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George Orwell and Animal Farm and 1984

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George Orwell and Animal Farm and 1984



George Orwell is only a pen name. The man behind the classics Animal Farm and 1984 was named Eric Arthur Blair and was born to a middle class family living in Bengal in 1903. Eric Blair got his first taste of class prejudice at a young age when his mother forced him to abandon his playmates, which were plumber's children (Crick 9). He could then play only with the other children in the family, all of whom were at least five years older or younger than Eric (Crick 12). This created in him a sense of alienation that plagued him all his life and seems to be reflected in the bitter decay and loneliness he later expressed in his novel 1984. As he moved around unsuccessfully from job to job, …show more content…

It tells the story of the revolution of the animals living on Manor Farm. A pig named Napoleon rises to become the totalitarian leader of the farm, which is renamed Animal Farm, after the lazy, alcoholic farmer is run off. Animal farm is an allegory for the October Revolution and Stalin's regime in Russia. It is a novel in which "every detail has political significance" (Meyers 133). Napoleon the Pig, representing Stalin, gradually tears down the precepts upon which Animal Farm has been founded and eventually returns the farm to a condition almost worse than before, with the pigs whipping, killing, and starving the other animals.



The humans in 1984 exist in much the same state as Orwell left the animals in Animal Farm. They are defeated, scared, and completely subservient to their totalitarian dictator. 1984 is Orwell's vision of the state of the future, a state existing under the rule of Big Brother in the year 1984. The novel focuses on the life of Winston Smith. Winston works in Minitrue, which is the branch of Big Brother's government concerned with writing news stories, whether true or false, and altering past news reports to reconcile any contradictions with current news stories and state policies. Minitrue is a shortening of the words "ministry of truth" in Newspeak, an original language, based on these types of abbreviations, created by Orwell to show how Big Brother uses the limiting of people's language to control their thoughts.

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