Big Brother is a character and symbol in George Orwell's 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is ostensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate wherein the ruling party, Ingsoc, wields total power for its own sake over the inhabitants. His image appears everywhere on posters within Oceanian society as a metaphor for the Party's complete control of the population. Orwell was deeply concerned with the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany and wrote his novel as a warning about the potential of a totalitarian leader destroying objective truth.
In the novel, the slogan "Big Brother is watching you" serves as a constant reminder that Party members in Oceania are not entitled to privacy. They are subject to constant surveillance to ensure their ideological purity. This is primarily through omnipresent telescreens, two-way video devices used for broadcasting propaganda and for spying on individuals by the Thought Police. As the figurehead of the Party, Big Brother is omnipotent and the subject of a cult of personality, illustrated in the daily, ritualistic Two Minutes Hate, a mass demonstration of hatred for the enemy of the state, Emmanuel Goldstein and adoration for the leader, Big Brother.
"Big Brother" has become a synecdoche for abuse of power and mass surveillance, particularly with respect to civil liberties and loss of privacy. The character has been influential on popular music, including songs by Stevie Wonder and David Bowie. As a metaphor for surveillance, Big Brother also inspired the worldwide reality television show, Big Brother. He was described as one of the ten greatest villains in literature by Stephen King.
Background
The concepts of Big Brother and the totalitarian regime of Oceania in George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four lie in his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell had volunteered to fight for the POUM and spent months on the Aragon front. In Barcelona he personally witnessed an atmosphere of terror when, in May 1937, the communists revolted against their allies resulting in five days of violence. Orwell and his wife, Eileen Blair, were forced to flee Spain. Orwell had been motivated to go to Spain by his concerns about fascism, but he discovered an atmosphere of paranoia, persecution and lies. The communists claimed that they had uncovered a network of traitors that had been working with the fascists to assassinate Republicans. This dishonesty shocked Orwell, but when he returned to England to publish what he had witnessed, he was told by friends that the truth could help to serve General Franco and fascism. The impact of his experiences was later expressed in his 1946 essay "Why I Write", in which he declared, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism".
Orwell became preoccupied with totalitarianism in the 1930s and gained knowledge of the rising political tyranny in Soviet Russia from leaked accounts that he read by disillusioned communists such as Boris Souvarine and André Gide. He based many elements of Oceania's totalitarian state on Russia under the leadership of Joseph Stalin and Germany under Adolf Hitler, including a cult of personality, historical revisionism, repression of free speech and the atmosphere of paranoia and fear. Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four as a satire and a fictional account of recent history. In his creation of Big Brother, he was inspired by the mystical nature of Stalin, as described in a passage by Gide: "His portrait is seen everywhere, his name is on everyone's lips, and praise of him occurs in every public speech. Is all this the result of worship, love or fear? Who can say?".
Orwell combined multiple accounts, including Assignment in Utopia (1937) by Eugene Lyons, The Woman Who Could Not Die (1938) by Iulia de Beausobre, who wrote of her two years in a Soviet prison, and Darkness at Noon (1940), Arthur Koestler's novel about the Great Purge, and synthesised this knowledge to create the fictional dictatorship of Oceania under Big Brother. He outlined some of the main ideas for the novel in his notebook from 1937 onwards under the working title The Last Man in Europe. Orwell was concerned that objective truth was fading from the world and wrote his novel as the ultimate conclusion of totalitarian destruction of truth. In his 1942 essay Looking Back on the Spanish War, Orwell wrote about the potential of "a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, 'It never happened'– well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five."
Orwell finished writing his novel on the island of Jura, whilst ill with tuberculosis and it was published in 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four was written as a warning. Orwell explained to his publisher Fredric Warburg in June 1949, "the moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one. Don’t let it happen. It depends on you".
Conception Biographer Dorian Lynskey considered Big Brother to be an amalgamation of several influences on Orwell, namely, Number One from Koestler's Darkness at Noon, the Benefactor from the novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Hitler and most of all, Stalin. Gorman Beauchamp said that Big Brother was based solely on Stalin and that Oceania is a reflection of the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
The idea could be borrowed from the 1937 H. G. Wells novel Star Begotten, in which "Big Brother" is referenced as a fictitious example of "mystical personifications" able to easily manipulate the common man.Wells, H. G.; Star Begotten, Sphere Books, 1937, p. 101–102. "Most of us to the very end are obsessed by infantile cravings for protection and direction, and out of these cravings come all these impulses towards slavish subjugation towards gods, kings, leaders, heroes, mystical personifications like the People, My Country Right or Wrong, the Church, the Party, the Masses, the Proletariat. Our imaginations hang on to some such Big Brother idea almost to the end. We will accept almost any self-abasement rather than step out of the crowd and be full-grown individuals." In the Soviet Union there was an ideology of "brotherly nations" or "brotherly countries". The Soviet Union presented itself as a big brother who watches over its younger brothers (other nations). The ideological word 'big brother' or 'older brother' was very well known and used in the Soviet Republics before and after the Second World War.
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 Bennett College during World War II. The original posters showed J. M. Bennett with the phrase "Let me be your father." After Bennett's death, his son took over the company and the posters were replaced with the text "Let me be your big brother".
A theory made by Mr. W.J. West, a London book collector, who found radio transcripts and over 250 letters written by Orwell during his years at the BBC, that the inspiration for Big Brother was Brendan Bracken, the Minister of Information, based on Orwell's use of the initials B.B., was discredited as speculation by Gordon B. Beadle. David M. Lubin postulated that Big Brother's visage was based on Herbert Kitchener, whom Orwell admired as a child. Kitchener's face appeared on Alfred Leete's 1914 British military recruitment poster Lord Kitchener Wants You.
Role in Nineteen Eighty-Four
Big Brother is the leader of a totalitarian superstate named Oceania, a hierarchical society consisting of the Inner Party, the Outer Party and the "proles". The novel is set in London within the region of Airstrip One. He is described through the viewpoint of the novel's protagonist, Winston Smith, who experiences a midlife crisis when he begins to question the political ruling party of Oceania named Ingsoc. Winston is employed at the Ministry of Truth, where he rectifies inconvenient historical fact in accordance with the ever-changing party line. He begins to rebel against the Party and develops a hatred for its leader Big Brother.
Big Brother is described in the novel as "a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features" and later as "black-haired, black-moustachioed, full of power and mysterious calm". His image appears everywhere on posters in public places:
Through Winston's personal rebellion, Orwell describes the full extent of the Party's power. Ingsoc employs the brutal methods of totalitarian control, through purges of dissidents, mass surveillance through a two-way device called a telescreen, propaganda events and psychological manipulation. Although rules of social behaviour are not written, members of the Outer Party, of which Winston is a member, are expected to conform completely. When Winston engages in an illicit affair with Julia, he is unaware that they are monitored by the Thought Police and mistakenly believes that the Party can never control his inner mind. Upon their arrest, he is tortured in Room 101 and converted to a mindless, obedient citizen of Oceania who loves Big Brother.
Characterisation The Party's eye Big Brother's omnipresent gaze found on coins, stamps and posters in Oceania is a visual metaphor of the Party's mass surveillance of the population and its social control. Like the telescreen, Big Brother's face appears everywhere in society. In Oceania, it is impossible for the individual to see reality unless it is through the eyes of the Party. The telescreen is used both for broadcasting propaganda to the masses, but also to spy on individuals, as an extension of the Thought Police, which makes it an essential aspect of the Party's totalitarian control. Erika Gottleib writes that Orwell employs the mystical symbol of the all-seeing eye, which represents man being in the presence of God. Winston is horrified by the pervasive all-seeing eye and attempts to hide from its gaze until he is consumed by it and his individuality is broken in Room 101 where he finds a union with the Godhead. The Party uses Big Brother's eye not only to outwardly enforce obedience, but to penetrate the mind, so that the authority of the Party is internalised by the individual as an ultimate control of the self.
Cult of personality Big Brother is the subject of a cult of personality, which Winston witnesses in the daily ritual called the Two Minutes Hate. It is broadcast from a large telescreen and its purpose is to create an emotional reaction in the audience. The event begins with a terrible screeching sound, followed by the face of the enemy of the state, Emmanuel Goldstein displayed on the screen, which generates hissing from the audience. The frenzy of hate reaches a climax and is then replaced with ecstasy, as the face of Big Brother appears.
The emotional response of the audience towards Big Brother is intensified by the limited access to food and comforts available within Oceania's totalitarian society. Additionally, the Party limits all pleasure, ensuring that only the love for Big Brother exists. Such demonstrations of devotion distract the population from enduring the discomfort and restrictions of daily life.
Omnipotent figurehead