Part 1 of 4 · freeIntroduction
In 1949, George Orwell published 1984, one of the most widely read dystopias in the world. It is more than a novel about the future: it is a vocabulary for talking about modern oppression. Big Brother, Newspeak, the Ministry of Truth: these words left fiction behind and now describe political reality.
Orwell wrote the book while he was gravely ill with tuberculosis, on the island of Jura in Scotland. His pessimism came from direct experience of politics, of war, and of organized lying. 1984 does not predict the future like a calendar. It describes a machinery of domination that Orwell had watched at close range, from Republican Spain to Oceania, the invented state where everything is controlled.
The rest is in the Sophia app.The remaining parts, the open-book quiz and the full glossary. Free to start; Premium unlocks everything.
- 2The Spanish wound: where Orwell's thinking began
- 3The architecture of control: the Oceania system
- 4Winston and Julia: how fragile private dissent is
Open-book quiz10 questions whose answers are in the text.
Glossary9 terms explained in a tap.
30 languagesThe same course, from French to Japanese.
