"1984" - Orwell's Dystopic Vision of the Future

29/3/2018

Orwell created his novel as a warning to society about the dangers of totalitarianism. Students need to be able gauge Orwell's contextual motivations and worldview. Orwell asserted,
‘What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, “I am going to produce a work of art.” I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience.”
Contextual resources can reinforce student understanding of the didactic purpose of the novel's confronting political satire. An audio version of the text is available on a site listed below. Contextual articles such as contemporaneous reviews and examining Orwell's articles and essays help clarify Orwell’s political purpose.