While it’s true that the day-to-day misery and bureaucratic absurdity of 1984 were heavily shaped by Orwell's time at the BBC, he primarily wrote the novel as a cautionary warning against the rise of totalitarianism and the dangers of a centralized, surveilled state.

Having witnessed the horrors of Nazi Germany, the rise of Stalinist Russia, and the Spanish Civil War, Orwell wanted to expose the mechanisms of oppression and propaganda.