1984 Compared To Today

1984 is the epitome of everything that author George Orwell despised. Ingsoc’s regime uses surveillance, language, and information to manipulate and control its citizens. Although 1984 is presented as a work of fiction, Orwell intended the novel to reflect the political climate of his time in the late 1940s. Without the foresight of the Cold War, 1984 proposed a real and terrifying analogy to readers due to the ideological battle between the United States and the Soviet Union. When former Supreme Court Justice Member William H. Rehnquist (2004) described the reaction of current readers to the novel, “...it will seem to them like a work of science fiction, in a setting conceivable only on some other planet. But in England in 1949, it would have

Nevertheless, many individuals see odd similarities between 1984 and the modern world as more than coincidental. Despite the extremity of comparing the modern world to the perfect totalitarian state of INGSOC, George Orwell’s 1984 recurring themes of totalitarianism, disinformation, and over-surveillance can be applied to today’s political climate.

Before engaging in the debate over the extent to which 1984 applies to the current political climate, it is imperative to understand the context in which Orwell created 1984, alongside the reasons why 1984 is compared to today. 1984 follows Winston Smith, a citizen of a totalitarian regime in Oceania, who is constantly wary of the watchful eye of Big Brother, the party’s emblem (Voice, 2019). He works at the Ministry of Truth, designed to rewrite the past to hold a monopoly on communication and information. For example, the party says that Oceania is at war with the regime of Eastasia, even if they are actually at war with Eurasia. Ingsoc’s control over information is

Oceania’s dystopian yet fictional setting created an authentic reality for readers to connect to as they saw Winston's world reflected in their own. Although 1984 was meant to represent Orwell’s time, the end of the Cold War created a divide on the extent to which 1984 still applied to the current political climate. For some readers, 1984 is a direct analogy to the current politics, as they find a significant amount of overlap between Ingsoc’s brutal tactics for manipulating citizens and the current use of government power, such as oversurveillence and the use of language and disinformation. To others, 1984 is an extremist and unfair comparison to today, as Orwell himself agreed that it was infeasible for any government to master the use of totalitarianism as compared to Ingsoc. However, regardless of the perspective, it is undisputable that Orwell designed his novel to reflect certain themes of totalitarianism that Orwell feared and worried would continue into the future. Everything Ingsoc did, though taken to the extreme, directly represented one or more societies within history. The novels grim narraitive served as a reminder of what could happen in the worst of society if totalitarianism continued to