1984 Essay Book Banned

[jman199]

Hey there guys! Im new here and I am in great need of help. My class recently read 1984 and for our final we have to write and essay on the book my teacher gave us a list of choices. I picked "1984 has been banned a few times,Mostly from schools, What about the book and its ideas would cause people to be so strongly against it?. Do some research on the banning of the book" well I had no problem with that I used the all mighty internet but its all the same thing Ive read it has been banned in Russia. Also a county in Florida had attempted to ban it but that's not enough information for my essay can someone please help me out if I dont pass the finial I wont graduate. Thank you.

[hillwalker]

It is surely not a case of identifying which countries banned the book but why did they feel threatened by it.

Firstly, I will assume you have read the novel (if not - well do so immediately).

When it was written, shortly after the end of the Second World War (and at the onset of the Cold War) Russia and Communism were suddenly the new enemy. In many ways '1984' follows on from 'Animal Farm' which was an allegorical illustration of the Communist Party and the 'red revolution'.
It is set in a totalitarian state very similar to Russia under Stalin - so, much of the oppression, censorship and removal of individual power refers directly to techniques employed during Stalin's regime (gulags, secret police, censorship of the media, etc.).

There are other references to life in such a state that many totalitarian regimes would prefer kept quiet than discussed so openly in literature - the omnipresence of the state (Big Brother), propaganda (belief in the party line has to be absolute or is punished), mass brainwashing (from entertainment that pushes the party line to massaging history), the treatment of dissidents, attidtudes to sex and love, I could go on and on.

So many terms from the novel have come to be used in contemporary language and media (Big Brother, doublethink, doublespeak, Room 101) that it's effect on our life today could be investigated as a thesis by itself.

So the main points to go for would be the way Orwell anticipates the future under a totalitarian state where individuality has no place (presumably the way things were heading under MacCarthyism until the 'Hippy Revolution' took place) - and its legacy on today's society where people still come up with conspiracy theories and the like because we have inherited a paranoid society. Take it from there?