This image is a poster illustrating the book "1984" by Georges Orwell. Georges Orwell, whose real name was Eric Blair, was a famous English author, born in India in 1903 and died in 1950. He lived a large part of his life in India, during the English colonies, which he condemned. All his life he opposed totalitarianism, communism, colonisation and imperialism. From 1934 to 1938, he even participated in the Spanish War as a volunteer, in opposition to Franco's dictatorship. He wrote a book about it, "Homage to Catalonia". In his most famous book, 1984, he portrays a dystopia in which a man called "Big Brother" is a dictator and watches over men, who only have to work, and who are forbidden to talk about politics. He has also written a very famous book, which is studied a lot in English in France and which I myself have read in French and English, and which is my favourite book: The Animal Farm. In Animal Farm, Orwell depicts animals taking power, unjustly led by the pigs.
The background of this poster is red, the colour of communism. In the middle of the poster there is a man with a stern look on his face, with a mustache, you could say he looks like Adolf Hitler. This man is "big brother", the dictator in the story, the title of this poster is the famous cult phrase from the novel: "big brother is watching you". This sentence defines exactly what dystopia is all about, men are constantly watched by the dictator, through cameras and TVs all over the country, called Oceania. I don't really agree, it's a very exaggerated point of view, even if it cannot be denied that there are some common points between the novel and our current life, especially with the surveillance of social networks.
This poster is terrifying, even with hindsight, it gives us the impression that someone is watching us, and that's the author's intention.
I really liked this book. Recently, it has been doing a lot of talking because some people have compared containment and sanitary measures with the oppression of the dictator. I don't agree with it at all, it doesn't compare to the book and I think that even though it is often said that George Orwell was trying to predict life in 1984, I think that he wanted above all to warn men, that they shouldn't let a man rule them in this way, as one of his great enemies did: Stalin, who was nicknamed "the father of the USSR", by the way. Orwell knew that revolutions were going to continue in Europe, and he wanted to warn men not to make the same mistakes. He himself said that revolutions are only effective if men are wary of people taking power, as with Napoleon in France. Personally, I like this poster very much, it is very representative of the novel, and I also like this novel very much, which is one of the few books I have enjoyed reading several times.
Thank you for your attention, and don't forget : big brother is watching you !
