摘要本文主要对乔治•奥威尔在《动物农场》和《1984》两部小说中所描写的社会进行了比较分析。对比研究主要从以下三个方面进行,即相似的社会结构,社会关系及其成因和相似的统治手段。而对两个社会中的统治手段，本文又从以下四个方面进行了详细的对比分析：一、创造一种口号；二、高压统治；三、转移人民注意力；四、操纵语言，篡改历史。通过这种横向比较，希望能给读者理解奥威尔的创作主题和手法提供一个新的视角。9752
关键词 乔治•奥威尔 《动物农场》 《1984》
毕 业 论 文 外 文 摘 要
Title A Comparison of the Two Societies in George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four
Abstract
This paper focuses on George Orwell’s two best-known novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. A detailed comparison of the two novels is made from three aspects, namely three-tiered social structure, similar social relations and the cause, and similar means of control. The last aspect is further analyzed from the following four parts: creation of a slogan, cruel ruling, distraction of people’s attention and manipulation of language and alteration of history. Hopefully, with this horizontal comparison, a fresh perspective can be provided for readers’ interpretation of Orwell's works.
Keywords George Orwell Animal Farm Nineteen Eighty-Four
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
1 A Comparison of the Social Structures in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four 4
2 A Comparison Between Social Relations 7
3 A Comparison of the Means of Control in the Two Societies 9
3.1 Creation of A Slogan To Erode People’s Minds 9
3.2 High-handed and Cruel Ruling through Supervision, Torture, and Killing 10
3.3 Distraction of People’s Attention by Creating a False Enemy 13
3.4 Manipulation of Language and Alteration of History 16
Conclusion 19
Acknowledgements 22
Bibliography 23
Introduction 正文总字数 6952
Among George Orwell’s numerous novels and essays, two stands out particularly, winning him world-wide fame. They are the frequently-quoted Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Written in his late life, the two works represent Orwell’s last effort in fighting against totalitarianism in various forms and under different ideological covers. They serve as a constant reminder of how corrupted a society could become if totalitarianism reigns over the world.
Born in 1903 in Britain, George Orwell is respected as an eminent journalist, novelist and essayist. Though he lived a short-lived life, he has left us a valuable treasure—a detailed record of the world of his time with his keen insight and incisive writing and has made many prophecies beyond his age. Young Orwell was educated at the prestigious boarding school St.Cyprian’s, where most of the students were from wealthy, upper-class family. As a poor boy coming from what he himself called “lower-middle-upper class’’, Orwell was admitted only as some sort of intelligence investment by the school to ensure that Orwell could win the Eton scholarship in the future for the honor of the school. Subjected to the snobbery and derision of other boys and the headmaster, Orwell had a rather painful childhood of corporal punishment and cramming study. It is exactly based on this experience that Orwell wrote the essay “Such Such Were The Joys”(1968). After graduated from Eton in 1921, Orwell went to Burma as a Sergeant in the Indian Imperial Police. Based on his experience during this time, he wrote his first fiction Burmese Days(1934) and some essays such as “Shooting an Elephant”(1950)and “A Hanging”(1931), criticizing Britain’s imperial rule in Burma. In 1928, Orwell decided to become a professional writer. In order to collect raw materials as well as to put his political beliefs to practice, he reduced himself to a tramp-like life, working low-paying jobs such as dish-washer, porter and part-time assistant in a bookstore in France and London. This was the first time that Orwell had got close to the real life of the masses of lower-class people, sharing with them their destitute life, toilsome and low-paying work and hopeless, miserable future. His first book Down and Out in Paris and London(1933) is an autobiographical record of this experience. In 1936, Orwell was offered the opportunity to visit depressing industrial areas such as Lancashire and Yorkshire and write a report about what he saw there. The result was the well-known book The Road to Wigan Pier(1937). Meanwhile, the Spanish War broke out. Orwell joined the Spanish War as a member of the anti-Stalinist political party——P.O.U.M. He was badly wound in the neck in the war and was later forced to leave Spain due to the persecution and threat from the Stalin. Homage to Catalonia(1938), which brought him world fame, was just written as an effort to reveal the brutal rule of Stalin and pay homage to the heroes cruelly killed in the fractional struggle within the Russian Communist Party. Just as Orwell said: “The Spanish war and other events in 1936-7 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly and indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism(Orwell 563).’’ In 1939, the novel Coming Up for Air was published, in which Orwell predicated the arrival of another world war. This is the first of his books to sell well at all. Animal Farm was published in August, 1945 and it was in Orwell’s words “the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole(Orwell 565).” In 1946, Orwell began to write Nineteen Eighty-Four which Orwell said "was written to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after(Orwell 561).” The two works turned out to be an instant success and Orwell became famous worldwide overnight. In the western world, Orwell’s works have such a great influence that a word “Orwell’s discourse” has been coined to refer to them. Especially after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, many of the words in the book, such “Big Brother”, “Newspeak”, “Double Think”, “Room101” have entered into common usage whenever totalitarianism is referred to. Although Orwell has left us for more than 100 years, his influence is so profound that we can still feel nowadays. With his keen insight, objective observation and truthful description, Orwell sets us an example of what the “wintry conscience of a generation” really is . 乔治•奥威尔小说《动物农场》和《1984》社会对比研究:http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_8565.html