Rationale

George Orwell was an American author, many of whose works encompassed the battle

against totalitarianism, a centralized system of government.

For this Written Task, I chose to write a sequel to Orwell’s 1984, which is from Part 3 of the

IBDP course. The novel revolves around the life of the protagonist, Winston Smith, as he

tries to battle the totalitarian regime of Oceania, a state where every civilian’s action was

monitored via telescreens, and even so much as thinking of disobeying “the Party” translated

to persecution. This is strikingly similar to governments’ mass surveillance today. At the

conclusion of the novel, Winston is forcibly made to love Big Brother, the symbolic dictator

of state, as is required.

Throughout the novel, a language called Newspeak is developed, which is claimed to

overcome standard English, or Oldspeak, by 2050. It aims to remove the ability to think at all.

1984’s Appendix complements this by someone in the future explaining the rules of

Newspeak. However, as authors such as Margaret Atwood have noted, the fact that this is

written in “Oldspeak” suggests that freedom eventually prevailed.

Thus, I decided that a sequel to 1984, which takes place 35 years later, would be perfect in

describing what led to Big Brother’s demise. The protagonist’s name, Freddie Lutz, is

derived from two people who fought totalitarianism in their own ways. The sequel shows

how language and love can minimize the grip of control. The writing style mirrors that of

1984 in that the tone is bleak, the diction simple with descriptive language, to ensure the

audience, the hopeless readers of 1984, can comprehend the happenings of the sequel, but
slight details have been tweaked to better fit the modern epoch. The sequel follows Lutz as he

takes the steps Winston failed to, uniting the rebels.

(300 words)