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Works
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NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
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1984 is a book divided
into 3 parts. In the first, there is the introduction of the main character, Winston
Smith, in the context of a regimented, oppressive world. The second part describes his
love for Julia, and the temporary happiness their relationship brings to both. The third
and last part deals with Winston s imprisonment and torture by the Thought Police,
and the final loss of his intellectual integrity. Winston Smith is a man, about 39 years
old, who lives in Oceania, a state reigned by the IngSoc. (the English socialist movement)
which is a sort of dictatorship. The world is divided into three main states: Oceania,
Eurasia and Estasia; these three countries are always involved in struggles against each
other and they change their alliances about every 4/5 years, so that they are continually
fighting and none of them could really defeat another one: there is a sort of ever-lasting
war and it brings the world a sort of balance. Oceania includes London, the city where
Winston lives, completely different to the actual London, because it appears as a
monotonous city dominated by the imposing building of the four Ministries of the
government, a city devastated by the continuous bombing and afflicted by an effective
poverty intentionally caused by the members of the Party in order to control people
better. Winston works for the Ministry of Truth which is a branch, a mean of the Socialism
to modify the past by re-writing documents, newspapers, books and every written document
in order to fit it to the ideals of the Party and to its way of acting. By re-writing
history the Party wants to make people think that It and especially its leader, Big
Brother, is infallible and had ruled Oceania since the first years of the world. The main
idea of the Party is to control people s mind and thoughts through an oppressive
policy, with telescreens put everywhere to monitor what everyone could say and even their
face-expressions, with a brain-washing, with the introduction of a strong Propaganda
against any possible enemy of the Party, repressing any possible free-minded thought,
introducing new cleverly studied recurrences like the Two Minutes Hate, or The Week Hate.
They also created a new language called Newspeak, introduced in order to reduce word and
so, consequently, reduce the ways to express any possible idea. However, Winston is not
completely absorbed by this artificial life and, while obeying to the prescription of the
Party, he even thinks like a normal man, considering the others as people accustomed to
the regime. He has to hidden every expression which could betray himself and to disguise
every thought opposite to the IngSoc. During his monotonous life, he is capable to write
in a diary, now implicitly forbidden by the Thought Police, in order to maintain sanity in
this disorienting world; in this diary he writes about his illegal minds, his impressions
about his work-mates and other compromising things which later lead him to the
imprisonment. Winston noticed two people from the place where he works, they are
OBrien and a brown girl. One day this girl, Julia, reveals himself being yet
free-minded and falls in love with Winston, so that they can momentary evade this
oppressive reality and find temporary happiness. They stay together whenever they can but
they dont know whats going to happen to them: OBrien appears as a
free-minded man too, and involves them in a subversive organisation against the
totalitarianism, but later on he reveals being a false man, a spy and a collaborator of
the IngSoc and so imprisons them in order to punish them and to conform their mind to the
ideals of the Party. Then they get separated and tortured both physically and mentally:
the Party and OBrien want to recreate their mind by introducing wrong ideas and
erasing their capability of free-thinking and their capability to feel sentiments. Their
aim is to completely re-write their minds and then liquidate them in order not to give any
possible model to the hidden revolutionary movement which could threat the government: the
Party must continue forever in ruling Oceania because men are just realising to perpetuate
his organisation. Then Winston is tortured but he has a strong mind and, even if he is
physically weak and continually tortured, OBrien finds difficulties to modify it,
but under the tortures he cant even pretend being under the Party control; after a
long period of detention, OBrien, with all his tortures, the electroshocks, the hit
of the clubs reaches his aim changing Winston s mind, leading his ideas to the
absurdity of those of the Party and finally turning his love for Julia to hate, completely
changing and distorting his personality and even his human-being. The book ends with the
encountering of Winston and Julia after the tortures they suffered and just before being
deleted from the nightmarish world they are living in: they sadly realise they had been
ruined, any human identity had disappeared in them, and they are not more capable of
loving another human creature, they became almost aliens even to themselves and to the
world they had lived before the dictatorship, the far normal world. Winston finally get
killed and every suffering he had bear are now stopped like his poor life. |
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ANIMAL FARM
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In this fable he
reproduced the political situation of the USSR through the story of a colony of animals.
It is a satire against the Soviet Union and all the dictatorships of the human history.
(written in 1943 but not published until 1945 because Russia was an ally during the World
War II and couldnt be offended.
| An attack to Marxism and specially to Stalinism. |
| An attack against all totalitarians. |
| A pessimistic description of the useless attempts of the Low (Boxer, the sheep, the
hens
) to obtain equality, while the Highs (the powerful, the most gifted, the most
cunning) try to maintain their power and the Middle (dogs, the Raven, the Cat, Mollie) try
to get some part of the cake. |
| Philosophically, the book seems to say that justice in the distribution of gifts and
resources does not exist. From this point of view the book results even more pessimistic
than a simple denunciation of the Russian Socialist Revolution. |
| The parallel with the Soviet Union is easy: |
Old Major |
(Marx and Stalin before the Revolution) |
Jones |
(Tsar Nicholas II) |
Napoleon |
(Lenin & Stalin) |
Snowball |
(Trotsky) |
Squealer |
(the agents for the propaganda) |
Pilkington |
(Britain) |
Frederick |
(Germany) |
First invasion |
(the anti revolution invasion in 1919 by the West) |
Second invasion |
(battle of the windmill) |
Boxers death |
(the exploitation of the small republics after 1945 Stalins purges) |
The windmill |
(Stalin 5 years plans) |
The last dinner party |
(the Teheran conference). |
| The denunciation regards political, philosophical and moral
questions: how can one concile his conscience with the discipline of an ideological
choice? |
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