George Orwell, author of the brilliant political allegory Animal Farm was once quoted to say: "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly against Totalitarianism and for Democratic Socialism, as I understand it."

Orwell saw his role as a writer to be the objective conscience of a society - he was trying to express the truth in a particular political system as he saw it.

1984, Orwell’s most famous book and perhaps one of the most important and dark political satires ever written is parodying many different institutions that existed all around the world in 1949 when he wrote the book. At this time, totalitarianism was a stalking fear. With Nazi Germany in the recent past and Russia and China in the present, 1984 was not only a savage social comment, but even a prophecy of what could occur in as little as 35 years time. Some of the satirical techniques used by Orwell in 1984 are irony and pathos, parody of literary works and exaggeration.

In the story itself, Orwell portrays a dystopian and totalitarian state in which the government monitors and controls every aspect of human life to the extent that even having a disloyal thought –that is, a thought against the government, which is also called “The Party”– is against the law. The mysterious head of government is the all knowing, all seeing, all giving, beloved Big Brother. Again, ironically he is described as “...a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features." Who else springs to mind’s eye but the face of Joseph Stalin, whose terrible dictatorship destroyed the lives of millions?

The day to day life is controlled by the ever-watching “Telescreens” in which people are watched for every hour of every day. Just by looking in some way “guilty”, for example a nervous twitching or talking in your sleep, you will be sent off to the ministry of love to be tortured and interrogated until you are “reborn”. Big brother must wear you down mentally by brainwashing and physically, by extreme violence so that when they do decide to kill you, you have learned to “love” big brother. This is why Winston comes to the conclusion that “To die hating them, that was freedom”

As the novel progresses, the timidly rebellious Winston Smith, the protagonist of 1984, sets out to challenge the limits of the Party’s power, only to discover that its ability to control and enslave its subjects goes far beyond even his wildest conceptions.

The four ministries of “The Party”, the government in power, are shown in a light which is both ironic and satirical and Orwell’s heaviest use of devices is seen. The Ministry of Truth concerns itself with lies; the Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war; the Ministry of Love with torture; and the Ministry of Plenty, with starvation.

Winston works for the Ministry of Truth and is successful in rewriting the past to suit the present needs of the party. In his workplace he meets a co-worker called Julia and they have a secret love affair. Since all love and sex is absolutely forbidden, they must find a place with no “Telescreens” to be together.

The three slogans of the Ministry of Truth, visible everywhere, are: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

While by definition these words are contradictions, in the world of 1984 the world is in a state of constant war, no-one is free, and everyone is ignorant. Through the universality of the extremes the terms become meaningless, and the slogans become unquestioned. The reader must accept these ironic slogans as part of the everyday running of the world.

Newspeak, the "official language" of Big Brother which has replaced the English language, is extraordinary in that its vocabulary decreases every year; the state of Big Brother sees no purpose in maintaining a complex language, and so Newspeak is a language dedicated to the "destruction of words". As the character Syme puts it: "Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well... If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well... Or again, if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning, or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still.... In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words—in reality, only one word."

The true goal of Newspeak was for the good of Big Brother’s obedience. Since the thought police had yet to develop a method of reading people's minds to catch defiance, Newspeak was created so that it wasn't even possible to think a bad thought.

The concept of “Doublethink” is one of Orwell’s most profound inventions. It is the ability to hold 2 contradictory thoughts at the one time. The author shows our hero, Winston unable to resist joining in the Two Minutes Hate. He turned his hate for Big Brother into hatred for the girl sitting beside him. “Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind. He would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon… he would ravish her and cut her throat at the moment of climax.” Why? Because “She was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so…” This concept describes Big brother’s power over every part of society.

George Orwell even made a direct reference to some of the things he was satirizing in the novel when one character, O’Brien described the motives of Big Brother. "The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.” One of the main ideas surrounding this power was that it never ended, and that it could never, ever be defeated or overthrown. As one character put it: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever”.

There are many parallels to other important people of the 20th century in 1984. In his diary, Winston writes: "If there is hope, it lies in the Proles”. This is satirising and imitating Marx’s idea of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, where it was believed that the only people that could save humanity from this supreme, totalitarian power was the common people, the “dumb huddled masses”.

The history of the world of 1984, like Animal Farm, closely parallels the history of Russia between 1917 and 1945 – entailing the hopeful revolutions, which were to supposedly bring a new, democratic beginning. However through great corruption, deception, political propaganda, and in the end utter and complete autocratic rule, the society was turned into an absolute dystopia, a nightmarish world demanding absolute obedience by the state.

The two main literary devices used in Orwell’s satire are irony and pathos. Irony – creating an image which is the opposite of what is really intended – is prevalent throughout the book, and is best illustrated by the concepts of “doublethink” and the roles of the four Ministries.

Pathos – the capacity to create feelings of sadness and pity – is a constant device used throughout the novel. It is impossible to read the book without feeling tremendous sadness for the main protagonist. This is one of the reasons why the book is so powerful: we can relate to Winston’s feelings, fears and sadness. Pathos as a literary device is very effective in stirring up emotion.

Orwell said his motive in politics was to “Attack the Right, but not to flatter the Left” and this is seen by his criticism of both totalitarianism and communism. He ironically described his family and upbringing as “lower-middle-upper class”.

1984 is a frighteningly disturbing look at the effects of a totalitarian government, and George Orwell will go down in history as one of the worlds most influential political writers. Although his views exceedingly pessimistic, it certainly helped in getting his strong point across.

And to sum up from the last, and perhaps saddest sentence of the book: "But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother".

-"George Orwell." The English Novel, Twentieth Century Criticism. Vol. 2, Twentieth Century Novelists. Ed. Paul Schlueter and June Schlueter. Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press, 1982. 243-52.

-Orwell, George. 1984. New York: The New American Library Inc., 1983.