What does Orwell's vision of the future look like in the book 1984?
There are many aspects to Orwell's vision of the future in his famous novel. The basic outlines can be summarized as follows, with the proviso that in a relatively brief answer such as this, any description of the 1984 world must be simplified to an extent.
We are told early on that the story is taking place in a world where a nuclear war has occurred, for there is a reference to the time early in Winston's memory "when the atomic bomb fell on Colchester." The actual details beyond that are not given, but the world has been reorganized into three "superstates": Oceania, which we are led to believe includes the British Isles, the United States, and the rest of the Americas, and possibly the other English-speaking parts of the world such as Australia; Eurasia, which includes the continent of Europe including the former Soviet Union and possibly the Middle East; and Eastasia, which would be China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and most of the Pacific islands, presumably. The world is in a continuous state of war, usually with one superstate in alliance with another against the third one.
All three super-states apparently have the same dictatorial, totalitarian system of government. Freedom of speech is suppressed, and even freedom of thought is dangerous because the assumption is that the secret police, called the Thought Police, have the ability to find out what people are thinking and arrest them for anti-government ideas even if the offending person has not actually committed an overt crime. The social hierarchy consists of three strata or levels. At the top is the Inner Party, the elite government managerial class who have the highest standard of living and actually "run things," creating "policy" and systematically feeding lies to the public and directing the falsification of historical records.
The group just below them is the Outer Party, to which Winston, Julia, and most of the other characters in the story belong. These people, though Party members, have no say in how the state is run and are basically low-level but skilled functionaries who carry out the tasks assigned by the Inner Party bosses. In some sense they are a futuristic version of the middle class—people with technical skills but without authority, like the non-managerial employees of a business.
And the third, lowest level of the hierarchy are the proles, the working-class people who make up approximately 70% of the population. The system is supposed to be a form of socialism, but the Party are taught to despise the proles, and even to consider them "not human beings." At the very pinnacle of this structure is Big Brother, the "Leader," a kind of futuristic Stalin or Hitler who may in fact not even be a real person but merely a symbol of absolute authority personified. His huge picture is posted everywhere, made to look as if the eyes are following one at all times. The population is under constant surveillance through "telescreens," TV screens which are placed everywhere and have the ability both to transmit and to receive, so that people are being watched at all times. Private life has come to an end.
Bombs are falling on London all the time, because of the perpetual state of war Oceania is in with one or the other of the rival super-states. But no "progress" one way or the other ever occurs in this warfare. We are given to understand that although the use of atomic bombs was at least partly what resulted in this post-cataclysmic world, only "conventional" bombs are now dropped, and appear to do no significant damage. The endless war is a psychological mechanism to keep the population in a state of fear and terror. The general condition of life in Oceania, and presumably the other superstates, is one of privation. Food is scanty and poor, Outer Party members must wear uniforms (specifically overalls, which traditionally are the clothing of British working-class people, though Party members are taught to despise the working class), their clothing and housing is in bad condition, and there is no freedom of social interaction. Though the society is atheistic, it is also sexually puritanical. Winston and Julia, in merely having a relationship without being married, are committing a crime. The end result is that they are arrested and tortured into a "re-educated" state, not entirely because Winston has had "heretical" thoughts which he has recorded in a diary, but because he and Julia have defied the Party simply through their act of loving each other.
This is the nightmare future Orwell has imagined. It is a projection into the future of things that were already happening in the first half of the twentieth century in both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. A government has taken control that purports to be socialistic, but the actual aim of the leaders is unlimited and absolute power for themselves. When Winston is being tortured and "re-educated," O'Brien makes it clear that the old ideas about equality and a workers' states are a sham, intended to dupe the population into thinking the leaders support them. An important part of this dystopian world is the Party's manipulation of language, the creation of a new, scaled-down English called Newspeak in which words are constantly being "destroyed" in order to limit people's ability even to think anti-government ideas, in so much as thought is dependent on words. It's not necessary to dwell on the fact that although Orwell's predictions have not come true, even thirty-four years after the year in which his novel is supposed to take place—some elements of them can be seen in real life today. It is anybody's guess if the complete prophesy will be fulfilled in the near or distant future.
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