Could the world in George Orwell's "1984" really exist? This question haunts readers from the first to the last pages of George Orwell's novel. Sadly, the answer is 'yes'; or at least Orwell hopes that readers will leave 1984 accepting the possibility enough to question government and tread cautiously into the future. The novel follows one man’s struggle against the overwhelming fear instilled in him by his society. Winston Smith, the main character, lives in a time and place where one group, Big Brother (BB), controls everything. BB controls what its citizens do and say, how they live, and how they love. As hard as it tries however, it can’t control how its citizens think or what they do or do not believe. In the 1940s, when Orwell was crafting this masterpiece, he was considering the recent rise in totalitarian governments and what affect they could have on the world if totalitarianism continued to spread. Totalitarianism tries to control every aspect of life, even the impossible: what people think & believe. What Orwell knew about it was based first on the corrupt, power-hungry Spaniards during the Spanish Civil War, then on the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, states which had come into being not long before the book was published. Orwell had witnessed the danger of absolute political authority in an age of advanced technology. He illustrated that peril harshly in 1984, making it one of the most powerful warnings ever issued against the dangers of totalitarian society. He was trying to give his readers a clear picture of what life would be like under the control of a totalitarian government. In a letter Orwell wrote to Noel Willmett before starting to write 1984, he stated, “Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler c