In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, how does Orwell creates a convincing dystopian society?

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In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell creates a convincing dystopian society in which he often combines the mundane and the extreme through the character of Winston Smith, who is living in a Communist state. This novel shows the total control exerted by Big Brother and how the society of today reflects it.

The future Orwell creates in Nineteen Eighty-Four combines the everyday with the extreme and shocking. In the first line itself, Orwell begins with an ordinary comment about the weather ‘It was a bright cold day in April…’ and carries on with a remark about the time ‘… and the clocks were striking thirteen’.  Everything in that sentence was purposely made to sound as if it was nothing out of the blue, until the last word, ‘thirteen’. At first glance, this sentence seems like the most conventional of openings, before re-reading it, when you realise clocks do not strike thirteen.  Mundane until the last word. Orwell uses this technique, combining mundane and extreme, throughout this novel by describing scenes familiar to us such as a ‘hallway smell [ing] of boiled cabbage and old rag mats’ and then startling us with situations like ‘Hate Week’. Orwell uses this technique to show the reader that from the outside this world is not different to ours, until you delve in further which is when you begin to see the corruption they face in Orwell’s futuristic world. Another reason Orwell has tried to show us the world in his novel isn’t different to ours is because he wanted to prove to the reader that our future could be like this. However the largest exemplification of this is the character of Winston.

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Thirty-nine years old, he is frail and thin, employed as a records editor or propaganda officer in the records department in the Ministry of Truth. ‘A smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades’. Orwell tells us all this to prove the Winston is the common man, easy for the reader to identify and sympathize with. He isn’t shown as too wealthy or living-on-the-streets poor, so that the ...

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