Criticism > Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism > Special Commissioned Entry on George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, W. Scott Lucas - Nineteen Eighty-Four As Studied

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NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR AS STUDIED

In a sense, Nineteen Eighty-Four is sui generis. This is not because Orwell's writing style is unique, whatever the claim made for his clarity of language, nor is it because he was alone in his projection of dystopia.

Instead, Nineteen Eighty-Four was set apart by those who reviewed and later taught it. It was far from the first novel to warn against the perils of the machine society, but it was the first after 1945 which, irrespective of Orwell's later qualifications, directed its warning against the perils of a contemporary enemy. In Britain and the United States, science fiction of the 1950s would use other threats to represent the Communist menace, but this was not the same as the depiction in Orwell's “fantasy” of a present danger. Orwell would have the advantage of writing in a style and technique which many considered superior to that of science fiction or other genres such as the Western...

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1. Introduction
2. Evolution Of Nineteen Eighty-Four
3. On Nineteen Eighty-Four
4. Themes
5. Critical Summary
6. Nineteen Eighty-Four In History
7. Adaptations
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four As Studied
9. Further Reading
10. Copyright