The Influences of George Orwell's 1984

The Influences of George Orwell's 1984

by Benjamin Secino

The Influences of George Orwell's 1984

George Orwell
Credit:	Von Branch of the National Union of Journalists

Abstract

This milestone explores the experiences and historical events that inspired George Orwell to compose his most famous work, Nineteen Eighty-Four. In doing so, this milestone details several major events in George Orwell's life that contributed in substantial ways to the political beliefs and worldviews behind Nineteen Eighty-Four. This background is then used as inspiration for a piece of creative writing that draws on the major themes of Orwell's masterpiece.

Introduction

This milestone articulates the major influences behind three of the themes found in George Orwell's novel, 1984: The error of hierarchical class systems; The horror of politically-induced warfare; And the need for a free, unbiased media. This research is timely, given the recent surge in the novel's popularity. In 2013, only twenty-four hours after Edward Snowden released information on the NSA, sales of 1984 on Amazon.com rose by 6,021%. More recently, after the 2016 Presidential election, 1984 became the #1 best-selling book on Amazon.com. As more and more people read this novel, it is important to understand where it came from and what its message means. Although a large group of information exists on how Orwell's 1984 can be interpreted, less attention has been given to how this work came to be from the psychological perspective of its author. This milestone aims to help fill this gap.

In a sense, this project represents a continuation of all my previous experience of analyzing literature and researching the historical background of well-known cultural icons. However, the deliverable aspect of this milestone, consisting of a piece of creative writing inspired by the themes of 1984, is new to me. I've done plenty of creative writing in the past, but have never been constrained by theme requirements. This represents a new challenge.

George Orwell: A Selected Biography

The following chapters in George Orwell's life have been selected for exploration because of their clear connections with themes in 1984. Furthermore, each of these events was written about by George Orwell himself, either in essays, novels, or letters. These first-person accounts give an important and undiluted perspective on George Orwell's thought process as a political satirist.

Childhood at Crossgates

Eric Blair, who adopted the pen name George Orwell in 1933, was born in 1903 in Bihar, India, to a family with multiple generations of imperialist background. His great-great grandfather was a plantation owner in Jamaica, his grandfather was a Church of England minister in India and Tasmania, and his father was a sub-deputy agent in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. Blair moved with his mother to England when he was one year old. Though he was very young at the time, this process of moving from a country where his family had a function and authority to a country where they had neither would have a lasting impact on Blair's sense of class. Blair would not see his father again until he was eight years old. By then Blair had lost all affection for his father, whom he saw "as a gruff-voiced elderly man forever saying 'Don't'."

At eight years old, Blair received a scholarship to study at a prep school named Crossgates, where, by his own description, he learned little of practical value. At age ten, Blair was moved into the scholarship class, a group of boys specially trained to win scholarships at desirable public schools. Blair later described the experience in an essay, "Such, Such Were the Joys:"

Over a period of two or three years the scholarship boys were crammed with learning as cynically as a goose is crammed for Christmas. And with what learning! ...Your job was to learn exactly those things that would give an examiner the impression that you knew more than you did know, and as far as possible to avoid burdening your brain with anything else. Subjects which lacked examination-value, such as geography, were almost completely neglected, mathematics was also neglected if you were a "classical," science was not taught in any form - indeed it was so despised that even an interest in natural history was discouraged - and the books you were encouraged to read in your spare time were chosen with one eye on the "English Paper."

While at Crossgates, Blair was constantly reminded of his status as one of the less-well-off students. Not only was a caste-like structure perpetuated by the other students at Crossgates, many if whom came from "millionaire" families, but clear favoritism for the monied students was also clear amongst the administration. Blair described how students from aristocratic or millionaire backgrounds were far less likely to receive beatings than the poorer students, and were given far greater lenience when it came to laziness and low quality of work. Blair was disgusted by this favoritism, realizing early on that many of the ideals that he was supposed to strive for, "to be at once a Christian and a social success," were unattainable because they depended "not only on what you did but on what you were." This sense would fuel many of Blair's later feelings of class and may have contributed to his socialist political views.

The Spanish Civil War

From Crossgates, Blair earned a scholarship to the well-regarded public school Eton, but, once there, his performance proved "disappointing". This assessment cost Blair an opportunity to study at Oxford or Cambridge, and he instead joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. Here Blair became one of just ninety police officers tasked with managing a city with "a population which was equal to that of a medium-sized European city." As revolutionary nationalism escalated in burma in the 1920s, though, Blair because uncomfortable with his position. Blair later reflected that as a police officer, he was "hated by a large number of people." Blair resigned from his post after five years, moving to Paris, London, and other locations in Southern England.

In December of 1936, Blair enlisted in a Socialist militia in the Spanish Civil War. His experiences are documented in his novel, "Homage to Catalonia," in which he explains that he had first traveled to Spain "with the notion of writing newspaper articles, but.. joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do." Blair received "the briefest and most ineffectual" training before being sent to the front lines in early January. Blair recounted in Homage to Catalonia the rifle given to him shortly before he was sent to the front lines:

It was a German Mauser dated 1896 - more than forty years old! It was rusty, the bolt was stiff, the wooden barrel-guard was split; one glance down the muzzle showed that it was corroded and past praying for. Most of the rifles were equally bad, some of them even worse. ...The sergeant gave us five minutes' 'instruction', which consisted in explaining how you loaded a rifle and how you took the bolt to pieces. ...Cartridges were handed out, fifty to a man, and then the ranks were formed and we strapped our kits on our backs and set out for the front line, about three miles away."

On the front lines, Blair entered into trench warfare, which he described as an almost surreal experience. Blair wrote that in trench warfare during the winter, the five most important things, in order, are firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy. Out at the front, Blair began to "marvel at the futility of it all," of a war that moved nowhere. Blair returned to Barcelona on April 26th, but spent most of his time on leave fighting in the streets for the Socialists. He returned to the front lines on May 10th, and on May 20th was shot by an enemy sniper through the throat. Blair describes the experience as "very interesting" and like being "struck by lightning." He spent the next month recovering in a number of hospitals, where Blair recounts that he was told repeatedly "that a man who is hit through the neck and survives... is the luckiest creature alive." Blair could not help thinking, however, that "it would be even luckier not to be hit at all." Blair was discharged from the military. Quickly, however, Blair learned that his militia-party had been outlawed and that its members were being arrested and executed. Pursued by police, Blair was barely able to escape to France on June 23rd.

World War II and BBC Propaganda

Blair is best known today for his strong critique of totalitarianism, but he also dedicated much of his talent to the opposition of British imperialism. This view was formed early in Blair's career as a writer, influenced by his experiences of class, oppression, and his time in Burma. However, with the outbreak of World War II, Blair felt compelled to support Britain in the war effort. Blair later wrote, "I know enough of British imperialism not to like it, but I would support it against Nazism or Japanese imperialism, as the lesser evil. Blair joined the BBC in August of 1941, taking a position with the Indian Section of the BBC's Easter Service. Blair worked for the BBC until 1943, first as a Talks Assistant, and later as Talks Producer. His task was to create propaganda in the form of weekly news reviews and cultural programs intended to send a "strong antifascist signal to India while at the same time attempting to strengthen Idia's loyal support of the British war effort."

Frequently, the message that Blair broadcast to India was in direct conflict with his own anti-imperialist stance. Though Blair worked hard to perform his task within the required guidelines, he was regularly censored by the Ministry of Information. Often, the work of censorship was delegated to Blair's colleagues within the BBC. As an example, Blair was prevented from inviting H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw to present on the radio because they were considered "loose cannons," critical of the war.

Working as a propagandist created a moral conflict for Blair. In 1938, Blair had written in Homage to Catalonia that "one of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all of the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting." Blair justified his work at the BBC by creating a distinction between "honest and dishonest propaganda," and by working to keep "our propaganda slightly less disgusting that it might otherwise have been. However, Blair was hesitant to put pen name, George Orwell, on many of his broadcasts. These were instead produced under the name Eric Blair. In April 1942, he wrote the following in his diary:

You can go on and on telling lies, and the most palpable lies at that, and even if they are not actually believed, there is no strong revulsion. We are all drowning in filth.... I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgement have simply disappeared from the face of the earth.

Blair left the BBC in 1943. The official reason for his resignation, though, is different from what may have been expected. The following is an excerpt from a letter Blair sent to LF Rushbrook Williams, the Eastern Service Director

I am tendering my resignation because for some time past I have been conscious that I was wasting my own time and the public money on doing work that produces no result. I believe that in the present political situation the broadcasting of British propaganda to India is an almost hopeless task. Whether these broadcasts should be continued at all is for others to judge, but I myself prefer not to spend my time on them when I could be occupying myself with journalism which does produce some measurable effect. I feel that by going back to my normal work of writing and journalism I could be more useful than I am at present.

Whether or not this was the real reason for Blair's departure cannot be determined. While it is likely that Blair felt himself wasted as a propagandist, it is probable that the main reason for his resignation was his ongoing moral disagreement with the work at hand.

Later Life

Soon after leaving the BBC, Blair began writing Animal Farm in November of 1943. Blair was inspired to compose this novel by a desire to expose Stalin's regime as "inscrutable" and "a savage kind of state-capitalism." Animal Farm was repeatedly rejected by publishers as "impossible to sell," until its eventual acceptance in October 1944. In the ten months before Animal Farm was published, Blair began work on Nineteen Eighty-Four. Though it would take Blair several years to complete this work, the main thesis behind it was solidly formed from the start. Blair wrote the following in a letter in 1944:

Hitler, no doubt, will soon disappear, but only at the expense of strengthening (a) Stalin, (b) the Anglo-American millionaires and (c) all sorts of petty fuhrers of the type of de Gaulle. All the national movements everywhere... seem to take non-democratic forms, to group themselves round some superhuman fuhrer... and to adopt the theory that the end justifies the means.... With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist.... Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can't say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible

In the last three years of his life, Blair moved in and out of hospitals with pneumonia and tuberculosis. Blair struggled to complete Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published in June of 1949, before his death on January of 1950. Eric Blair was forty-six years old.

The Influences of 1984

Many of the influences behind George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four came more or less directly from his own life experiences. The analysis conducted here will focus on three influences, each contributing to a major theme in Orwell's work.

First, Orwell developed a strong aversion to class distinctions during his time at Crossgates, and from his work in Burma's police force. This hatred for anything approaching a caste system appears in Nineteen Eighty-Four as a scalding critique of the party system. In Oceania, society is divided into three classes: The proles, the Outer Party, and the Inner Party. In this system, as at Crossgates, what you were able to achieve and how highly you were regarded depended "not only on what you did but on what you were." For instance, members of the Inner Party, similar to the "millionaire" children at Crossgates, are allowed far more indulgent behavior than the proles. Members of the Inner Party enjoy good food, comfortable living conditions, and the ability to turn off their telescreens, luxuries that are unattainable for anyone else. As with Orwell's more general Democratic Socialist political beliefs, these issues of injustice can be seen as direct consequences of his experiences as a child and young adult.

From his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell gained a lasting sense of the futility and horror of armed conflicts in which neither army can - or is willing to - defeat the other. Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in a world divided into three superstates. These powers are constantly at war with one another, but none can defeat the others, and, more to the point, none are willing to try. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, power is maintained through constant conflict and the threat that if citizens overthrow their governments, they will be crushed by the other world powers. Orwell was first inspired to write about such a world by the 1943 Tehran Conference, in which Marshal Stalin, President Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Churchill met to discuss how the world should function after the end of the Second World War. Orwell saw this as the beginnings of a "carve-up" of the globe into superpowers. This view was further entrenched by the use of the atomic bomb in 1945, which Orwell believed would lead the way to a world in which complete destruction was a constant threat. It is likely, though, that if Orwell did not have personal experience with war he would not have been so concerned by his observations.

A second powerful connection between Orwell's experience in Spain and the militaristic strategy in Nineteen Eighty-Four comes from the betrayal that Orwell's militia faced in 1937. Here, the militia to which Orwell belonged was abruptly and unjustly labeled traitorous. Its members were rounded up, jailed, and, in many cases, killed. The reason for this betrayal was purely strategic. The militia had served its purpose on the front lines, and now posed a potential threat to the political leaders. Eliminating the militia helped the leaders solidify their claims to power. This reality is mirrored in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the superstates are constantly creating and breaking alliances with each other, always for individual gain.

Finally, Orwell's time at the Ministry of Information during World War II directly influenced his depiction of Oceana's Ministry of Truth. Working for the BBC and the MOI give Orwell direct experience with the creation of propaganda and the control of thought. Here, he experienced a kind of Thought Police: Colleagues at the BBC were often tasked with censoring each other, reviewing and blocking each others works. It's hard to imagine that this kind of self-policing was not a direct ancestor to the infamous enforcers of Oceana.

Furthermore, the central character of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston, works at the Ministry of Truth, just as Orwell worked for the Ministry of Information. As if this were not enough, the Eastern Service Committee for which Orwell worked held its meetings in Room 101, the same room in which Winston is tortured and broken, "taught" to love the Party and Big Brother. The parallel made by Orwell between the Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Truth could not be more obvious. In his mind, both agencies seek to control the thoughts of the public by distorting facts and presenting only those truths which are convenient for the political leaders.

Through these strong connections between major events in Orwell's life and central themes in Nineteen Eighty-Four, it can be clearly seen that Orwell took a great deal of his inspiration from events surrounding him. Nineteen Eighty-Four, then, can be seen as a kind of directed autobiography, in which George Orwell told the story of his life in such a way as to prove his political points and rail against totalitarianism.

Deliverable

The deliverable for this milestone consists of a piece of creative writing that explores major themes from George Orwell's novel, 1984. As I was writing this piece, I based its world around certain concepts. First, just as Orwell divides his world into three superstates, I decided to separate my world into two governmental systems. However, I did not want to explore a conflict in medias res. I wanted to examine the origins of such a conflict, and the impacts that its development would have on society. But I do not believe that two superstates could exist together for any period of time without breaking into conflict, and I also did not want to look into the simultaneous formation of two superstates. I decided to solve this issue by separating the superstates by a vast distance and allowing them to discover each other after they were both fully established. But what distance could be vast enough for an all-powerful government to be oblivious of its neighbor? My answer was outer space, an idea which brought me to a world where inter-galactic travel was possible. This world also freed me to create a society that existed by Orwellian principles without having to seem like a descendant of human society. This society could be non-human, erasing a reader's preexisting beliefs as to how a society should be run. It also allowed me to examine a class structure that might never develop amongst humans, one in which an individual's rank depends largely on genetically engineered traits given before birth.

Finally, in exploring the application of Orwell's themes, I created thematic aspects that contrast with Orwell's novel. First, the government in my piece controls society largely through appeasement practices, creating beautiful cities, comfortable living conditions, and free genetic alteration services that combine to make its citizens unwilling to overthrow the government and readily accept the totalitarian control over their lives. I created this system because I believe it to be more realistic than Orwell's sadistic Big Brother. Beating society with a stick may temporarily make it follow your will, but it is my personal belief that leading society with a carrot is a more sustainable long-term approach. Second, in contrast to Orwell's Winston, who starts 1984 hating Big Brother but is eventually "taught" to love the regime, I decided to write for a character that begins with total belief in the political system and only slowly begins to lose her faith in her government's desire to protect and care for her. I made this decision for the sake of variety, and for the interesting experience of writing from the point of view of a character with beliefs that are entirely different from my own.

When reading my work, I believe that it is important to keep in mind that much of it, like 1984, is either metaphorical or satirical. I hope you enjoy.

The Void Between - Draft Two

Conclusion

This milestone found that many of the major events in George Orwell's life ended up influencing his writing and political beliefs in major ways, as shown in his landmark novel, 1984. Orwell derived his hatred of hierarchical class systems from his experiences as a child at school and as a young adult in the Burmese police force. His distrust for political and useless wars can be seen as a direct consequence of his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and his revulsion to propaganda and governmental efforts to control thought were almost certainly heightened by his experience as a radio propagandist for the BBC during the Second World War. All of these themes show prominently in 1984.

In a further effort to understand the meaning of these themes, a piece of creative writing was composed that explores the workings of a class-based society with tight governmental control over the media and its engagement in a politically-induced war. This piece is linked to above.

George Orwell's 1984 remains one of the most influential novels of the 20th century. Further research should focus on how 1984 is interpreted today, almost seventy years after it was written, and what it means in today's social-political environment.