (i.e., Emmanuel Goldstein's book) reveal that at some point after the Second World War, the United Kingdom descended into civil war, eventually being absorbed by the United States to form the new world power of Oceania; at roughly the same time, the Soviet Union expanded into mainland Europe to form Eurasia; and the third world power, Eastasia - an amalgamation of east Asian countries including China and Japan - emerged some time later.

There was a period of nuclear warfare during which some hundreds of atomic bombs were dropped, mainly on Europe, western Russia, and North America. (The only city that is explicitly stated to have suffered a nuclear attack is Colchester.) It is not clear what came first - the civil war which ended with the Party taking over, the absorption of Britain by the US, or the external war in which Colchester was bombed. To reconstruct it one needs to try combining the hints scattered in "1984" itself with the analysis and predictions contained in Orwell's non-fiction writings.

In articles written during the Second World War, Orwell repeatedly expressed the idea that British democracy as it existed before 1939 would not survive the war, the only question being whether its end would come through a Fascist takeover from above or by a Socialist revolution from below. (The second possibility, it should be noted, was greatly supported and hoped for by Orwell, to the extent that he joined and loyally participated in "the Home Guard" throughout the war, in the futile expectation that that body would become the nucleus of a revolutionary militia). After the war ended Orwell openly expressed his surprise that events have proven him wrong.

The most complete expression of Orwell's predictions in that direction are contained in "The Lion and the Unicorn" which he wrote in 1940. There, he stated that "the war and the revolution are inseparable (...) the fact that we are at war has turned Socialism from a textbook word into a realizable policy". The reason for that, according to Orwell, was that the outmoded British class system constituted a major hindrance to the war effort, and only a Socialist society would be able to defeat Hitler. Since the middle classes were in process of realizing this, too, they would support the revolution, and only outright reactionaries would oppose it - which would limit the amount of force the revolutionaries would need in order to gain power and keep it.

Thus, an "English Socialism" would come about which "...will never lose touch with the tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above the State. It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little with the spoken and written word".

Such a revolutionary regime, which Orwell found highly desirable and was actively trying to bring about in 1940, is of course a far cry from the monstrous edifice presided over by Big Brother, which was his nightmare a few years later. Still, one can see how the one may degenerate into the other (and The Party does provide "traitors" with "a solemn trial" before shooting them...)