When Orwell wrote the story 1984, he was really piecing together
many ideas from his radio commentary and essays of the time. The
different elements of 1984 can be seen as a warning to the people.
Orwell believed that he lived in a time and country that practiced
totalitarian politics. The exaggerated politics and government of
1984 was where Orwell thought the world might be headed. Orwell
had a way of using his surroundings and experiences directly in his
writing. The term proles, for instance, is shortened for proletarian.
This comes from Marx's Communist Manifesto. In Which,
Marx refers to the working class as the proletarian. The idea of "Big
Brother came from an advertisement for the Bennett Correspondence
College. Young Man Bennett, the spokesman, says in the ad, "Let me
be your Big Brother." Even Orwell's Ministry of Truth comes from the
Israeli Broadcasting House, where he worked each day. Finally, the
dreaded room 101 was where Orwell did his broadcasts.
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Looking around him during everyday life Orwell would see the
poverty of the underfed, dirty, and ill clothed thousands. London
was filled with bomb craters, where children might play in the
remains of a blown out building. It was an English Socialism.
Orwell's England even had less to eat now then during the war.
In 1948 the labor party was ruling, and Orwell did not like what
he saw around him. Even the name of the ruling party in 1984,
Ingsoc could be seen as a shortened version of English
Socialism. The BBC became popular in 1946, and TV's
were beginning to pop up in homes, these first TV's gave the citizens
of the real 1948 a sense of being watched. Those who did not truly
understand the technology were very skeptical.
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