What happens if we lose everything that defines us as us?Â
1984 truly delves into this scary concept as the Party removes everyoneâs personal details so they are not able to establish their own identity. For example, even Winston does not know his own age, who his real parents are nor can he trust his own childhood memories as there are no photographs or evidences to help him differentiate between reality and imagination.Â
Aside from Winston, the rest of Oceania are also denied documents that could give them a sense of individuality and help them differentiate themselves from others . This causes their memories to grow fuzzy, thus making the people of Oceania vulnerable and dependent on the stories that the Party tells them.
In turn, by controlling the present, the Party can re-engineer the past. Simultaneously, by controlling the past, the Party can rationalise its shortcomings and project a perfect government that is far from the truth.Â
With no recollection of the past, the people of Oceania can no longer stay in touch with their real identities and instead, become identical as they wear the same uniform, drink the same brand of alcohol and more. Yet, Winston builds his own sense of identity through recording his thoughts, experiences and emotions in his diary. This act along with his relationship with Julia symbolises Winstonâs declaration of his own independence and identity as a rebel who disagrees with the Partyâs system.Â
Despite this, Winstonâs own sense of individuality and identity dissolves after his torturous experience at the Ministry of Love, which transforms him into another member of the Outer Party who blends into the crowd. By asserting a dark vision of humanityâs individualism, Orwell urges audiences in the present to truly value their freedom to express and preserve their identity.Â
Here are some quotes that are related to this idea which you may find helpful:
Quote | Link to the Consequences of Totalitarianism |
---|---|
âWho controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the pastâ | This slogan from the Party reveals that by rewriting history, the Party can justify their actions and systems in the present. Alternatively, by controlling the present, they can choose to manipulate history however they like. |
âWhat appealed to [Winston] about [the coral paperweight] was not so much its beauty as the air it seemed to possess of belonging to an age quite different to the present oneâ | This quote from Winston represents his act of rebellion which helps him to assert his own independence in determining what he likes or does not like that are outside of the Partyâs influence. |
âAnd when memory failed and written records were falsified⌠the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had go to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist.â | This quote represents Winstonâs realisation that the Party purposefully erodes peopleâs memories of the past to disable their sense of identity and gain full control of their sense of self. |
Of course, 1984 also includes other themes that you may be thinking about writing analysis for, such as:Â
Check out our recommended related text for 1984 .
Analysing your text is always the first step to writing an amazing essay! Lots of students make the mistake of jumping right into writing without really understanding what the text is about.
This leads to arguments that only skim the surface of the complex ideas, techniques and elements of the text. So, letâs build a comprehensive thesis through an in-depth analysis of the 1984.Â
Here are three easy steps that you can use to analyse 1984 and really impress your English teachers!
1984 is a world of its own with its totalitarian systems, use of foreign words and more. So, we totally understand if youâre feeling lost and donât know where to begin.Â
Our piece of advice is to look for examples that come with a technique. Techniques offer you a chance to delve into the textâs underlying meaning, which would help you deepen your analysis and enrich your essay writing.Â
Find our extensive list of quotes from 1984 by George Orwell!
Here are two quotes that relate to consequences of totalitarian power, which we have picked to help you visualise which examples can provide a deeper meaning:Â
âBig Brother is Watching You.â âWAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTHâÂ
Getting a good grade in English is more than listing out every technique that you can find in the text. Instead, itâs about finding techniques that allow you to dive deeper into the themes youâre focussing on, while also supporting your argument.Â
Try to look for techniques that allow you to explain its effects and link to your argument such as symbols, metaphors, connotations, similes and historical allegories . In Orwellâs case, he uses a lot of language techniques such as neologism, where he makes up his own words such as âDoublethinkâ or âNewspeakâ.Â
For the two quotes above, its three techniques include historical allusion, rhetoric and oxymoron.Â
If possible, you can look out for a quote that encompasses a few techniques to really pack a punch in your analysis.Â
Once youâre done collecting your examples and techniques, the next part is writing. You must remember to explain what the effect of the technique is and how it supports your argument. Otherwise, itâs not going to be a cohesive essay if youâre just listing out techniques.Â
An example of listing out techniques looks like this:Â
âThe rhetoric âBig Brother is Watching Youâ is also a historical allusion while âWar is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strengthâ is oxymoronic.â
Instead, you must elaborate on how each of these techniques link to your argument.Â
âBig Brother is Watching Youâ is a rhetoric imposed by the Party to instil psychological fear and submission of the people of Oceania, whereby Orwell uses to warn the dangers of totalitarianism. âBig Brotherâ is also a historical allusion to Hitler to remind the audience that 1984 is not entirely fictional but a possible future of our reality, urging us to take action against totalitarian regimes with the autonomy we have now.Â
Meanwhile, the slogan ââWAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTHâ represents the oxymoronic mentalities that have been indoctrinated into the people of Oceania, highlighting how totalitarian regimes would force its people to think whatever they want their people to think, no matter how illogical it is.Â
Together, your analysis should look something like:Â
The Party perpetuates the rhetoric, âBig Brother is Watching Youâ to instil psychological fear and coercion of the the people of Oceania, which forewarns a lack of individual freedom and private reflection within authoritarian regimes. As âBig Brotherâ is a historical allusion to Hitler, Orwell reminds the audience that 1984 and its extremist politics is a reality, urging us to defend our independence before itâs forbidden. Furthermore, the slogan âWar is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strengthâ embodies the oxymoronic mentalities that the Party indoctrinates into its people, revealing the extreme extent of psychological control an authoritarian regime strives to ensure their power is never questioned, no matter how irrational it is.
Check out other texts weâve created guides for below:
We have an incredible team of tutors and mentors.
We can help you master your essay analysis of 1984 by taking you through the summary, context, key characters and themes. Weâll also help you ace your upcoming English assessments with personalised lessons conducted one-on-one in your home or online!
Weâve supported over  8,000 students over the last 11 years , and on average our students score mark improvements of over 20%!
To find out more and get started with an inspirational tutor and mentor,  get in touch today  or give us a ring on 1300 267 888!
Kate Lynn Law  graduated in 2017 with an all rounders HSC award and an ATAR of 97.65. Passionate about mentoring, she enjoys working with high school students to improve their academic, work and life skills in preparation for the HSC and what comes next. An avid blogger, Kate had administered a creative writing page for over 2000 people since 2013, writing to an international audience since her early teenage years.
Everything you need to know about analysing ‘jasper jones’ for english – summary, context, themes & characters, a comprehensive guide to analysing ‘the book thief’: summary, context, themes & characters, the definitive guide to analysing ‘in cold blood’: summary, context & themes, 45,861 students have a head start....
Get exclusive study content & advice from our team of experts delivered weekly to your inbox!
Discover how we can help you!
What 1984 means today
No novel of the past century has had more influence than George Orwellâs 1984 . The title, the adjectival form of the authorâs last name, the vocabulary of the all-powerful Party that rules the superstate Oceania with the ideology of Ingsocâ doublethink , memory hole , unperson , thoughtcrime , Newspeak , Thought Police , Room 101 , Big Brother âtheyâve all entered the English language as instantly recognizable signs of a nightmare future. Itâs almost impossible to talk about propaganda, surveillance, authoritarian politics, or perversions of truth without dropping a reference to 1984. Throughout the Cold War, the novel found avid underground readers behind the Iron Curtain who wondered, How did he know?
It was also assigned reading for several generations of American high-school students. I first encountered 1984 in 10th-grade English class. Orwellâs novel was paired with Aldous Huxleyâs Brave New World , whose hedonistic and pharmaceutical dystopia seemed more relevant to a California teenager in the 1970s than did the bleak sadism of Oceania. I was too young and historically ignorant to understand where 1984 came from and exactly what it was warning against. Neither the book nor its author stuck with me. In my 20s, I discovered Orwellâs essays and nonfiction books and reread them so many times that my copies started to disintegrate, but I didnât go back to 1984 . Since high school, Iâd lived through another decade of the 20th century, including the calendar year of the title, and I assumed I already âknewâ the book. It was too familiar to revisit.
Read: Teaching â1984â in 2016
So when I recently read the novel again, I wasnât prepared for its power. You have to clear away what you think you know, all the terminology and iconography and cultural spin-offs, to grasp the original genius and lasting greatness of 1984 . It is both a profound political essay and a shocking, heartbreaking work of art. And in the Trump era , itâs a best seller .
The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwellâs 1984 , by the British music critic Dorian Lynskey, makes a rich and compelling case for the novel as the summation of Orwellâs entire body of work and a master key to understanding the modern world. The book was published in 1949, when Orwell was dying of tuberculosis , but Lynskey dates its biographical sources back more than a decade to Orwellâs months in Spain as a volunteer on the republican side of the countryâs civil war. His introduction to totalitarianism came in Barcelona, when agents of the Soviet Union created an elaborate lie to discredit Trotskyists in the Spanish government as fascist spies.
Left-wing journalists readily accepted the fabrication, useful as it was to the cause of communism. Orwell didnât, exposing the lie with eyewitness testimony in journalism that preceded his classic book Homage to Catalonia âand that made him a heretic on the left. He was stoical about the boredom and discomforts of trench warfareâhe was shot in the neck and barely escaped Spain with his lifeâbut he took the erasure of truth hard. It threatened his sense of what makes us sane, and life worth living. âHistory stopped in 1936,â he later told his friend Arthur Koestler, who knew exactly what Orwell meant. After Spain, just about everything he wrote and read led to the creation of his final masterpiece. âHistory stopped,â Lynskey writes, âand Nineteen Eighty-Four began.â
The biographical story of 1984 âthe dying manâs race against time to finish his novel in a remote cottage on the Isle of Jura , off Scotlandâwill be familiar to many Orwell readers. One of Lynskeyâs contributions is to destroy the notion that its terrifying vision can be attributed to, and in some way disregarded as, the death wish of a tuberculosis patient. In fact, terminal illness roused in Orwell a rage to liveâhe got remarried on his deathbedâjust as the novelâs pessimism is relieved, until its last pages, by Winston Smithâs attachment to nature, antique objects, the smell of coffee, the sound of a proletarian woman singing, and above all his lover, Julia. 1984 is crushingly grim, but its clarity and rigor are stimulants to consciousness and resistance. According to Lynskey, âNothing in Orwellâs life and work supports a diagnosis of despair.â
Lynskey traces the literary genesis of 1984 to the utopian fictions of the optimistic 19th centuryâEdward Bellamyâs Looking Backward (1888); the sci-fi novels of H. G. Wells, which Orwell read as a boyâand their dystopian successors in the 20th, including the Russian Yevgeny Zamyatinâs We (1924) and Huxleyâs Brave New World (1932). The most interesting pages in The Ministry of Truth are Lynskeyâs account of the novelâs afterlife. The struggle to claim 1984 began immediately upon publication, with a battle over its political meaning. Conservative American reviewers concluded that Orwellâs main target wasnât just the Soviet Union but the left generally. Orwell, fading fast, waded in with a statement explaining that the novel was not an attack on any particular government but a satire of the totalitarian tendencies in Western society and intellectuals: âThe moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Donât let it happen. It depends on you .â But every work of art escapes the artistâs controlâthe more popular and complex, the greater the misunderstandings.
Lynskeyâs account of the reach of 1984 is revelatory. The novel has inspired movies, television shows, plays, a ballet, an opera, a David Bowie album , imitations, parodies, sequels, rebuttals, Lee Harvey Oswald, the Black Panther Party, and the John Birch Society. It has acquired something of the smothering ubiquity of Big Brother himself: 1984 is watching you. With the arrival of the year 1984, the cultural appropriations rose to a deafening level. That January an ad for the Apple Macintosh was watched by 96 million people during the Super Bowl and became a marketing legend. The Mac, represented by a female athlete, hurls a sledgehammer at a giant telescreen and explodes the shouting face of a manâoppressive technologyâto the astonishment of a crowd of gray zombies. The message: âYouâll see why 1984 wonât be like â1984.âââ
The argument recurs every decade or so: Orwell got it wrong. Things havenât turned out that bad. The Soviet Union is history. Technology is liberating. But Orwell never intended his novel to be a prediction, only a warning. And itâs as a warning that 1984 keeps finding new relevance. The week of Donald Trumpâs inauguration, when the presidentâs adviser Kellyanne Conway justified his false crowd estimate by using the phrase alternative facts , the novel returned to the best-seller lists. A theatrical adaptation was rushed to Broadway. The vocabulary of Newspeak went viral. An authoritarian president who stood the term fake news on its head, who once said, âWhat youâre seeing and what youâre reading is not whatâs happening,â has given 1984 a whole new life.
What does the novel mean for us? Not Room 101 in the Ministry of Love, where Winston is interrogated and tortured until he loses everything he holds dear. We donât live under anything like a totalitarian system. âBy definition, a country in which you are free to read Nineteen Eighty-Four is not the country described in Nineteen Eighty-Four ,â Lynskey acknowledges. Instead, we pass our days under the nonstop surveillance of a telescreen that we bought at the Apple Store, carry with us everywhere, and tell everything to, without any coercion by the state. The Ministry of Truth is Facebook, Google, and cable news. We have met Big Brother and he is us.
Trumpâs election brought a rush of cautionary books with titles like On Tyranny , Fascism: A Warning , and How Fascism Works . My local bookstore set up a totalitarian-themed table and placed the new books alongside 1984 . They pointed back to the 20th centuryâif it happened in Germany, it could happen hereâand warned readers how easily democracies collapse. They were alarm bells against complacency and fatalismââ the politics of inevitability ,â in the words of the historian Timothy Snyder, âa sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done.â The warnings were justified, but their emphasis on the mechanisms of earlier dictatorships drew attention away from the heart of the malignancyânot the state, but the individual. The crucial issue was not that Trump might abolish democracy but that Americans had put him in a position to try. Unfreedom today is voluntary. It comes from the bottom up.
We are living with a new kind of regime that didnât exist in Orwellâs time. It combines hard nationalismâthe diversion of frustration and cynicism into xenophobia and hatredâwith soft distraction and confusion: a blend of Orwell and Huxley, cruelty and entertainment. The state of mind that the Party enforces through terror in 1984 , where truth becomes so unstable that it ceases to exist, we now induce in ourselves. Totalitarian propaganda unifies control over all information, until reality is what the Party says it isâthe goal of Newspeak is to impoverish language so that politically incorrect thoughts are no longer possible. Today the problem is too much information from too many sources, with a resulting plague of fragmentation and divisionânot excessive authority but its disappearance, which leaves ordinary people to work out the facts for themselves, at the mercy of their own prejudices and delusions.
During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, propagandists at a Russian troll farm used social media to disseminate a meme: âââThe People Will Believe What the Media Tells Them They Believe.â Â â George Orwell.â But Orwell never said this. The moral authority of his name was stolen and turned into a lie toward that most Orwellian end: the destruction of belief in truth. The Russians needed partners in this effort and found them by the millions, especially among Americaâs non-elites. In 1984 , working-class people are called âproles,â and Winston believes theyâre the only hope for the future. As Lynskey points out, Orwell didnât foresee âthat the common man and woman would embrace doublethink as enthusiastically as the intellectuals and, without the need for terror or torture, would choose to believe that two plus two was whatever they wanted it to be.â
We stagger under the daily load of doublethink pouring from Trump, his enablers in the Inner Party, his mouthpieces in the Ministry of Truth, and his fanatical supporters among the proles. Spotting doublethink in ourselves is much harder. âTo see what is in front of oneâs nose needs a constant struggle,â Orwell wrote . In front of my nose, in the world of enlightened and progressive people where I live and work, a different sort of doublethink has become pervasive. Itâs not the claim that true is fake or that two plus two makes five. Progressive doublethinkâwhich has grown worse in reaction to the right-wing kindâcreates a more insidious unreality because it operates in the name of all that is good. Its key word is justice âa word no one should want to live without. But today the demand for justice forces you to accept contradictions that are the essence of doublethink.
For example, many on the left now share an unacknowledged but common assumption that a good work of art is made of good politics and that good politics is a matter of identity. The progressive view of a book or play depends on its political stance, and its stanceâeven its subject matterâis scrutinized in light of the group affiliation of the artist: Personal identity plus political position equals aesthetic value. This confusion of categories guides judgments all across the worlds of media, the arts, and education, from movie reviews to grant committees. Some people who register the assumption as doublethink might be privately troubled, but they donât say so publicly. Then self-censorship turns into self-deception, until the recognition itself disappearsâa lie you accept becomes a lie you forget. In this way, intelligent people do the work of eliminating their own unorthodoxy without the Thought Police.
A lost scottish island, george orwell, and the future of maps.
Orthodoxy is also enforced by social pressure, nowhere more intensely than on Twitter, where the specter of being shamed or âcanceledâ produces conformity as much as the prospect of adding to your tribe of followers does. This pressure can be more powerful than a party or state, because it speaks in the name of the people and in the language of moral outrage, against which there is, in a way, no defense. Certain commissars with large followings patrol the precincts of social media and punish thought criminals, but most progressives assent without difficulty to the stifling consensus of the moment and the intolerance it breedsânot out of fear, but because they want to be counted on the side of justice.
This willing constriction of intellectual freedom will do lasting damage. It corrupts the ability to think clearly, and it undermines both culture and progress. Good art doesnât come from wokeness, and social problems starved of debate canât find real solutions. âNothing is gained by teaching a parrot a new word,â Orwell wrote in 1946. âWhat is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side.â Not much has changed since the 1940s. The will to power still passes through hatred on the right and virtue on the left.
1984 will always be an essential book, regardless of changes in ideologies, for its portrayal of one person struggling to hold on to what is real and valuable. âSanity is not statistical,â Winston thinks one night as he slips off to sleep. Truth, it turns out, is the most fragile thing in the world. The central drama of politics is the one inside your skull.
This article appears in the July 2019 print edition with the headline âGeorge Orwellâs Unheeded Warning.â
âWhen you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
More Stories
What Democrats Can Learn From the Trauma of 1968
What Will Become of American Civilization?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
George Orwellâs Nineteen Eighty-Four , completed in 1948 and published a year later, is a classic example of dystopian fiction. Indeed, itâs surely the most famous dystopian novel in the world, even if its ideas are known by far more people than have actually read it. (According to at least one survey , Nineteen Eighty-Four is the book people most often claim to have read when they havenât.)
Like many novels that are more known about than are carefully read and analysed, Nineteen Eighty-Four is actually a more complex work than the label ânightmare dystopian visionâ can convey. Before we offer an analysis of the novelâs themes and origins, letâs briefly recap the plot.
Nineteen Eighty-Four : plot summary
In the year 1984, Britain has been renamed Airstrip One and is a province of Oceania, a vast totalitarian superstate ruled by âthe Partyâ, whose politics are described as Ingsoc (âEnglish Socialismâ). Big Brother is the leader of the Party, which keeps its citizens in a perpetual state of fear and submission through a variety of means.
Surveillance is a key part of the novelâs world, with hidden microphones (which are found in the countryside as well as urban areas, and can identify not only what is said but also who says it) and two-way telescreen monitors being used to root out any dissidents, who disappear from society with all trace of their existence wiped out.
They become, in the language of Newspeak (the language used by people in the novel), âunpersonsâ. People are short of food, perpetually on the brink of starvation, and going about in fear for their lives.
The novelâs setting is London, where Trafalgar Square has been renamed Victory Square and the statue of Horatio Nelson atop Nelsonâs Column has been replaced by one of Big Brother. Through such touches, Orwell defamiliarises the London of the 1940s which the original readers would have recognised, showing how the London they know might be transformed under a totalitarian regime.
The novelâs protagonist is Winston Smith, who works at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting historical records so they are consistent with the stateâs latest version of history. However, even though his day job involves doing the work of the Party, Winston longs to escape the oppressive control of the Party, hoping for a rebellion.
Winston meets the owner of an antique shop named Mr Charrington, from whom he buys a diary in which he can record his true feelings towards the Party. Believing the working-class âprolesâ are the key to a revolution, Winston visits them, but is disappointed to find them wholly lacking in any political understanding.
Meanwhile, hearing of the existence of an underground resistance movement known as the Brotherhood â which has been formed by the rival of Big Brother, a man named Emmanuel Goldstein â Winston suspects that OâBrien, who also works with him, is involved with this resistance.
At lunch with another colleague, named Syme, Winston learns that the English language is being rewritten as Newspeak so as to control and influence peopleâs thought, the idea being that if the word for an idea doesnât exist in the language, people will be unable to think about it.
Winston meets a woman named Julia who works for the Ministry of Truth, maintaining novel-writing machines, but believes she is a Party spy sent to watch him. But then Julia passes a clandestine love message to him and the two begin an affair â which is itself illicit since the Party decrees that sex is for reproduction alone, rather than pleasure.
We gradually learn more about Winstonâs past, including his marriage to Katherine, from whom he is now separated. Syme, who had been working on Newspeak, disappears in mysterious circumstances: something Winston had predicted.
OâBrien invites Winston to his flat, declaring himself â as Winston had also predicted â a member of the Brotherhood, the resistance against the Party. He gives Winston a copy of the book written by Goldstein, the leader of the Brotherhood.
When Oceaniaâs enemy changes during the ritual Hate Week, Winston is tasked with making further historical revisions to old newspapers and documents to reflect this change.
Meanwhile, Winston and Julia secretly read Goldsteinâs book, which explains how the Party maintains its totalitarian power. As Winston had suspected, the secret to overthrowing the Party lies in the vast mass of the population known as the âprolesâ (derived from âproletarianâ, Marxâs term for the working classes). It argues that the Party can be overthrown if proles rise up against it.
But shortly after this, Winston and Julia are arrested, having been shopped to the authorities by Mr Charrington (whose flat above his shop they had been using for their illicit meetings). It turns out that both he and OâBrien work for the Thought Police, on behalf of the Party.
At the Ministry of Love, OâBrien tells Winston that Goldsteinâs book was actually written by him and other Party members, and that the Brotherhood may not even exist. Winston endures torture and starvation in an attempt to grind him down so he will accept Big Brother.
In Room 101, a room in which a prisoner is exposed to their greatest fear, Winston is placed in front of a wire cage containing rats, which he fears above all else. Winston betrays Julia, wishing she could take his place and endure this suffering instead.
His reprogramming complete, Winston is allowed to go free, but he is essentially living under a death sentence: he knows that one day he will be summoned by the authorities and shot for his former treachery.
He meets Julia one day, and learns that she was subjected to torture at the Ministry of Love as well. They have both betrayed each other, and part ways. The novel ends with Winston accepting, after all, that the Party has won and that âhe loved Big Brother.â
Nineteen Eighty-Four : analysis
Nineteen Eighty-Four is probably the most famous novel about totalitarianism, and about the dangers of allowing a one-party state where democracy, freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and even freedom of thought are all outlawed. The novel is often analysed as a warning about the dangers of allowing a creeping totalitarianism into Britain, after the horrors of such regimes in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and elsewhere had been witnessed.
Because of this quality of the book, it is often called âpropheticâ and a ânightmare vision of the futureâ, among other things.
However, books set in the future are rarely simply about the future. They are not mere speculation, but are grounded in the circumstances in which they were written.
Indeed, we might go so far as to say that most dystopian novels, whilst nominally set in an imagined future, are really using their future setting to reflect on what are already firmly established social or political ideas. In the case of Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four , this means the novel reflects the London of the 1940s.
By the time he came to write the novel, Orwell already had a long-standing interest in using his writing to highlight the horrors of totalitarianism around the world, especially following his experience fighting in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. As Orwell put it in his essay â Why I Write â, all of his serious work written since 1936 was written â against totalitarianism and for democratic socialismâ.
In his analysis of Nineteen Eighty-Four in his study of Orwell, George Orwell (Readerâs Guides) , Jeffrey Meyers argues convincingly that, rather than being a nightmare vision of the future, a prophetic or speculative work, Orwellâs novel is actually a ârealistic synthesis and rearrangement of familiar materialsâ â indeed, as much of Orwellâs best work is.
His talent lay not in original imaginative thinking but in clear-headed critical analysis of things as they are: his essays are a prime example of this. Nineteen Eighty-Four is, in Meyerâs words, ârealistic rather than fantasticâ.
Indeed, Orwell himself stated that although the novel was âin a sense a fantasyâ, it is written in the form of the naturalistic novel, with its themes and ideas having been already âpartly realised in Communism and fascismâ. Orwellâs intention, as stated by Orwell himself, was to take the totalitarian ideas that had âtaken rootâ in the minds of intellectuals all over Europe, and draw them out âto their logical consequencesâ.
Like much classic speculative fiction â the novels and stories of J. G. Ballard offer another example â the futuristic vision of the author is more a reflection of contemporary anxieties and concerns. Meyers goes so far as to argue that Nineteen Eighty-Four is actually the political regimes of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia âtransposedâ into London of the early 1940s, during the Second World War.
Certainly, many of the most famous features of Nineteen Eighty-Four were suggested to Orwell by his time working at the BBC in London in the first half of the 1940s: it is well-known that the Ministry of Truth was based on the bureaucratic BBC with its propaganda department, while the infamous Room 101 was supposedly named after a room of that number in the BBC building, in which Orwell had to endure tedious meetings.
The technology of the novel, too, was familiar by the 1940s, involving little innovation or leaps of imagination from Orwell (âtelescreensâ being a natural extension of the television set: BBC TV had been established in 1936, although the Second World War pushed back its development somewhat).
Orwell learned much about the workings of Stalinism from reading Trotskyâs The Revolution Betrayed (1937), written by one of the leading figures in the Russian Revolution of 1917 who saw Stalinist Russia as the antithesis of what Trotsky, Lenin, and those early revolutionaries had been striving to achieve. (This would also be important for Orwellâs Animal Farm , of course.)
And indeed, many of the details surrounding censorship â the rewriting of history, the suppression of dissident literature, the control of the language people use to express themselves and even to think in â were also derived from Orwellâs reading of life in Soviet Russia. Surveillance was also a key element of the Stalinist regime, as in other Communist countries in Europe.
The moustachioed figure of Big Brother in Nineteen Eighty-Four recalls nobody so much as Josef Stalin himself. Not only the ideas of âthought crimeâ and âthought policeâ, but even the terms themselves, predate Orwellâs use of them: they were first recorded in a 1934 book about Japan.
One of the key questions Winston asks himself in Nineteen Eighty-Four is what the Party is trying to achieve. OâBrienâs answer is simple: the maintaining of power for its own sake. Many human beings want to control other human beings, and they can persuade a worrying number of people to go along with their plans and even actively support them.
Despite the fact that they are starving and living a miserable life, many of the people in Airstrip One love Big Brother, viewing him not as a tyrannical dictator but as their âSaviourâ (as one woman calls him). Again, this detail was taken from accounts of Stalin, who was revered by many Russians even though they were often living a wretched life under his rule.
Another key theme of Orwellâs novel is the relationship between language and thought. In our era of fake news and corrupt media, this has only become even more pronounced: if you lie to a population and confuse them enough, you can control them. OâBrien introduces Winston to the work of the traitor to the Party, Emmanuel Goldstein, only to tell him later that Goldstein may not exist and his book was actually written by the Party.
Is this the lie, or was the book the lie? One of the most famous lines from the novel is Winstonâs note to himself in his diary: âFreedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.â
But later, OâBrien will force Winston to âadmitâ that two plus two can make five. Orwell tells us, âThe Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.â
Or as Voltaire once wrote, âTruly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust.â Forcing somebody to utter blatant falsehoods is a powerful psychological tool for totalitarian regimes because through doing so, they have chipped away at your moral and intellectual integrity.
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Type your emailâŚ
1984 is a novel which is great in spite of itself and has been lionised for the wrong reasons. The title of the novel is a simple anagram of 1948, the date when the novel was written, and was driven by Orwell’s paranoia about the 1945 Labour government in UK. Orwell, a public school man, had built a reputation for hiself in the nineteen thirties as a socialist writer, and had fought for socialism in the Spanish civil war. The Road To Wigan Pier is an excellent polemic attacking the way the UK government was handling the mass unemployment of the time, reducing workers to a state of near starvation. In Homage To Catalonia, Orwell describes his experiences fighting with a small Marxist militia against Franco’s fascists. It was in Spain that Orwell developed his lifelong hatred of Stalinism, observing that the Communist contingents were more interested in suppressing other left-wing factions than in defeating Franco. The 1945 Labour government ws Britain’s first democratically elected socialist governement. It successfully established the welfare state and the National Health Service in a country almost bankrupted by the war, and despite the fact that Truman in USA was demanding the punctual repayment of wartime loans. Instead of rejoicing, Orwell, by now terminally ill from tuberculosis, saw the necessary continuation of wartime austerity and rationing as a deliberate and unnecessary imposition. Consequently, the book is often used as propaganda against socialism. The virtues of the book are the warnings about the dangers of giving the state too much power, in the form of electronic surveillance, ehanced police powers, intrusive laws, and the insidious use of political propaganda to warp peoples’ thinking. All of this has come to pass in the West as well as the East, but because of the overtly anticommunist spin to Orwell’s novel, most people fail to get its important message..
As with other work here, another good review. I’m also fascinated that Orwell located the government as prime problem, whereas Huxley located the people as prime problem, two sides of the same coin.
Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.
Continue reading
Home â Essay Samples â Literature â George Orwell â George Orwell: The Novel 1984
About this sample
Words: 1014 |
Published: Apr 29, 2022
Words: 1014 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read
Let us write you an essay from scratch
Get high-quality help
Dr. Heisenberg
Verified writer
+ 120 experts online
By clicking âCheck Writersâ Offersâ, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . Weâll occasionally send you promo and account related email
No need to pay just yet!
4 pages / 1839 words
6 pages / 2692 words
7 pages / 3276 words
4 pages / 1799 words
Remember! This is just a sample.
You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.
121 writers online
Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled
In George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984," Tom Parsons is a character whose portrayal offers unique insights into the oppressive society of Oceania. Parsons represents the embodiment of the Party's indoctrination and the [...]
George Orwellâs novel 1984 warns of a totalitarian state in the future. The totalitarian state, Oceania, under the control of the Party and its leader Big Brother, poses a society where the government is always right and where [...]
The novel revolves around the rise of a group of farm animals who overthrow their human owner in an effort to create an egalitarian society. However, as time progresses, the pigs, led by the cunning and manipulative Napoleon, [...]
George Orwell's "Animal Farm" is a classic work of literature that uses satire to expose the flaws in political systems and human nature. By using animals to represent different groups of people and events, Orwell is able to [...]
Nineteen Eighty-Four reveals a world where personal privacy is illusory. The author created a bleak manifestation of a dystopian future where the danger of domestic control is prophetic. Under this fictional totalitarian [...]
Travel writing has been a powerful way of directing the audience to new places; some pieces of work will take you on an emotional roller coaster through the eyes of the writers, to explore and experience new things, to get a [...]
By clicking âSendâ, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.
Where do you want us to send this sample?
By clicking âContinueâ, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.
Be careful. This essay is not unique
This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before
Download this Sample
Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts
Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.
Please check your inbox.
We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!
We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing weâll assume you board with our cookie policy .
What can you say about the famous George Orwellâs book? With the 1984 essay topics and research titles gathered by our team , youâll easily find the right words.
đ most interesting essay topics for 1984, đ good 1984 research paper topics, â 1984 essay questions.
IvyPanda. (2024, February 20). 1984 Essay Topics & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/1984-essay-examples/
"1984 Essay Topics & Examples." IvyPanda , 20 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/1984-essay-examples/.
IvyPanda . (2024) '1984 Essay Topics & Examples'. 20 February.
IvyPanda . 2024. "1984 Essay Topics & Examples." February 20, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/1984-essay-examples/.
1. IvyPanda . "1984 Essay Topics & Examples." February 20, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/1984-essay-examples/.
Bibliography
IvyPanda . "1984 Essay Topics & Examples." February 20, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/1984-essay-examples/.
The following essay was written by Project Academy English Tutor, Marko Beocanin
Marko Beocanin
99.95 ATAR & 3 x State Ranker
The following essay was written by Project Academy English Teacher, Marko Beocanin.
Markoâs Achievements:
Marko kindly agreed to share his essay and thorough annotations to help demystify for HSC students what comprises an upper Band 6 response!
Markoâs following essay was written in response to the question:
âThe representation of human experiences makes us more aware of the intricate nature of humanity.â In your response, discuss this statement with detailed reference to George Orwellâs âNineteen Eighty-Fourâ.
George Orwellâs 1949 Swiftian satire Nineteen Eighty-Four invites us to appreciate the intricate nature of humanity by representing how the abuse of power by totalitarian governments degrades our individual and collective experiences. (Link to rubric through individual/collective experiences, and a clear cause and effect argument: totalitarian governance -> degraded human experience. Also, comments on the genre of Swiftian satire. Value!) Orwell explores how oppressive authorities suppress the intricate societal pillars of culture, expression and freedom to maintain power. He then reveals how this suppression brutalises individual human behaviour and motivations because it undermines emotion and intricate thought. (Link to rubric through âhuman behaviour and motivationsâ, and extended cause and effect in which the first paragraph explores the collective âcauseâ and the second paragraph explores the individual âeffectâ. This is an easy way to structure your arguments whilst continuously engaging with the rubric!) Ultimately, he argues that we must resist the political apathy that enables oppressive governments to maintain power and crush human intricacy. Therefore, his representation of human experiences not only challenges us to consider the intricate nature of humanity, but exhorts us to greater political vigilance so we can preserve it. (Concluding sentence that broadens the scope of the question and reaffirms the purpose of the text).
Orwell makes us aware of the intricate nature of humanity by representing how totalitarian authorities suppress intricate collective experiences of culture, expression and freedom in order to assert control. (This is the âcollectiveâ paragraph â a cause and effect argument that relates the question to the loss of human intricacy in the collective as a result of totalitarian rule). His bleak vision was informed by Stalinâs USSR: a regime built upon the fabrication of history in Stalinâs âcult of personalityâ, and ruthlessly enforced by the NKVD. (Specific context â an actual specific regime is named and some details about its enforcement are given). The symbolic colourlessness and propaganda-poster motif he uses to describe London reflects the loss of human intricacy and culture under such leadership: âthere seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere.â (First example sets up the world of the text, and the degraded collective experience). Orwell uses the telescreens, dramatically capitalised âBIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOUâ posters and allusions to Stalin in Big Brotherâs âblack-moustachioâd faceâ as metonyms for how governmental surveillance dominates both physical and cultural collective experiences. Winstonâs metatextual construction of the fictitious âComrade Ogilvyâ serves as a symbol for the vast, worthless masses of information produced by totalitarian governments to undermine the intricacy of real human history: âComrade Ogilvy, who had never existedâŚwould exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.â Similarly, Orwellâs satirical representation of Newspeak ignites the idea that political slovenliness causes self-expression to degrade, which in turn destroys our capacity for intricate thought and resistance: âwe shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.â (The examples above prove that the governmentâs leadership style truly is totalitarian, and that it results in a loss of intricacy and âhumanityâ in the collective. Itâs good to cover a variety of examples that explore different facets of the collective â for example, the first example establishes the extreme surveillance, the second example establishes the loss of âtruthâ/history, and the third example establishes the loss of language). The political bitterness that marks Nineteen Eighty-Four as a Swiftian satire (This is a link to the âSwiftianâ term used in the thesis statement. Itâs important to refer back to any descriptive terms you use in your thesis) ultimately culminates in OâBrienâs monologue, where Orwell juxtaposes the politicised verb âabolishâ to symbols of human intricacy, âwe shall abolish the orgasmâŚthere will be no art, no literature, no scienceâŚwhen we are omnipotentâ, to express how totalitarian rulers suppress collective experiences to gain metaphoric omnipotence. Thus, Orwell makes us aware of the intricate nature of humanity by representing a future in which totalitarian governments suppress it. (A linking sentence that ties it all back to the question and rephrases the point)
Orwell then argues that the effect of this suppression is a loss of human intricacy that brutalises society and devalues individual experiences. (Cause and effect argument that links collective suppression to a loss of human intricacy on an individual scale â continuous engagement with the question and the rubric!) Orwellâs exposure to the widespread hysteria of Hitlerâs Nazi regime, caused by the Nuremberg Rallies and Joseph Goebbelsâ virulent anti-semitic propaganda, informs his representation of Oceaniaâs dehumanised masses. (More specific context around the Nazis, and a specific link to how it informed his work) The burlesque Two Minute Hate reveals human inconsistency by representing how even introspective, intelligent characters can be stripped of their intricacy and compassion by the experience of collective hysteria: even Winston wishes to âflog [Julia] to death with a rubber truncheonâŚravish her and cut her throat at the moment of climaxâ, and is only restored by compliance to the Christ-like totalitarian authority, âMy-Saviour!â, Big Brother. (A link to the rubric with the âhuman inconsistencyâ point) Orwell frequently juxtaposes dehumanising representations of the proles, âthe proles are not human beingsâ, to political sloganism: âAs the Party slogan put it: âProles and animals are freeââ, to argue that in such a collectively suppressed society, the upper class grow insensitive towards the intricate nature of those less privileged. (Itâs important to link the proles into your argument â theyâre often forgotten, but theyâre a big part of the text!) He asserts that this loss of empathy degrades the authenticity and intricacy of human relationships, characterised by Winsonâs paradoxically hyperbolic repulsion towards his wife: â[Katharine] had without exception the most stupid, vulgar, empty mind that he had every encounteredâ. (Continuous engagement with the question and rubric: make sure to recycle rubric terms â here, done with âparadoxicallyâ â and question terms â here, with âintricacyâ)  Winstonâs âbetrayalâ of Julia symbolises how totalitarianism ultimately brutalises individuals by replacing their compassion for intricate ideals such as love with selfish pragmatism: âDo it to JuliaâŚTear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me!â Therefore, Orwell makes us more aware of the intricate nature of humanity by demonstrating how it can be robbed by suppressive governments and collective hysteria. (A linking sentence that sums up the paragraph).
By making us aware of how totalitarian governments suppress meaningful human experiences both individually and collectively, Orwell challenges us to resist so we can preserve our intricate nature. (This third paragraph discusses Orwellâs purpose as a composer. This can in general be a helpful way to structure paragraphs: Collective, Individual, Purpose) Orwellâs service in the 1930s Spanish Civil War as part of the Republican militia fighting against fascist-supported rebels positions him to satirise the political apathy of his audience. (Integration of personal context is useful here to justify Orwellâs motivations. Itâs also a lot fresher than just including another totalitarian regime Orwell was exposed to) Orwell alludes to this through the metaphor of Winstonâs diarising as an anomalous individual experience of resistance, ââ[Winston] was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear,â which highlights how his intricate nature persists even in a suppressive society. Often, Orwell meta-fictively addresses his own context, as âa time when thought is freeâŚwhen truth existsâ, to establish an imperative to preserve our intricate human nature while we still can. The Julia romance trope (Itâs good to include terms such as âtropeâ which reflect your understanding of narrative structure and the overall form of the work.) represents how Winstonâs gradual rejection of his political apathy empowered him to experience an authentic, intricately human relationship that subverts his totalitarian society: âthe gesture with which [Julia] had thrown her clothes asideâŚ[belonged] to an ancient time. Winston woke up with the word âShakespeareâ on his lips.â Orwell juxtaposes Juliaâs sexuality to Shakespeare, an immediately-recognisable metonym for culture and history, to argue that human intricacy can only be restored by actively resisting the dehumanising influence of the government. Orwell also represents Winstonâs desensitised and immediate devotion to the Brotherhood to reflect how the preservation of human intricacy is a cause worth rebelling for, even by paradoxically unjust means: â[Winston was] prepared to commit murderâŚacts of sabotage which may cause the deaths of hundreds of innocent peopleâŚthrow sulphuric acid in a childâs face.â (More chronological examples that show Winstonâs transformation throughout the text. Itâs useful to explore and contrast those who resist with those who donât resist, and how just the act of resistance in some way restores our humanity! Thatâs why this paragraph comes after the âbrutalised individual experienceâ paragraph) However, Orwell ultimately asserts that it is too late for Winston to meaningfully restore humanityâs intricate nature, and concludes the text with his symbolic death and acceptance of the regime, â[Winston] had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.â (Itâs important to remember that Orwell ends the text so miserably so that he can motivate his audiences not to do the same thing). The futility of this ending ignites the idea that we must not only be aware of our intricate nature, but must actively resist oppressive governments while we still can in order to preserve it. (A linking sentence that ties the paragraph together and justifies the futility of the ending)
Therefore, Orwellâs representation of human experiences in Nineteen Eighty-Four encourages us to reflect personally on our own intricate human nature, and challenges us to fight to preserve it. (Engages with the question (through the reflection point), and includes Orwellâs purpose as a composer). His depiction of a totalitarian governmentâs unchecked assertion of power on human culture and freedom, and the brutalising impact this has on individual and collective experiences, ultimately galvanises us to reject political apathy. (Your argument summaries can often be combined into a sentence or two in the conclusion now that the marker knows what youâre talking about. This reinforces the cause and effect structure as well.) Thus, the role of storytelling for Orwell is not only to make us more aware of our intricate nature, but to prove that we must actively resist oppressive governments while we still can in order to preserve it. (The clincher! Itâs often useful to add ânot onlyâ in your final sentence to reinforce the massive scope of the text)
If reading this essay has helped you, you may also enjoy reading Markoâs ultimate guide to writing 20/20 HSC English essays .
P.S If you have any questions about aceing HSC English , you are welcome to learn from Marko and join one of Project Academyâs HSC English classes on a 3 week trial .
School holidays, HSC study breaks and STUVAC periods present an opportunity...
Co-founder of Project Academy
A comprehensive guide to short and long answer questions, with exemplars from Light: Quantum Model to Advanced Mechanics to Magnetic Fields.
Head of Physics, 99.80 ATAR
Like every other Year 12 student, I struggled A LOT with procrastination...
Jasmine De Rosa
99.60 ATAR, 6th in NSW for Economics
Come along as Katriel dissects Riya's exemplar essay through a HSC markerâs eyes
English Team
Katriel Tan and Marko Beocanin
Trial any Project Academy course for 3 weeks.
NSW's Top 1% Tutors
Unlimited Tutorials
NSW's Most Effective Courses
Access to Project's iPad
Access to Exclusive Resources
Access to Project's Study Space
Informative essays are often assigned in schools and universities. Hereâs how to write them effectively:
After writing, make sure your essay is clear, balanced, and informative. Invest time in planning, thorough research, and effective organization. For more details on how to write an informative essay, our essay writer has got some expert tips up their sleeve! So, let's keep on reading this article.
Informative essays aim to educate the reader about a specific topic. They present facts, explanations, and insights in a clear and straightforward manner without trying to persuade or argue a particular point of view. The main goal is to increase the readerâs understanding of the subject by providing well-researched and organized information.
For example, an informative essay is often needed in an educational setting, such as when a student is assigned to explain the process of photosynthesis in a biology class. In this case, the student must consider the audienceâs level of knowledge, ensuring the explanation is neither too basic nor too complex. The essay should include key details like the roles of sunlight, chlorophyll, and carbon dioxide, and it should be organized logically with clear transitions between points to help readers follow the explanation easily.
Our qualified writers are here to craft a masterpiece tailored to your needs worthy of an A+
Writing an informative essay involves several clear steps that help you present your topic effectively. By following these steps, you can ensure your essay is well-organized, thoroughly researched, and engaging for your readers. Hereâs a detailed guide from our admission essay writing service on how to start an informative essay and help you continue the process.
When writing an informative essay, you start by choosing a topic. This can set the tone for your entire essay, so it's important to pick something both interesting and relevant. Think about subjects that intrigue you or issues that are currently trending and have ample information available. The topic should be specific enough to be covered thoroughly in the length of your essay but broad enough to find plenty of sources.
Some informative writing topics include:
Research will build a strong case for your topic. Jot down everything including facts, questions, even random ideas. When you find something interesting, note the source and look at its references. Try to go beyond textbooks - look for documentaries, news articles, interviews, or even blog posts by experts. You can also explore offline by visiting your local library and browsing relevant sections.Â
Take notes in your own words, summarizing key points and paraphrases. This helps you understand better and write smoothly. As you read, think critically - consider the author's perspective, evidence, and potential bias to add analysis to your essay.
Track your sources for later, but don't get hung up on strict formats during initial research. Focus on gathering strong material. By approaching your research thoughtfully and actively, you'll create a solid foundation for your essay.
The purpose of an outline for an informative essay is to organize your thoughts and ensure your essay has a logical flow. By outlining, you can spot any gaps in your research and ensure all necessary points are covered. Itâs best to create an outline after youâve completed your research but before you start writing. This way, you have all the information you need and can arrange it in a coherent order.
For example, if your essay topic is "The Impact of Plastic Pollution on Marine Life," your outline might look something like this:
Introduction đ | |
---|---|
Introduce the topic of plastic pollution. Present the thesis statement | |
Body Paragraphs đ | |
Explain how marine animals mistake plastic for food. Discuss the impact on their health and survival. | |
Describe how animals get entangled in plastic debris. Highlight the physical harm and risk of death. | |
Explore how plastics release harmful chemicals into the ocean. Discuss the long-term effects on marine ecosystems. | |
Conclusion đ | |
Summarize the key points Restate the thesis Provide a final thought on the importance of addressing this issue. |
Now that you have an outline and know how to start an essay , youâre ready to start writing your informative essay. This step involves turning your organized thoughts and detailed notes into a coherent and engaging piece of writing.
Your first sentence should grab the readerâs attentionâconsider starting with a surprising fact, a quote, or a brief anecdote related to your topic. After this hook, provide some background information to set the context for your essay. Finish your introduction with a clear thesis statement that outlines the main points you will cover.
Next, move on to the body paragraphs. Each paragraph should focus on a specific aspect of your topic, as outlined earlier. Start each paragraph with a topic sentence that states the main idea, followed by supporting sentences that include facts, examples, and explanations.Â
After the body paragraphs, write your conclusion where you reinforce your main message. Throughout your writing, keep your language clear and concise. Avoid jargon unless youâre sure your audience will understand it, and explain any complex terms. Be sure to write in a neutral tone, focusing on informing rather than persuading. This will help ensure your essay is both informative and accessible to your readers.
Note : If youâre a computer science major, youâll find our guide on IEEE format very helpful!
Once you have completed your informative essay, focus on proofreading for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. Read your essay slowly and aloud to catch any mistakes that might have slipped through. Pay attention to how your sentences are constructedâmake sure they are clear and contribute to the overall meaning of your essay.
Double-check the accuracy of any facts, statistics, or quotes you've included. Also check that each sentence and paragraph directly contribute to informing your reader about the topic without unnecessary distractions.
Lastly, consider sharing your essay with someone you trust, like a friend or teacher, for their input. You can also use our term paper writing services to make your essay even stronger. Remember, fresh eyes can often catch mistakes or suggest improvements.Â
Essay examples show how theoretical ideas can be applied effectively and engagingly. So, let's check them out for good structure, organization, and presentation techniques.
Additionally, you can also explore essay writing apps that offer convenience and flexibility, allowing you to work on assignments wherever you are.
Here are some helpful tips on how to write an informative essay that combines strong mechanics with engaging delivery and leaves your readers feeling more informed.
Now that you have these tips, you're ready to write a strong informative essay. This guide has given you key ideas, like how to pick a good topic, how to plan your essay, and how to write each part. It also offered helpful advice to improve your writing overall. By using these tips, you'll have a successful and informative writing experience, allowing you to share interesting information about a topic you care about! And if you struggle with getting started on your writing assignments, you can always order essay from our experts.
Claim your expertly crafted informative essay today and command attention with your brilliant insights!
How to write an informative article, what is an informative essay.
is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.
đ best essay topics on 1984, âď¸ nineteen eighty-four essay topics for college, đ most interesting 1984 research titles, đĄ simple 1984 essay ideas.
Cite this post
StudyCorgi. (2024, July 23). Orwell's 1984 Essay Topics - 57 Ideas. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/1984-essay-topics/
"Orwell's 1984 Essay Topics - 57 Ideas." StudyCorgi , 23 July 2024, studycorgi.com/ideas/1984-essay-topics/.
StudyCorgi . (2024) 'Orwell's 1984 Essay Topics - 57 Ideas'. 23 July.
1. StudyCorgi . "Orwell's 1984 Essay Topics - 57 Ideas." July 23, 2024. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/1984-essay-topics/.
Bibliography
StudyCorgi . "Orwell's 1984 Essay Topics - 57 Ideas." July 23, 2024. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/1984-essay-topics/.
StudyCorgi . 2024. "Orwell's 1984 Essay Topics - 57 Ideas." July 23, 2024. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/1984-essay-topics/.
These essay examples and topics on 1984 were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if youâre using them to write your assignment.
This essay topic collection was updated on August 12, 2024 .
What is informative writing.
Informative writing educates the reader about a certain topic. An informative essay may explain new information, describe a process, or clarify a concept. The provided information is objective, meaning the writing focuses on presentation of fact and should not contain personal opinion or bias.
Informative writing includes description, process, cause and effect, comparison, and problems and possible solutions:
Describes a person, place, thing, or event using descriptive language that appeals to readersâ senses
Explains the process to do something or how something was created
Discusses the relationship between two things, determining how one ( cause ) leads to the other ( effect ); the effect needs to be based on fact and not an assumption
Identifies the similarities and differences between two things; does not indicate that one is better than the other
Details a problem and presents various possible solutions ; the writer does not suggest one solution is more effective than the others
The purpose of an informative essay depends upon the writerâs motivation, but may be to share new information, describe a process, clarify a concept, explain why or how, or detail a topicâs intricacies.
Informative essays may introduce readers to new information .
Summarizing a scientific/technological study
Outlining the various aspects of a religion
Providing information on a historical period
Describe a process or give step-by-step details of a procedure.
How to write an informational essay
How to construct an argument
How to apply for a job
Clarify a concept and offer details about complex ideas.
Explain why or how something works the way that it does.
Describe how the stock market impacts the economy
Illustrate why there are high and low tides
Detail how the heart functions
Offer information on the smaller aspects or intricacies of a larger topic.
Identify the importance of the individual bones in the body
Outlining the Dust Bowl in the context of the Great Depression
Explaining how bees impact the environment
Regardless of the type of information, the informative essay structure typically consists of an introduction, body, and conclusion.
Introduction
Background information
Explanation of evidence
Restated thesis
Review of main ideas
Closing statement
When composing the introductory paragraph(s) of an informative paper, include a hook, introduce the topic, provide background information, and develop a good thesis statement.
If the hook or introduction creates interest in the first paragraph, it will draw the readersâ attention and make them more receptive to the essay writer's ideas. Some of the most common techniques to accomplish this include the following:
Emphasize the topicâs importance by explaining the current interest in the topic or by indicating that the subject is influential.
Use pertinent statistics to give the paper an air of authority.
A surprising statement can be shocking; sometimes it is disgusting; sometimes it is joyful; sometimes it is surprising because of who said it.
An interesting incident or anecdote can act as a teaser to lure the reader into the remainder of the essay. Be sure that the device is appropriate for the informative essay topic and focus on what is to follow.
Directly introduce the topic of the essay.
Provide the reader with the background information necessary to understand the topic. Donât repeat this information in the body of the essay; it should help the reader understand what follows.
Identify the overall purpose of the essay with the thesis (purpose statement). Writers can also include their support directly in the thesis, which outlines the structure of the essay for the reader.
Each body paragraph should contain a topic sentence, evidence, explanation of evidence, and a transition sentence.
A good topic sentence should identify what information the reader should expect in the paragraph and how it connects to the main purpose identified in the thesis.
Provide evidence that details the main point of the paragraph. This includes paraphrasing, summarizing, and directly quoting facts, statistics, and statements.
Explain how the evidence connects to the main purpose of the essay.
Place transitions at the end of each body paragraph, except the last. There is no need to transition from the last support to the conclusion. A transition should accomplish three goals:
Tell the reader where you were (current support)
Tell the reader where you are going (next support)
Relate the paperâs purpose
Incorporate a rephrased thesis, summary, and closing statement into the conclusion of an informative essay.
Rephrase the purpose of the essay. Do not just repeat the purpose statement from the thesis.
Summarize the main idea found in each body paragraph by rephrasing each topic sentence.
End with a clincher or closing statement that helps readers answer the question âso what?â What should the reader take away from the information provided in the essay? Why should they care about the topic?
The following example illustrates a good informative essay format:
IMAGES
COMMENTS
Open your essay by discussing George Orwell's "1984" as a prophetic warning against totalitarianism and government surveillance. Explore how the novel's themes are eerily relevant in today's world. The Orwellian Language Hook. Delve into the concept of Newspeak in "1984" and its parallels to modern language manipulation.
The best study guide to 1984 on the planet, from the creators of SparkNotes. Get the summaries, analysis, and quotes you need. 1984 Study Guide | Literature Guide | LitCharts. ... Prior to writing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell wrote and published essays on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), Jack London's The Iron Heel (1907), ...
Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984) is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by English writer George Orwell.It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society.
We can help you master your essay analysis of 1984 by taking you through the summary, context, key characters and themes. We'll also help you ace your upcoming English assessments with personalised lessons conducted one-on-one in your home or online! We've supported over 8,000 students over the last 11 years, and on average our students ...
In my 20s, I discovered Orwell's essays and nonfiction books and reread them so many times that my copies started to disintegrate, but I didn't go back to 1984. Since high school, I'd lived ...
As Orwell put it in his essay ... 1984 is a novel which is great in spite of itself and has been lionised for the wrong reasons. The title of the novel is a simple anagram of 1948, the date when the novel was written, and was driven by Orwell's paranoia about the 1945 Labour government in UK. Orwell, a public school man, had built a ...
5. Cutting down the choice of words diminishes the range of thought. 6. The "A" vocabulary consists of words needed for everyday life, words already in existence. 7. The "A" vocabulary ...
1984 Full Summary. After the Second World War, the civil war broke down in Great Britain, which lead to it being occupied by a new superstate - Oceania. The citizens of Oceania live under the rule of an ideology of one Party. The ruler and impersonification of that Party is a leader called Big Brother.
Winston knows that life is not meant to be lived as it is in Oceania, and he tries to construct his ideal society out of fragments of dreams, nursery rhymes, and his love for Julia. Their affair ...
Part 1, Chapter 3. 1. Describe the circumstances surrounding the death of Winston's mother. What are his conflicting emotions? Tell why her death is doubly tragic, in view of societal changes ...
Published: Apr 29, 2022. Over the past few decades, George Orwell has been considered a neo-conservative enthusiast regarding the Cold War. In my contention, the cold war was pursued by three world superpowers, very similar to those that appear in Orwell's novel, 1984. The novel was a mordant yet brilliant "attack" on totalitarian trends ...
Dystopias "Brave New World" by Huxley and "1984" by Orwell. The modern world is full of complications and the moments when it seems like a dystopia the darkest version of the future. In the novel, promiscuity is encouraged, and sex is a form of entertainment. Two Opposite Worlds: "Utopia" and "1984".
99.95 ATAR & 3 x State Ranker. The following essay was written by Project Academy English Teacher, Marko Beocanin. Marko's Achievements: 8th in NSW for English Advanced (98/100) Rank 1 in English Advanced, Extension 1 and Extension 2. School Captain of Normanhurst Boys High School. 99.95 ATAR. Marko kindly agreed to share his essay and ...
1984 Literary Analysis Essay. This is a literary analysis on the novel 1984 by George Orwell. 1984 is a more recent classic dystopian novel. Written in 1949, it's based in the future year of what is presumed to be 1984. It focuses on the life of Winston Smith, a member of the newly established Party that rules over a territory called Oceania ...
Informative essays aim to educate the reader about a specific topic. They present facts, explanations, and insights in a clear and straightforward manner without trying to persuade or argue a particular point of view. ... 1984 Summary Summary of A Rose for Emily Beowulf Summary Summery of Divine Comedy Great Expectations Summary The Great ...
What is an informative essay? Learn what an informative essay is and how to write an informative essay using proper format and structure. ... In fact, it's nothing new at all. In 1984, rising pop ...
Looking for the best 1984 topic for your essay or research? đĄ StudyCorgi has plenty of fresh and unique titles available for free. đ Check out this page! Free essays. ... Argumentative Essay Maker Informative Essay Maker Scholarship Essay Generator Essays Summary Generator Paragraph Rewriter Hook Generator for Essays Essay Expander Tool.
An informative essay is an essay that explains a topic. Informative essays come in many forms; one might explain how a system works, analyze data, summarize an event, compare two or more subjects, or walk the reader through a process step-by-step. Unlike reaction essays, reflective essays, and narrative essays, informative essays are purely ...
Purpose of informative writing. The purpose of an informative essay depends upon the writer's motivation, but may be to share new information, describe a process, clarify a concept, explain why or how, or detail a topic's intricacies. Informative essays may introduce readers to new information. Summarizing a scientific/technological study.