George Orwell: 1984

We think we know it all about 1984, its background and implications. A dark alegory of the USSR and the Eastern block, presciently written in the 1940s. A threat on the world to come, if we don´t watch out. The portrait of a totalitarian State, able to view and record, through technology, all possible details, even minor ones, of our lifes.

1984 is a dystopia. A good dystopia, aside from literary values, is always a warning. And to be so, it needs to be an exaggeration. The society described by Orwell is a hell, a sordid psychological nightmare. We could wonder if such a society could exist to such a degree of ignominy, without people exploding, minds and bodies bursting, and destroying it. Wonder if it is possible such a repression of all desires, emotions and freedom, this perversion of all that constitutes a human being. And not a tiny, miserable insect in the hands of Ideology.

The answer is clearly, no. Or not to this unhuman extent. But reading Orwell´s novel is necessary. For moral and political reasons. It is a warning through exaggeration and practical impossibility. Because 1984's world of manipulation of language, of a rough reinvention of the past, of full creation of reality by media, annihilation of the very concept of truth, of total loss of privacity, can perfectly exist, though in a much more subtle way. 1984 is a reminder of the possibility of a few real dangers, aside from being a magnificent thriller.

1984, (1948). George Orwell