Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four), by Wikipedia / CC BY SA 3.0
#Mass surveillance
#Nineteen Eighty-Four characters
#Fictional dictators
#Fictional characters introduced in 1949
#Fictional governments
#Literary villains
#Dystopian fiction
#Male characters in literature
Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
Big Brother is a fictional character and symbol in George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four".
He is ostensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling party Ingsoc wields total power "for its own sake" over the inhabitants. In the society that Orwell describes, every citizen is under constant surveillance by the authorities, mainly by telescreens (with the exception of the Proles). The people are constantly reminded of this by the slogan "Big Brother is watching you": a maxim that is ubiquitously on display.
In modern culture, the term "Big Brother" has entered the lexicon as a synonym for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance.
In the essay section of his novel "1985", Anthony Burgess states that Orwell got the idea for the name of Big Brother from advertising billboards for educational correspondence courses from a company called Bennett's during World War II. The original posters showed J. M. Bennett himself, a kindly-looking old man offering guidance and support to would-be students with the phrase "Let me be attached." According to Burgess, after Bennett's death, his son took over the company and the posters were replaced with pictures of the son (who looked imposing and stern in contrast to his father's kindly demeanor) with the text "Let me be your big brother".
Additional speculation from Douglas Kellner of the University of California, Los Angeles argued that Big Brother represents Joseph Stalin. Another theory is that the inspiration for Big Brother was Brendan Bracken, the Minister of Information until 194...
0 Comments