rve to undermine individual liberty, which is the foundation of democratic ideology.
             In his 1946 essay entitled, "Why I Write," Orwell remarks that, "every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it" (Orwell "Why I Write"). This anti-totalitarian attitude is unsurprising, given that by the middle of the twentieth-century, Europe was decimated by two world wars, and witnessed the rise to power of several fascist dictators, including Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Francisco Franco, the last of which Orwell fought against during the Spanish Civil War (cf. Glover 53). Orwell was an outspoken critic of fascism and communism, and his writings were certainly indicative of his desire to warn the general public of the dangers of such forms of absolute governmental control. In fact, in 1940,
             George Orwell wrote a review of Mein Kampf, in which he commented on the rigidity of Hitler's mind. In its unchanging monomaniac vision, the future was to be a 'horrible brainless Empire in which, essentially, nothing ever happens except the training of young men for war and the endless breeding of fresh cannon-fodder. (Glover 361)
             It is not hard to draw parallels between Orwell's commentary on Mein Kampf and his Nineteen Eighty-Four, as Oceania is most certainly a state that robs its subjects of their individuality, and views them merely as instrumental tools to enforce and perpetuate governmental policy and propaganda. Winston Smith's job at the Ministry of Truth stands as one microcosm of this overarching theme, as Winston is but one of perhaps hundreds of other workers whose job it is to secure governmental control by falsifying historical records, since "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past" (Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Fou...