A "dystopia" is the opposite of a utopia. Although the word itself is a modern coinage, it derives from two Greek roots, δυσ- and τόπος (meaning "bad" and "place"). Generally, a dystopian novel is one which portrays an imaginary future that is extremely undesirable, often as a cautionary tale intended to comment on the possible consequences of contemporary tendencies.
Orwell's 1984 was a novel criticizing authoritarianism, a tendency he saw shared by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, inter alia, but which he saw also as a potential threat to all liberal democracies.
The first dystopian element is the complete lack of individual freedom of speech or thought, which Orwell finds horrifying. He sees the degradation of speech and the rewriting of history as a horrific assault on truth and mental inquiry, and a form of what we now might call "gaslighting."
Another major dystopian element of the society is the way it allows sex for procreation by forbids romantic love. Orwell also portrays the loyalty demanded by Big Brother as undermining even friendship, while the ubiquity of the secret police makes it impossible to trust anyone. Thus a major element of the dystopian nature of the society is the way it degrades human relationships.
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