The outlook for the future is usually full of hope. When the failures of the past and the problems of the present collide, the future is often seen as a place of hope. This mentality was no different in Britain during the mid-20th century, especially in the late 1940s. World War II was finally over, the days of fighting Nazi Germany were behind us, but the current circumstances were grim. Britain was still recovering from the effects of the Second World War and managing the transition to a new democratic socialist government. From the east loomed Stalin's Soviet Union with its communist government and totalitarian mentality in power. Many were unaware of the facts regarding communism and looked to it with hope. The reason for this was, as Mitzi Brunsdale states, because of “all kinds of personal and social inadequacies” (139). Many in the West were disheartened by current conditions and looked to Stalinism for hope. Much of “Western support for Stalin often took the form of neo-religious adulation” (Brunsdale139). On the other hand, George Orwell was in direct opposition. This resistance against Stalin's totalitarian rule was especially expressed in one of his most popular books entitled 1984, which “brings home to England the experience of countless those who suffered under the totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe” (Meyers 114). George Orwell through his own life experiences and through the accounts of others had seen the dangers of totalitarianism. In 1984, George Orwell exposed three dangerous aspects of totalitarianism by showing the oppression of the individual in history to show the true nature of totalitarianism. One of the first ways Orwell exposes totalitarianism through the oppression of the self.... ..middle of paper......y write a novel that so clearly shows the power of the state and the diminution of the individual gives shivers to those who read his book. Even in the future, every reader is faced with the reality of the possibility that such a society exists. With technological advances and the emergence of many story-defining questions, the possibility of certain elements of the book becoming reality seems to become more and more of a reality. Works Cited Bal, Sant S. George Orwell The Ethical Imagination. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities, 1981. Print.Brunsdale, Mitzi M. Student Companion to George Orwell. Westport: Greenwood, 2000. Print.Meyers, Jeffrey. A Reader's Guide to George Orwell. Totown: Littlefield, Adams &, 1975. Print.Meyers, Valerie. Modern novelists George Orwell. New York: St. Martin's, 1991. Print.Orwell, George. Nineteen eighty-four. New York: Penguin Group, 2003. Print.