George Orwell's 1984: themes and analysis

¶ … Accuracy of George Orwell's Predictions

George Orwell chose a specific date, 1984, for the title of his novel predicting the evolution of society by that date. However we are now 18 years past that date and his predictions have not come true. How could Orwell have been so wrong? Or was he only wrong about the exact timing and still correct about his general predictions? To understand Orwell's view of the future, it is necessary to put Orwell's work in the context of contemporary events just after the conclusion of World War II. His lifetime only spanned the first half of the twentieth century, a period of tremendous conflict, particularly in the "civilized world" of Orwell's experience. Much of the conflict occurred in Europe and impacted the United Kingdom dramatically. The power vacuum resulting at the end of World War II allowed the growth of totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. From the viewpoint of the democratic governments, communism was the next great threat after the demise of Hitler's Germany and imperial Japan. The era of the "Red Scare" and McCarthyism epitomized the extreme reaction of the "free" countries to the stated goal of communism to overwhelm the democratic societies. Orwell could not help but be influenced by this tremendous fear and the subsequent response.

How could any rational person living at that time expect anything other than the open societies evolving to the situation Orwell predicted in his novel? Couple this climate with the development of more and more sophisticated technology to not only invade personal privacy, but also to manipulate people's view of their own country and prejudices against people who did not share the same values. Ironically Orwell portrayed the follies of communism in Animal Farm and yet the perceived peril of communism tilted his view of the world, as it might look 35 years in the future. In this article, I will show how logical and obvious were Orwell's conclusions and how 35 years would seem to be such a long time when less than 35 years had seen two World Wars, the Great Depression, the rise and fall of Hitler's Germany and imperial Japan, and the rise of world wide communism.