1984 by George Orwell: An Introduction

George Orwell’s daunting vision of a dystopia has manifested in a literary masterpiece. With the title of 1984, Orwell envisioned a futuristic society where individuality and freedom are outdated and obsolete. Amongst the preeminent pieces of 20^th century literature, Orwell narrates the tale of an individual by the name of Winston Smith who as a member of the Outer Party, re-writes old newspaper articles in order to keep current news in line with the ideology of the Party that he serves. Based upon his experiences as a child and as an adult, Winston Smith despises virtually every aspect of the Party itself and imagines rebellion against Big Brother, the enigmatic dictator whose face personifies the totalitarianism that the Party and the sovereignty of Oceania stand for. Being a literary political fiction of the dystopian genre, Nineteen Eighty-Four has been deemed as a classic novel in terms of content, style, and themes. A plethora of the concepts it encompasses including Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, and memory hole have become a reputable lexicon ever since the book was published. The content of the literary work has given rise to the term Orwellian which signifies any form of deception, furtive surveillance, and historical manipulation in order to insidiously serve a totalitarian agenda of the nightmarish vision.