Nineteen Eighty-Four: Encyclopedia II - Nineteen Eighty-Four - Novel history

Nineteen Eighty-Four - Novel history

Nineteen Eighty-Four - Title

The novel was written by George Orwell under the working title of The Last Man in Europe. However, the book's publishers in both the United Kingdom and the United States, where it was simultaneously released, moved to change its title for marketing purposes to Nineteen Eighty-Four. First published on June 8, 1949, the bulk of the novel was written by Orwell on the island of Jura, Scotland in 1948, although Orwell had been writing small parts of it since 1945. The book begins approximately on April 4, 1984 (the first entry in Winston Smith's diary) at 13:00 ("It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen...").

The original working title of The Last Man in Europe was a natural evolution of the theme of the novel itself. When the publishers requested a new title Orwell did not object. It has been suggested that Orwell had originally chosen to call it Nineteen Eighty, but as his writing dragged on due to the advance of his tuberculosis, Orwell changed it to Nineteen Eighty-Two and then to Nineteen Eighty-Four. From this beginning of speculation a number of competing theories have also arisen regarding the meaning of the title. Some have suggested that Orwell simply switched the last two digits of the year in which he wrote the book (1948), but others have suggested that it may also have been an allusion to the centenary of the Fabian Society, a socialist organization founded in 1884. Alternatively, still other theories link it to Jack London's novel The Iron Heel, in which the power of a political movement reaches its height in 1984, or even to G. K. Chesterton's The Napoleon of Notting Hill, also set in that year. Even further suggestions are that it refers to a poem that his wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, had written called End of the Century, 1984. The only real knowledge that we have is that the working name was The Last Man in Europe because it related to the storyline of the book, and that the publishers wanted to change the name for purposes of mass marketing. It might also be noted, again, that the first entry in the main character's diary, near the start of the book, is "April 4, 1984."

Nineteen Eighty-Four - Orwell's inspiration

The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four also reflects various aspects of the social and political life of both the United Kingdom and the United States of America. There have been suggestions that the primary character was named Winston after Winston Churchill, who had been British Prime Minister during the Second World War.

Orwell is reported to have said that the book described what he viewed as the situation in the United Kingdom in 1948, when the British economy was poor, the British Empire was dissolving at the same time as newspapers were reporting its triumphs, and wartime allies such as the USSR were rapidly becoming peacetime foes ('Eurasia is the enemy. Eurasia has always been the enemy').

His work for the overseas service of the BBC, which at the time was under the control of the Ministry of Information, also played a significant role as the basis for his Ministry of Truth (as he later admitted to Malcolm Muggeridge).

In many ways, Oceania is indeed a future metamorphosis of the British Empire. It is, as its name suggests, an essentially naval power. Much of its militarism is focused on veneration for sailors and seafarers, serving on board "floating fortresses" which Orwell evidently conceived of as the next stage in the growth of ever-bigger warships, after the Dreadnoughts of WWI and the aircraft carriers of WWII. And much of the fighting conducted by Oceania's troops takes place in defence of India, which was of course the British Empire's "Jewel in the Crown".

O'Brien, representative par excellence of the oppressive Party, is in many ways depicted as a member of the old British ruling class (in one case, Winston Smith thinks of him as a person who in the past would have been holding a snuffbox - i.e. an old-fashioned English Gentleman).

It is also significant that the main organ of The Party is the The Times. This is certainly not taken from the practice of the Bolsheviks, who did not take over the established newspapers of Tsarist Russia but created their own papers. And the Party also publishes low-level papers, full of nothing but crime, gossip and soft pornography, for the consumption of "the proles". The Bolsheviks, who had a puritan streak, never did anything remotely the like, but such papers are very much part of British life (in Orwell's time and even more nowadays).

It is natural that such comparisons and references would crop up in a book by Orwell - a man who started as a loyal servant of the British Empire in the Colonial Police at Burma, became bitterly disillusioned with the Empire and seeker after a revolution, and rediscovered his British patriotism during WWII. However, since the book was used for decades as a staple of anti-Soviet propaganda, this aspect of it was obscured from its widely-known image - though quite obvious to an intelligent reader.

It should also be noted that Oceania’s standard practice of declaring POW's to be "war criminals" as a justification for killing them out of hand might be considered as Orwell's criticism of the Nuremberg Trials conducted by the victors of WWII against the losers - another aspect of this book which did not quite fit with using it as Cold War propaganda.

Thus, it is more accurate to perceive the novel as a prognostication of the British society in which Orwell grew up set in the future than to see it strictly as propaganda opposed against and attacking the Soviet Union.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Novel history", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki