The early 1900s were a trying time for much of the world. Two world wars, throngs of revolutions, and recessions in several once wealthy, powerful nations. Growing up in these tough times immensely helped shape George Orwell’s writing style. Orwell believed that “subject matter [is] determined by the age [a writer] lives in” and that he lived in a “tumultuous, revolutionary [age]”. Though there are a plethora of reasons an author may write, Orwell believed the typical writer’s motivation came from “sheer egoism”, “aesthetic enthusiasm”, “historic impulse”, and “political purpose”. In the political spectrum of this, he concluded that the “desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after” was a major theme (Orwell). This idea was proven true for his own works, namely Animal Farm and 1984. In Orwell’s 1984, Oceania is a complete, repressive totalitarian state and is a warning to the western world.
George Orwell was part of the Imperial Police in
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German children were targeted by the Nazi Party “as a special audience for its propaganda messages” with organizations such as The Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls ("Indoctrinating"). These groups parallel the Junior Spies and the Anti-Sex League in 1984. Hitler and Big Brother used the kids in these groups to teach blind allegiance. In the novel the children “were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages […that] produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the disciple of the Party” (Orwell 29). In Oceania, “it was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children” and the newspapers each week had reports of “child heroes” who turned in their traitor parents for conscious and unconscious remarks of rebellion towards the Party (Orwell