The Will To Power In Orwell's Novels

George Orwell,renowned for his masterpieces Animal Farm and 1984,has been regarded as one of the most influential English novelists in the 20^th century.His biographer Jeffrey Myers'made a revealing comment on him,which says that Orwell is the“wintry consciousness of a generation.”His novels ring an alarm on the threat of totalitarianism for the world,and through that shows a broad love and concern upon the human being.If reading Orwell helps nurturing in oneself a broad love and a sense of concern on the human species,then making clear of the essence of his concern would be meaningful in achieving a better understanding on him,thus helping to spread that love and concern of Orwell.Being inspired by the similarities and differences between Animal Farm and 1984,this thesis tries to deliver what the author has found on the essence of the regimes in Orwell's novels,or in other words,why should the regimes in these two novels being there?The author holds that Animal Farm and 1984 presented a comparatively wholesome picture on Orwell's perception of the relationship between the development of ruling techniques and the power drive behind.In these two works,Orwell firstly constructed a simplified version of society under corruptive rulers,where preliminary controlling techniques were used to achieve power control,including drowning of heretic voices,deprivation of knowledge and mixing up memory and imagination;Then a totalitarian regime of much more complexity and much advanced ruling techniques was constructed in 1984 to achieve power control in terms of thought,with measures like doublethink and Newspeak.This thesis tries to reveal the development in between,and finally pointing out that the impulse behind such development is the will to power.