Is 1984 only valuable as a novel for warning the world about the dangers of totalitarianism and dystopias?

I disagree with the first answer addressing 1984 as a ‘love story’; The characters do not end up together and worse, the main character first imagines raping the girl he later comes to sleep with. This is not love or lust, rape is about control. This shows that the character lacks control in his life, and this is not a feeling, but a fact.

1984 is a warning, but moreso on how easily people can be persuaded to switch their thinking in an instant, without thinking, and see their ally as their enemy in mere seconds. It also reveals the shocking effects of propogranda at the end, along with the lasting effects of torture induced PTSD.

Between the two, Brave New World is a far better warning of the current world and future; Orwell believed mankind would live in a bleak, cruel world, where Huxley believed control lied in drugging the population into happiness. Many conspiracy theorists agree more with Huxley, and Orwell, proving his arrogance, sent Huxley a copy of his book for his opinion.

Huxley read it and told him he still believed his dystopian future was far more likely. In the advent of antidepressants and such, it seems Huxley is correct; Humanity has long proven we will only tolerate cruelty and tyrants for so long. Since a major theme in the book is being aware of this, Orwell’s work lacks the same sense of reality. His book is mainly revolving as a warning of technology and its use for spying more than anything else.


While 1984 is valuable as a warning about the danger of totalitarianism and a dystopic future, it also has merit as a love story. Orwell knew his craft, and even if you were not interested in the didactic (warning/cautionary) purpose of the novel, you could enjoy it as a well-wrought tale about how two people fall in love and set up a world apart from the regime that controls every aspect of their lives.
Orwell uses character development to show how Winston grows from an angry, alienated, and desensitized person who fantasizes about raping and harming Julia to one who is loving and caring toward her. We see him expand from a person indifferent to the proles to one who, right before his arrest, sees the large-framed, older prole woman who hangs the laundry outside the room above Mr. Charrington's shop as fully human and even beautiful.
Orwell uses setting to pull us into the novel as well; his descriptions of Winston's flat are amazing, and his descriptions of the room where Julia and Winston make an ordinary domestic life for themselves in the hours they can snatch away are illuminating.
He also uses symbolism, likening the room above Mr. Charrington's shop to the paperweight Winston buys. The paperweight with coral inside becomes a symbol of the room and of the two lovers' escape. Even if we do not live with the horrors of the totalitarian society Julia and Winston must cope with, many of us can connect with the idea of finding delight in a refuge with one we love. Winston describes it in the following way:

He turned over towards the light and lay gazing into the glass paperweight. The inexhaustibly interesting thing was not the fragment of coral but the interior of the glass itself. There was such a depth of it, and yet it was almost as transparent as air. It was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete. He had the feeling that he could get inside it, and that in fact he was inside it, along with the mahogany bed and the gateleg table, and the clock and the steel engraving and the paperweight itself. The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal

Orwell is a masterful writer who provides the reader with a strong story that includes at least one compelling character who learns and grows, an evocative setting, a David-and-Goliath plot, and a believable love story. Even if the totalitarian elements were softened, it would still be a fine and worthwhile novel.

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