George Orwell, the assumed name of writer Eric Arthur Blair, was born in 1903 in Bengal India. His father, Richard Blair, was a British official in the Indian civil services. His mother, Ida, was a governess and the daughter of a teak merchant in Burma ("Orwell, George." 1019). Orwell had one older sister, named Marjorie, who was born in 1898 (Shelden 15). Throughout his life Orwell and his father had a very strained relationship, until his father's death in 1939 (Shelden 11). As a result of his parents class prejudice, Orwell had few friends as a child because he was not allowed to play with the "common" children. He eventually invented an invisible friend named Franky to play with (Shelden 19).

In 1911 Orwell was sent to St. Cyprian's, a preparatory school, on the Sussex

coast. Known for his intelligence, Orwell was "distinguished among th

The most obvious parallel is that of Big Brother symbolizing Stalin. The portrait of Big Brother hangs on walls everywhere, all bearing a man with the same description, "a man of about forty-five with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features" (Orwell 5). Critic Philip Rahv writes "Big Brother . . . is obviously modeled on Stalin, both in his physical features and literary style . . . " (340). Common to these posters is the slogan "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU" (Orwell 5). Such phrases are very similar to Stalin, who rarely ever made an appearance in public, yet his portrait was everywhere constantly watching. Big Brother, like Stalin, is invisible, described as "a face on the hoardings, a voice on the telescreen" (Orwell 171). The style of speech frequented by Stalin is also mimicked by Orwell. The military style and the habit of asking questions and promptly answering them is, as Winston put it, "easy to imitate" (Orwell 42).

In 1943 Orwell traveled to Spain to report on the Civil War and join the Republican militia. He suffered an injury during this time that would damage his throat permanently ("Orwell, George." 1020). After returning to England he held a

One of the most widely known events in history is Stalin's switch of alliances from Allied forces to his agreement with Hitler (Howe 95). In 1984 Oceania undergoes a similar change, when in the middle of a public rally the speaker makes

During the following years he lived in the slums of England and France, working as a dishwasher and living in cheap lodging houses to gather material for his first novel Down and Out in Paris and London, published in 1933 (Kalechofsky vii). His next novel Burmese Days was based on his experienced in Burma as a member of the Imperial Police. In 1935 his novel A Clergyman's Daughter was published ("Orwell, George." 1020). Just a year after that he married Eileen O'Shaughnessy, on June 9, 1936 (Kalechofsky vii).

described as having a "lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard . . . " bears a strong resemblance to Leon Trotsky, a villain in Stalinist Russia (Orwell 13-14). Style of speech is also mimicked again by Orwell by basing Goldstein's fictional novel The Theory and Practice of Oligarchial Collectivism on Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed. One critic said "Emmanuel Goldstein's book . . . imitates Trotsky's style in his 'fondness of using scientific references in non-scientific contexts.'" (Lee 195). One such example was when Goldstein makes the comparison of the upheaval of social classes to the movement of a gyroscope always returning to the equilibrium (Orwell 152).

"Orwell loved the past, hated the present and dreaded the future" said critic Malcolm Muggeridge of Orwell's novel 1984. The novel, based solely on the futuristic super-nation Oceania, is completely controlled by a totalitarian government. Through the character of Winston Smith, Orwell expresses his own negative views toward totalitarianism and his bleak outlook toward the future.

job working for the British Broadcasting Company and became the literary editor of the Tribune

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