1984, THE HISTORY IN A BOOK.

Laura Sofía Peña Velosa
6-03-2017
Mr. Fajardo
1984, THE HISTORY IN A BOOK.
“Nuestras discordias tienen su origen en las dos más copiosas fuentes de calamidad pública: la ignorancia y la debilidad.”
- Simón Bolivar.
1984 by George Orwell, 1984 is a novel who talks about a totalitarian state world were someone is taking advantage of how ignorant people is, and because of that, the “Big Brother” uses his speach to convince the others for join his party, Winston, our main character is into that but he does not really like the idea, something is pushing him backwards and he is not really convinced about how things are getting along on his alliance (On the book there are different types of alliance) But, this kind of governments were taking control about everything we got, even, our language, deleting words that could make our daily life “sweeter” Or that’s what they thought in that governments.

George Orwell was born by the name of “Eric A. Blair” in Motihari, Bengal, India; 1903. Journalist and Writer.

This book, is quite interesting, why? It can be related in many ways, first of all the Saphyr-Worff theory, first of all, the Saphyr-Worff theory is like a pyramid that tries to explain how Culture, literature and language are realted, knowing this, we can talk know about this theory on 1984, the author, Eric Blair, starting from the part in which people said he took his life experiences and put them into his books and created a new world, even thought one of his master pieces is consider science fiction.

We are going to touch many points in this text:
A) Why If 1984 is a “science fiction” text it can be related with such mundane things as social inequality and totalities?
First of all, when we talk about a principal character like Big brother is, can we talk about World War 1 (WW1) and World World 2 (WW2)? Yes we can, as everyone should know, the World War 1 started on August the 1st of 1914, after the muder of the archduke Francisco Fernando from the Austro-Hungarian Empire the German empire declares war against Russia. Thanks to alliances France prepares for the conflict join to England, what happened in that war? Well, the Ottoman Empire dissolves, and little countries come out from this place like “Siria, Iraq, Jordania, etc”… But, how a huge Empire like the Ottoman was could be destroy, well, French and English (Big brother) people convinced the civilization inside of the Ottoman Empire with the agreement of Sykes Picot, in this agreement, the Britain and French told these people they will help the to create the “Great Arabia” Well, after the dissolve the Ottoman Empire, the French and British people decided where will be the limits between Syria and Irak, so, Syria was controlled by French people, and Irak was controlled by the British, so, does the text can not be related? It can, what did cause this false promise? Well, nowadays, we know this as the middle east conflict, but this goes forwards, because this part connects with one of the more important channels of the world and the biggest reserve of petroleum and this is one of the principal causes why people want this territory, this creates and Arabic moved for give back life to the “Great Arabia” dream, so here is when this people started the conflict but the big brother nowadays (USA, France, etc.) Makes the people from the entire world think that what they are doing is right and the people who started everything and are wrong are Syria, Irak and all these countries. This does not mean that everything is fault of big brother, because these places are not very stable as government, why? Because they do not like to know what is wrong and what is right far all the manipulation they got in there, they have internal “Big Brother’s” being one nation.
World War 2, again, our example is Big Brother, but know, his name is Adolf Hitler, and is not something that happened just in old times, it stills happening, but we are going to explain first why did World War 2 started, September the 1st of 1939; first of all, the main leader of this “catastrophe” was Adolf Hitler, he walk up to the power on the 1930’s and since that he convinced Germans to reveal against other parties and Jews, again the “Big brother effect” works on the world war 2, and makes many people suffer the pain that the government is giving to them a wrong idea of what is good and what is bad, killing every moral aspect these people had, not only in Germany also in France, USA, England, etc.
So, the basic relation it has is, the totalitarian states of XX century, like for example, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini…

1. Mussolini: The first idea Mussolini had, was, to make Italy a great republic again, capitalist, but this caused a huge repression on Italians, so that did not go very well; This government was divided in two ways, the first one is the conciliation of the fascism on Italy, going hand by hand with a militarism state also. Giacomo Metteotti sue the violence lived in Italy and he was liked by Mussolini for that; The second part, the fascist dictatorship, the state started to control the people, many other parties were closed, and things that went against the State were punish.
2. Hitler: It is the same story, because he based some things on the ideologies of Mussolini, but the name of his party was Nazism.
3. Stalin: He was a Lenin successor, of the URSS; he transformed Russia into semi feudal and in a economic power with military stuff. Stalin started socialist and communist on west Europe.

As you can see, it is easy to relate all this, the representation of all this parties wars for power are the same, but shown in different ways on the book, as in the book they can be Oceania, in that time that could be the Mussolini government, some people stood, but others are afraid to do something about it.

B) Do this kind of totalitarism can be evidence on our country?
Yes, we can take an easy example, not from this country but it still works. Donald Trump, it is funny, because, the way he got into government was quite similar to the way Hitler did it. This is the most interesting part of the book, even though it is a despotic, science fictional story, it is related nowadays and years ago, so, it is really related with real life problems, that is the magic behind 1984, so… why are we living in a real version of 1984? The answer can be resolved by the simple reason that we are not only living in a bad democracy but also a not functional enough country; We can relate this with the game called “BioShock”
“No gods or kings, only man”
-BioShock
The main characteristic about this game, is, that the set of the story was a place governed by men, the most talented in each area of science, arts, etc… But, when the submarine city starts to get so many innovations that the civilization starts to kill itself, creating a social catastrophe, because everyone wants to keep improving their DNA to continue with “The perfect society”. So, in 1984, people do not have a choice to do what they like, they only belief in one thing, “Big Brother” The society of the book can collapse just as “Rapture” did, thanks to people like Wiston. “Rapture” stills being part of the war, Oceania has conflicts, on 1984 people are forced to do what someone told them to do, in “Rapture” people do what they already knew how to do, but in both cases, they are pressed, the State is so demanding with the society that instead of creating and innovating in a good way, they force people not to think of other thing; On Rapture people do not have any gods or cults, neither a “boss” and it also has a Big brother, two, Andrew Ryans and Atlas; In 1984 people do not belief in anything else but the thing the think is good, so for people in Oceania living in that way is good. Our principle characters in the book and the game can be really related to each other (Jack And Wiston) When Jack first arrive to “Rapture” he wants to discover why that super nation was destroy; Wiston starts to discover why things in his society are so weird. In this part what can we say?
“I’m not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. These people will liberate themselves”
“Atlas” BioShock
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength”
“1984” George Orwell
Too much liberty is bad? Not enough liberty is also bad? What is the way we can fix everything? For the type of government they have, Big brother is like the god, the omnipresent and omniscient part of the story, the one who punish what is considered wrong. This is why government of 1984 is so related with reality and why it can be related with Colombian government; First of all, people in 1984 do not know if the life they are living in that country is morally correct, and we neither, in our constitution there is a part for president were it says,

“ARTICULO 191. Para ser Presidente de la República se requiere ser colombiano por nacimiento, ciudadano en ejercicio y mayor de treinta años.”
“TÍTULO VII
DE LA RAMA EJECUTIVA; CAPITULO 1.
DEL PRESIDENTE DE LA REPUBLICA”
As you can see, one of the only things we need to be a president is just be, so, what will guarantee that this person will do the right thing for us? What will guarantee this person is a good one for the country; we do not know that, either Oceania population in 1984 does, both of us are living on ignorance, which is not what we can call strength in our society, that makes us weaker, and the one who has the power is not the congress, is not Big brother, is not a state; the power is us, the population.
Represented in a pyramid, the person who has the power is the president, the one who’s “watching us”, but we are at the bottom, without a bottom there is not a top of a pyramid. We are that ignorant that we think the only ones who can be called powerful are the people with money, the “Bourgeois”, these people means nothing without us, the pyramid is not completely right at all, they are not the power, we are the power. Now, you may think, “Well, people chose those presidents and everything” And its for the same reason, ignorance. Rousseau said, when we have to make a law, we all have to make it, if not, those are not laws; The most common in our daily life’s to choose a representative in our government, when this was created after the French Revolution, when the feudal state got rid; they created the “Representative Government Republic” (By the time, only France and USA got this type of government) What does this mean? These people are just representing their proposals, and asking everybody either they aprove it or not, if not, that could not be a law, if people aprove it, that could be a law. But, Colombian government is getting again into the feudal government, why? Because every president, every person with “power” has his family into that zone and also friends, were all under the control of different people who might be the same, who might not change anything, those are our big brothers, we are Oceania and our education is so poor that we can not realize what are they doing with us, some people do not even care about what is happening and create a “comfort-zone” around that, we give a blind trust in people who’s playing with us.
In the young Greece, Athens, had their own system, in which anyone could participate, from the most poor until the richest, people who could go to the power were the ones who were more prepare for this, there were many different opinions, polarization was not possible to make because candidates were chose randomly, and the could not promise anything; They had not a Big Brother they where all “Winstons”.
These method had problems, and that is why everything keeps evolving, not only the species, our ideologies too.
If we want to avoid a 1984 end, we all have to make a change, the only way this can be avoid is participating, knowing who is our representative, not placing a person in a god’s place. The power is in the bottom, not at the top; the pyramid is not complete without us; 1984 is a reality, but it can only stay like a fiction.

who needs rethoric questions? XD this text contains too many of them, please make sure to supress them in academic texts since those questions are somewhat too informal. Your redaction is pretty decent and your punctuation is well used. Be careful with the use of People (being plural, should be used with ARE and never let the verb acquire the S of a third person) in general this is a good text and the different intentions are determined correctly. Your grade is an 8,5.