1984 - The Big Brother

[ZeitGeist]

Reading the novel, I couldn't help thinking that the Big Brother echoes 2 historical figures - Stalin and Hitler.
Just like Hitler, the Big Brother is "worshiped" by the population. He has a certain "charm". The appearance - black moustache, dark hair, for example. Hitler was seen to be the "saviour" of the country by many germans at the time.
I also thought that the way the countries were ruled (Oceania in the book and Hitler Germany) are simular. The governments relied heavily on the armed forces - they were "police states", to different extents. Just like Belarus and Russia are today, it is argued.
What do you think?

[DanWilde1966]

I think that you are absolutely correct. Orwell's intention was to write a novel that would exaggerate world political tendencies in 1948 (the year he wrote it), and of course, the Nazi and Russian totalitarian regimes were both current, or at least fresh, in the public mind. Orwell had written about dictatorship in Animal Farm (which satirises the Russian Revolution), and many of the themes of that short work are reprised in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In the later novel, of course, the tendencies and characteristics of dictatorship are taken to a terrifying extreme ("thoughtcrime", "doublethink", the ubiquitous telescreens), to create a truly dystopian vision of the future. One can debate the extent to which Orwell?s prophecies have become true. Have his exaggerations of reality in 1948, become 2005?s actuality?

[ZeitGeist]

Well, something in 1984 is very similar to a present-day life.
We have around... what? 5 milion CCTV cameras in Britain. We are constantly watched. In the underground, on the street, in shops, etc. The images are stored for 90 days and this information is not secure, it can be easily accessed by an experienced hacker. And then everyone claims that that's for our own security...
You may disagree with me, but I instantly thought of south-east population of London, when I read the passage, where the author descibes proles, and especially the way they talk.