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1984 George Orwell Influence

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The book 1984, by George Orwell was published in 1949. Although originally written as fiction, it has historical connotations behind it. In Why I Write published by Orwell, he has clearly stated that all the books he’s written after 1936 are “against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism.” He also says he wrote the book to describe “a hierarchical world tyranny is set up, how it stays in power, how it treats its people” (orwell today).Hence, we can infer that it was somewhat influenced by communistic societies at the time. Even today, we see several aspects of Orwell’s book in our world. In fact, even though the United States thrives under a democratic system, there are several aspects of Oceania that can be seen here, often times to …show more content…

In 1984, there is a continuous war between Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. The enemy of the war keeps changing, but the war has no end in sight. Winston describes this as “not remembering a time when his country had not been at war” with his “earliest memories [being that of] an air raid.” These wars are a way to keep people busy, fearful and hateful- and address the shortcomings of their own country. There are even celebrations like Two Minutes of Hate and Hate Week, where the enemy keeps changing, but the goal is constant fear for the public. This is similar to what the US has done in the past several decades. First there was the constant threat of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. These were the times when schools, offices and most major buildings carried out drills in case of a nuclear attack. US also intercepted in the Vietnam War, causing several casualties, while the people at home were left blind to what is going on. More recently, the Iraq War was started, which seemed unending to many. There were troops stationed in the Middle East, while substantial funding was taken from homeland issues and contributed there. It also resulted in other effects like forming of ISIS (Atlantic). Even more recently, people in the US have been afraid of nuclear war with North Korea, while there were troops still in Iraq, while there is an aspect of fear from other countries like Russia as well. This situation, before and after the Cold War, has been like 1984, in that it seems never ending. The enemy keeps changing, but the war never ends. This is not just in the case in the US, but in other countries as well, like Syria, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, etc, where war has taken over people's lives. They live everyday in fear of their lives- while other important things like education, and healthcare are all ignored. War has overshadowed their lives. Hence, there are similar aspects of

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