Orwell or are we?

1. Excerpts from Orwell's novel 1984, published in 1949

Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in Oceania, one of three intercontinental super-states. The story occurs in London, the "chief city of Airstrip One",^[18] itself a province of Oceania that "had once been called England or Britain".^[19] Posters of the ruling Party's leader, "Big Brother", bearing the caption BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, dominate the city landscapes, while two-way television (the telescreen) dominates the "private" and public spaces of the populace. Oceania's people are in three classes — the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles. The Party government controls the people via the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), the workplace of protagonist Winston Smith, an Outer Party member. As in the Nazi and Stalinist regimes, propaganda is pervasive; Smith's job is rewriting historical documents to match the contemporary party line, the orthodoxy of which changes daily. It therefore includes destroying evidence, amending newspaper articles, deleting any references to the existence of people identified as "unpersons".

The story begins on 4 April 1984: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen".^[20] The date is questionable, because it is what Winston Smith perceives. Historical facts and documents have been rewritten and revised so many times that even the correct year is uncertain. In the story's course, he concludes it as irrelevant, because the State can arbitrarily alter it; the year 1984 and its world are transmutable.

Ministry of Truth bureaucrat Winston Smith is the protagonist. The story consists of three parts. The first describes the world of 1984 as he perceives it; the second is his illicit romance with Julia and his intellectual rebellion against the Party; the third is his capture and imprisonment, interrogation, torture, and re-education in the Ministry of Love.

The intellectual Winston Smith is a member of the Outer Party who lives in the ruins of London and grew up in the post-World War II United Kingdom during the revolution and the civil war. As his parents disappeared in the civil war, the English Socialism Movement ("Ingsoc" in Newspeak) put him in an orphanage for training and employment in the Outer Party. His squalid existence consists of living in a one-room apartment, eating a subsistence diet of black bread and synthetic meals washed down with Victory-brandgin. He is discontented, and keeps an ill-advised journal of dissenting, negative thoughts and opinions about the Party. If the journal or Winston's errant behavior were to be discovered, it would result in his torture and execution at the hands of the Thought Police. However, unlike most party members, he is lucky enough to have been given a room with a small alcove beside his telescreen where he cannot be seen, where he can keep his own private secrets. more.....

2. The Animal Farm by George Orwell

"ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS"

In Animal Farm, Orwell describes a farm that is run by the animals beginning as a democracy. Characteristics of the farm represented the best in people, a community partnership that embraced the concept of a state of happiness. This idyllic society slowly eroded as the pigs began to take over the farm moving towards a dictatorship. Receiving all the benefit and sharing little with the rest of farm animals, the pigs became an elite society within the farm. The other animals allow this transition due to complacency, lacking the foresight to react before the pigs took control of the community.

The last para from the book..

"Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike.    No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs.  The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." 

read the book online here