Wednesday March 18th

The first three chapters of 1984 invite us into the world of Airstrip One (formerly England) in the fictitious year of 1984. Read these chapters carefully and describe this world as completely as you can. In your answer, you should consider the following: What is the government like? What are people’s lives like? How did things get this way? Do you notice any characteristics of a dystopian society? What are they?

We start out in Airstrip one, the picture created for us is not a pleasant one, it would appear that we are looking at a city devestated by war, a dark unwelcoming city of concrete and dust. Nothing is clean its just one big city of oppression and unpleasantness. The Government is a very oppresive one, wherever you look there are posters saying big brother is watching you, also there are telescreens in every room and every possible location. The government is constantly on the look for anyone betraying the party. To go with that there are thought police, they come during the night and arrest those who have committed thought crime or taken actions against the party. Also there are no laws but if one were to do anything that suggested individualism or going against the party you could be arrested and hauled off. The peoples lives in 1984 are crap the live in slum like conditions for the most part where nothing works. If you are a parent you live in constant fear because your children are little demons that could rat you out to the thought police weather you did anything or not. This society is a dystopian because basically everything sucks and no one is happy unless your the people on the very top. You could also argue that this isn't a dystopia because it would appear that there was no attempt for a utopia in the first place. A dystopia is a utopia that went wrong due to some flaw... this here is just crap... there was not attempt for this to be a good society its just people living in non stop poverty and being miserable a more correct term than dystopia would be hell.