Written at the end of the 1940s by George Orwell, 1984 is a cautionary tale of what could happen in a Britain of the future. From the perspective of Orwell, the world was finally coming into a period of peace and hope after the devastating effects of the Second World War. Orwell looked at the regimes in Nazi Germany and the continuing situation in Soviet Russia. He raises many points in the book that still has power some 80 years since it was first published. One thing that Orwell did get wrong was the use of cameras. These have benefitted us by preventing crime and providing greater security. It’s why a CCTV Gloucester based firm like https://apmfireandsecurity.com/cctv-security-systems/cctv-installation-gloucester are very important to homes and industry.
The book’s main concerns are around the rise of a godlike figure surrounded by a cult-like following amongst the population. Britain has been renamed Airstrip One after decades of war and revolution. Out of this chaos, the Party of Ingsoc is in total control. The main character’s job is to delete pieces of historical evidence that show the party’s rise to power was not inevitable.
With deliberate stories of misinformation placed in the news and an ongoing war that may or may not be happening against a constantly changing enemy, it seems that people have simply given up and decided to just go along with what the Party and Big Brother tell them. These are themes that have started to occur in our own western societies. Perhaps Orwell was not all that far away from the truth.
