How Is George Orwell Relevant Today

With the recent election of president Donald Trump, and critics looking closer at vices in our society, sales of George Orwell’s 1984 have skyrocketed. Whether or not Orwell meant to warm us about the future of our society is unclear, but it is clear that some of these warnings are in fact valid, considering the degree our world reflects Big Brother’s. Although it would be an exaggeration to say that our society has turned into the totalitarian state Orwell writes about, his ideas and warnings are without a doubt, embedded in today’s society. This dystopian literary work was written to terrify its audience, but from truth to privacy, the similarities it has to our world today is what is truly horrific. In George Orwell’s 1984 the protagonist Winston Smith’s society is similar to our society today regarding citizens’ knowledge of the truth. President Donald Trump's adviser, Kellyanne Conway, used the phrase "alternative facts" in a recent interview defending White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who had inaccurately described Trump's inauguration turnout. In 1984 “alternative facts” are called doublethink. For example, when Winston describes how he remembers facts that the Party says are falsehoods Orwell says “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never
This dystopian society that is meant to be horrific and very fictional, is becoming more and more similar to our modern society considering the degree our society reflects Big Brother’s. With the recent election, and more and more discoveries about invasion of citizen’s privacy, no wonder the sales of this book have