1984: George Orwell’s masterpiece that is always relevant

Many people consider that we are living in a true dystopian nightmare. Until a few months ago, we had a normal life: we left our home to go to work, we got together with friends and we could walk the streets safely. Currently, what we are experiencing with the coronavirus makes us rethink the concept of normality.

Well, in this sense, many people make a kind of analogy between the current situation with science fiction classics. For example, the Télam website mentions that we are in a “real-time dystopia”, since reality is on the heels of science fiction, showing us that sometimes these literary worlds can also materialize.

Many people consider that we must get used to this new reality. For example, El Salto daily highlights that the "coronavirus dystopia is here to stay." Faced with this situation, we decided to recapitulate and delve into the substance of this matter, analyzing George Orwell's 1984, a landmark work for humanity's fictional literature, which was the cornerstone for the creation of new scenarios that, right now, are not so unreal.

1984, an engaging story constantly adapting

Art always has the ability to anticipate new scenarios. Whether by foresight or by imagination, dystopian literature showed things that happened in the future. For example, the website of El Mundo highlights that "it is as if the world knew that something bad was going to happen to it", because these scenarios are not new topics in our culture, although it is true that it is very rare to see them in reality.

So, we must understand that we are talking about a classic dystopian fiction political novel, which was published in the year 1949. Although it is old, the reality is that it is extremely valid today. The more time passes, the more we can see its themes coming to life.

Basically, the novel describes the life of a society watched over by an omnipresent Big Brother, deriving in the concept of "Orwellian world" to refer to the total and absolute presence of certain organizations, but also of the intention to provoke certain models of behavior appropriate for the population, according to the specialized magazine of Cultura Más.

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The BBC media also highlights that this story about totalitarianism has a huge impact on today's society, since we understand what is described. The emergence of organizations such as the Thought Police or the Ministry of Love (paradoxically, an entity engaged in causing pain) demonstrates the double discourse that operates in politics.

The idea of "total control" operated by the media is also prevalent today. For example, the controlling entity of the book, Big Brother, was replicated as a reality show in various countries around the world. Even the Los Andes media in Mendoza mentions that they are thinking about a return of this program in the near future, where the lives of some participants locked in a house are observed.

These situations cause people to understand that this story of ideological persecution and absolute totalitarianism, thought of as a dystopian novel, can be completely real. Even seven decades after its publication, the Xataka media mentions that 1984 continues to be a bestseller today, which they classify as a "self-fulfilling prophecy".

Knowing this, it is not surprising that, in the face of an attack on freedom of expression, a propaganda use of the State, the lies of the politicians, or the continuous observation of citizens, leads us to immediately relate it to this book. Be that as it may, most likely, both in this strange present and in the uncertain future, we will continue to relate the facts with the society proposed by Orwell.