1984 was a 'Heed my warning' book written by George Orwell (his real name was Eric Blair) about the danger of totalitarian states, brain washing, and technology (though I'm sure there will be lots of people out there happy to disagree with me). The main charactor is a man called Winstone, and is based in a world in the future (or was, when it was written just after the second world war -- 1939 - 45) where the countries are all amalgamted into 3 superpowers that are all fighting, and have huge nuclear arsenals they daren't use.

It is a prophetic book.. .."while so many of his friends were romanticising Joe Stalin as the friend of the common man, Orwell had the insight to recognise the dictator for the blood-soaked thug was, and the courage to tell a gullible world the truth.

In 1984, he sets himself the task of revealing the inner woeking of totalitarian regimes as a warning against accomodating tyranny. In part to emphasise that an urgent battle was raging for the soul of Western Civilisation, he planned to call the book 'The Last man in Europe'

Writing the book became a race against time. Orwell feared that some calamity might erupt and cause the Cold War to grow hot - and his disease was catching up with him. At the end of 1948, he was so weak that he could hardly sit up. With his old manual typewriter awkwardly positioned on his lap, he spent hours banging away on the machine, coughing and spitting up blood..." - from The Guardian, I think

The Book, which became a success after he died, is now world famous, and is heralded amongst the best books of all time. From The Guardian of Sunday 23rd October, 1999, the book is cited as being number 10 in the 'Booktrack top 20 classics of all time'.

Orwell was a part of the Syndicalistic movent ("free socialism") that beleived that there should be no state or other higher force that control pepole. The companies should be owned by the workers so everybody got the chance to control their own lives. A syndicalist doesn't want to change the society with weapons in his hand, rather inspire people to think for themselves, learn by their mistakes, and understand the world in wich they live in. It is for this reason that Orwell wrote 1984: to make people aware of the truth. This was the reason for the writing of "Animal Farm", another of Orwell's books...

At the end of the second world war, Hitler was (of course) cast as a monster.. the title of Churchill's speech of xxxx says it all: "<<>>". Stalin, however, was portrayed as "Uncle Joe".. a jovial character, a friend of the allies. he could do nothing wrong, and he had helped the Allies win the war. The truth was, in fact, supressed. The truth was that Stalin, the great friend of the allies, had started off as their mortal enemy, and far from being friendly, he killed millions during his purges. Worse still, to a socialist, Stalin was corrupting the idea of socialism itself, and had used Communism as a means through which to gain power. The governmental system of Russia was not communism, but totalitarianism.

In animal Farm, Stalin is represented by Napolean, an appropriately-named pig. When the animals on the farm rebel and depose the 'ruler' of the farm (Farmer Jones) it is the pigs who grasp the oppertunity to gain control. At first, all get an equal say, and all of the animals live by the maxims proposed by Old Major, a pig who represents Marx. However, the pigs gradually gain control, starting with the appropriation by them of extra food, followed by their dominance at meetings, their living in the house, etc etc. They also change the commandments of Old Major (which are painted on the side of the barn by the pigs) in order to justify this in the minds of the few animals who are intelligent enough to notice. Note: Most of the animals are conformist and are easily brainwashed by the pigs. Boxer (a horse)'s motto says it all.. "Napolean is always right". The one animal who sees through what the pigs are doing (Benjamin, a donkey, and Boxer's friend) refuses to say anything but "Donkeys live a long time. You've never seen a dead donkey". Benjamin is often seen to represent the intelligent cynics in the world, and the analagy can be taken further to correlate Benjamin with Orwell himself.

In the same way, then, that each item, idea, charactor, and place represents something in the real world, 1984 represents what Orwell beleived the future of the world would be like were people not educated.