(This might help out someone who is having trouble writing something interesting and original about
Nineteen Eighty-Four for a school report.)
In pre WW-II Britain and across the Commonwealth, ads for “Bennett College, in Sheffield” were a mainstay of the back pages of magazines, and sounded a clarion call among the ads for trusses, cures for bad breath, baldness and hæmorrhoids.
Men, aged 16-45! You need help!
The headline was styled after recruitment posters of the time, and flattered the reader into thinking that they might have hidden talents. Let Bennett College be your stepping-stone to success! Bennett College was a trade correspondence school, similar to ICS, or any of a number of firms like it. It gave you a certificate in anything from Marine Architecture to Modern Farm Management, to Short Story Writing, that you could give to a potential new boss and show that, even if you hadn’t learned from your folks, you at least had some experience.
“Let me be your Father.”
Their secret weapon/killer app was their innovative career counseling department, headed by Mr. Bennett himself, formerly a local bookseller. His in-print persona looks like a jolly old pal (“juddly owlde boud”, in the parlance of the time), the kind of fellow to whom one might confide the details of one’s life, and receive the benefits of his worldly wisdom, that kind of thing. One can only picture the young men who might have come from an abusive family, or one whose real father had died (perhaps in the Great War or in the Spanish Flu) who might be unsure as to what they might be suited as a trade, painstakingly writing his letter hoping for a situation as a draper’s assistant, or perhaps, a soil specialist, and the team of answerers that would be trying to puzzle out his ungrammar to find him a good fit. It was a good system, the list of certifiable courses was long, and if you didn’t see your dream job in the list, you were encouraged to write in with your ideas. From print ads in the late Teens through both Wars, Bennett College expanded to urban posters and billboards, and to a certain strata of up-and-coming young Britain, Mr. Bennett was as recognizable as, well, a member of the family.
Unfortunately, the system had one enormous failure: his son.
With the senior Bennett’s death, the place became far more streamlined, less friendly. A sign of the times was when a well-known local beggar came up to the Admissions office: up until then, it was SOP to hand the fellow a shilling, and bid the fellow a good day, secure that the expense would be covered by petty cash, as an example of community good will. Suddenly, the receptionist was told that it would no longer be covered, and the fellow should be told in no uncertain terms the College was no longer “an easy touch”.
Even while his father was still alive Bennett, Jr., had been looking forward to becoming his replacement, billing himself as his father’s helper. It was not a good fit for him. Instead of looking like the older relative you never knew you needed in your family, he looked like he was the first man in his family who’d gotten a liberal arts degree. (Which he most likely was.) And was looking down upon you, who didn’t even have a correspondence school education…
“Let me be your Big Brother."
At the same time, Eric Temple Blair a/k/a George Orwell, looked at the change in the posters with gloom. So many things had changed recently! During the War, people had become inured to talking in acronyms and abbreviations, used 24-hour days, and even using the metric system. Having the younger Bennett superciliously staring at him was just par for the course, in the days of women in uniforms and ration books.
Who better to be the symbol of the age?