What Does Big Brother Mean In 1984

1984 is a book written by George Orwell about a highly controlled, dystopian society. An entity, named Big Brother, controls everything surrounding the public. The book was written in 1948, just three years after Orwell had witnessed the fall of the totalitarian regime in Germany and the rise of the Soviet Union and China, both controlled by totalitarian governments. The free western world was still weak as a result of the 2nd World War. The story of 1984 plays out in Britain. The demise of the British Empire after the second World War and the takeover of a totalitarian government was a real possibility for Orwell at the time that he wrote the book. In 1984, Orwell uses many symbols to show his opinions of the new totalitarian governments. Big Brother acts as a symbol in 1984 of how …show more content…
As 1984 progresses, the reader’s knowledge of the Party becomes increasingly nebulous. Big Brother could be a manipulative tactic from the government to make citizens feel protected. It is revealed that Big Brother could be an ideology rather than a person when O’Brien says “‘Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party’” (pg. 268). Big Brother is never seen or heard of, so it can be questioned whether he even exists. Moreover, Winston’s job is an example of the unclearness of the government. Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, where he falsifies information and forges documents. He explains that, “[t]his process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound tracks, cartoons, photographs--to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance” (pg. 41). This sort of falsification is comparable to Josef Stalin’s alterations of photographs, which had begun before World War II. Over time, it becomes unclear what is real and what is