George Orwell was a British author best known for his dystopian novels 1984 and Animal Farm. 1984 depicts a totalitarian future where the government controls every aspect of life through surveillance and propaganda. The protagonist Winston rebels against the ruling party but is ultimately broken through torture and mind control. Animal Farm uses allegory to satirize Stalinism and the Soviet Union, depicting an animal rebellion on a farm that leads to the pigs becoming the new oppressors. Orwell was motivated by his opposition to totalitarianism which was on the rise in the 1930s and 1940s.