George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ is one of the most prominent texts studied across schools for the common module as the exploration of key concerns of the contextual period are now more relevant than ever.

Nonetheless, when discussing Orwell’s text, it is crucial to unpack the ideas in relation to the human experience, for example:

• A Collective and Tormented Human Experience.

This idea can be integrated into a topic sentence:

Orwell’s politically charged novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four emphasises his perspective of a bleak and tormented human experience as a product of totalitarian leaders utilisation of surveillance technology and propaganda eroding individualism.

This idea in the topic sentence must link to events that are prevalent in Orwell’s context:

Orwell’s zeitgeist was characterised by a number of authoritarian leaders, such as Stalin and Hitler, who employed debilitating measures in order to control the masses.

Lead the context into the example…

This notion is hyperbolised by Orwell in his conjuration of the mechanism of ‘Newspeak’ within 1984, described by Syme in, ‘Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.’

• Lexical choice: ‘In the end…’ exudes the party’s everlasting power
• Paradox - 'thoughtcrime literally impossible’: How can a controlling entity monitor individual thoughts?
• Exaggeration - ‘no words to express it’
• Contribute to the decay of an individual’s ability to express themselves: loss of individual identity

If we put another set of examples and techniques together for the second part of the paragraph…

Furthermore, Orwell additionally vocalises his concerns regarding the uprise of weaponry and its terrifying means of inducing fear and control, referencing the events of World War II. This is specifically conveyed within Winston's imagined future in, “a world of...monstrous machines and terrifying weapons… three hundred million people all with the same face”. The cumulative listing and fear inducing adjectives correlates to the Orwellian society of Oceania and the contextual concerns of the rapid rise of machinery and weaponry, as it is used to debilitate individuality and incite control. Therefore, Orwell didactically voices his concerned perspective regarding authoritarian governments tormenting the human experience, leading to a warped reality and the erosion of individualism.

*Please note that while this information is a great starting point for these texts, relying solely on the information in this post will not be enough to get a result in the top bands.