1984 is, in another way than \"Animal Farm\", arealistic view of a new society , whose importance did not decline but rather increased after edition of the book in 1949.his vision of terror is very closed to a Kafka´s view of the world who in his works also treated with the destiny of a man focussed and driven into a corner. Orwell´s interpretation, however, is different from the German author´s one by the fact that he concretely shows the political plans of the oppression system. So we always have the empression that Kafka´s world is fantastically invented whereas Orwell´s world is terribly near to reality. It is almost impossible to ignore the fascination of Orwell´s terror world of 1984.
Some scenes remain burnt in the reader´s memory, for example the scene of the maincharacter arrestation. In the final chapter we see how the human consceince is worked out by brainwashing. The reader dies the mental death of his man. Never and in no other work of the world literature, the terror againstone individuel is better shown than in 1984. So the importence of this novel cannot only be a mastepiece of literature, it is Orwell´s testament for people born after him.
His massage is a warning for the crisis of civilisation in the 20th century. Orwell warns us for the dangers of social wrong developments, especially of dangers coming from totalitarian conditions. He shows us which way such systems get their power and keep it. Orwell fights for the sound human intelligence (for which every individual is responsible) and liberal tolerance towards diffrent thinking people. He refuses to give up parts of the truth for any \"higher ideals\".
At the end of his life, Orwell becomes a moralist and humanist, he is free from the pathetic terror of all politicans who want to improve the world. He is still engaded for the social weak people in the civil society (for him the \"proles\" are the omly people of hope for a none-totalitarian future) but he does not belive anymore that Marxism is an idealogy which can make people free and happy. The reason is that the real existing Soviet communist government had disappointed all his hopes of a \"better way\" and that obviously the bad sides of this new society were even worse than those of the old one.
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