Lesser-Known Facts About George Orwell's 1984

Here are some interesting facts I uncovered about this wonderful novel, while researching for my current project. If I have something incorrect or overstated, please comment and let me know.

George Orwell finished writing 1984 while dying. He completed the manuscript on the Scottish island of Jura in late 1948, suffering from tuberculosis so severe he could barely sit upright. His publisher had to send a nurse to the island. Orwell typed the final draft himself because he couldn't afford a professional typist, an effort his doctors believed shortened his life. He died seven months after publication.

The novel's original title was "The Last Man in Europe." Orwell's publisher convinced him to change it, fearing the original sounded too literary and wouldn't sell. The year 1984 was likely chosen by inverting 1948, the year of completion, though Orwell never confirmed this.

Room 101 was real. Orwell worked at the BBC during World War II in a building on Portland Place. Room 101 was a conference room where he attended tedious propaganda meetings he despised. The room became synonymous in his mind with the worst thing imaginable—not physical torture, but the slow death of the soul through bureaucratic compliance.

The Two Minutes Hate was inspired by wartime film screenings. Orwell observed how audiences responded to propaganda newsreels—the collective fury, the performative outrage—and recognized that participation could become compulsory. The hate didn't need to be genuine to be effective.

Big Brother may have been based on Joseph Stalin, but the name came from a British government poster. "Your Big Brother Is Watching" appeared on wartime billboards encouraging citizens to be vigilant. Orwell inverted the intended comfort into surveillance horror.

The appendix on Newspeak is written in past tense. Scholars have debated this for decades. "Newspeak was the official language of Oceania." Was. This grammatical choice suggests the regime eventually fell—or that the narrator survived it. Orwell never clarified whether this was intentional hope or editorial oversight.

The telescreen technology that seemed futuristic in 1949 was based on existing patents. Two-way television was theoretically possible, and Orwell knew it. The horror wasn't the technology—it was the certainty that such technology would be used for control.