George Orwells first classic novel, Animal Farm, was a historical allegory.

Through a group of speaking farm animals, Orwell told the story of the Russian Revolution and Joseph Stalins rise to power. The pig Napoleon and his minions overthrow the farms humans, and the pigs power expands until all power is in their trotters, pretence is no longer necessary, and they rule by naked force (Atwood). Orwells next novel, 1984, was, in many ways, a continuation of his original ideas in Animal Farm. 1984, however, depicted a futuristic society in the midst of a totalitarian rule, as opposed to the rise of such a regime. Orwell claimed that the setting of 1984 symbolized an English world mired in poverty and depression (Ebert). However, Orwell also proved to be surprisingly cognizant in predicting future governments which would oppress its citizens in the way the Big Brother does, from Africa to Asia and even todays America.

Atwood
Animal Farm charts the progress of an idealistic movement of liberation towards a totalitarian dictatorship headed by a despotic tyrant; Nineteen Eighty-Four describes what it's like to live entirely within such a system. The government of Airstrip One, Winston's "country", is brutal. The constant surveillance, the impossibility of speaking frankly to anyone, the looming, ominous figure of Big Brother, the regime's need for enemies and wars - fictitious though both may be - which are used to terrify the people and unite them in hatred, the mind-numbing slogans, the distortions of language, the destruction of what has really happened by stuffing any record of it down the Memory Hole - these made a deep impression on me. But like all absolutist governments and religions, the Party demands that every personal loyalty be sacrificed to it, and replaced with an absolute loyalty to Big Brother. Orwell has been accused of bitterness and pessimism - of leaving us with a vision of the future in which the individual has no chance, and where the brutal, totalitarian boot of the all-controlling Party will grind into the human face, for ever. However, the essay on Newspeak is written in standard English, in the third person, and in the past tense, which can only mean that the regime has fallen, and that language and individuality have survived. The majority of dystopias - Orwell's included - have been written by men, and the point of view has been male. When women have appeared in them, they have been either sexless automatons or rebels who have defied the sex rules of the regime. But with 9/11, all that changed. Now it appears we face the prospect of two contradictory dystopias at once - open markets, closed minds - because state surveillance is back again with a vengeance. The torturer's dreaded Room 101 has been with us for millennia. The dungeons of Rome, the Inquisition, the Star Chamber, the Bastille, the proceedings of General Pinochet and of the junta in Argentina - all have depended on secrecy and on the abuse of power. Lots of countries have had their versions of it -

their ways of silencing troublesome dissent.

IHR Many of the predictions made by George Orwell in his book 1984 in relation to "Big Brother" surveillance, corruption of language and control of history have already come about to a great extent in Communist countries and to some extent in the West. The powers of security police in Western countries to intercept mail and tap phones have often been extended, police agencies keep numerous files on law-abiding citizens, and more and more public officials have the right to enter private homes without a warrant. Many government departments keep computerized information on citizens and there is a danger that this information will be fed into a centralized data bank. The popular perception of history is based on brainwashing by the mass media, indoctrination by the education system, peer group pressure, self-censorship and television "docudramas." Some aspects of popular history are shrouded in secrecy and receive little publicity. Thus, collaboration between the Nazis and the Zionists in World War II, revisionist evidence about the treatment of Jews during that war, the role of Subhas Bose in the struggle for Indian independence, massacres by the Soviets at Katyn, Vynnytsia and elsewhere, and the sinking of the passenger ships Wilhelm Gustloff, General Steuben, and Goya, in each case with greater loss of life than the Titanic, are seldom mentioned in the controlled media of the West.
Ebert What Orwell feared, when he wrote his novel in 1948, was that Hitlerism, Stalinism, centralism and conformity would catch hold and turn the world into a totalitarian prison camp. It is hard, looking around (he globe, to say that he was altogether wrong.

Economist Their seemingly opposite lives were dedicated to the same cause: fighting against the future. They saw the evil of their own time not as throwback but preface. Moral relativism, cloaked in jargon, was on the march, promoted by the tedious, despicable knowalls of the supposedly educated classes.

Economist With so much to gain, what is there to lose? Privacy and the risk of abuse by a malevolent government spring to mind first. Indeed, compared with some smart systems, the ubiquitous telescreen monitoring device in George Orwells novel 1984 seems a plaything. The books hero, Winston Smith, would soon have a much harder time finding a corner in his room to hide from Big Brother.

The masterpiece that killed Orwell

Some hotels have refused to call a guest bedroom number 101 - rather like those tower blocks that don't have a 13th floor - thanks to the ingenious Orwellian concept of a room that contains whatever its occupant finds most impossible to endure. An accusation often levelled at the current government by those who like it least is that they are trying to tell us what we can and cannot think is right and wrong. People who believe that there are correct ways to think find themselves named after Orwell's enforcement brigade.

NYT

Orwell did not intend ''1984'' simply as an attack on Communism but as a parable about all forms of tyranny. ''I believe totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere,'' he said, ''and I have tried to draw these ideas out to their logical consequences.'' His tale is meant to illustrate the brute precepts of the sinister, sadistic O'Brien, leader of the Inner Party: ''The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. . . . One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. . . . The object of torture is torture. . . . The object of power is power. . . . Power is in tearing the human mind to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.''