Volume 4 – "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell

Written in the shadow of World War Two, George Orwell's bleak vision of the future is perhaps the most iconic dystopia; a nightmare world where totalitarianism is taken to its logical conclusion. Against Oceania's all-powerful one-party state, the lone rebellion of Outer Party functionary, Winston Smith, barely disrupts the flow of repression, leaving a pessimistic ending that seems to deny even the possibility of hope.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, dystopia is a regimented Stalinist tyranny lacking even freedom to think, but this is not, an imported tyranny – it is a home-grown, forcing us to look within to find totalitarianism's roots. Orwell's dystopia is much more than a prophecy of a surveillance society; it is a description of what happens when power reaches its apogee and rulers decree what constitutes reality.

Building on the earlier dystopian works and arguing against contemporary political philosophy, Orwell argued there could be no escape from a truly totalitarian rule, not even within the privacy of one's mind. Inventing the philosophy of collective solipsism, Orwell anticipated the mind control techniques described by later social psychologists. Not only is "Big Brother is watching you," he is controlling how you think.

Volume 4 peers through the unremitting bleakness to see why Nineteen Eighty-Four has retained its power down the decades. The true nature of totalitarianism is far uglier than we could ever imagine.

The Series