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Would Earth become a more efficient place to live under the authority of someone like Big Brother? In the novel 1984 by George Orwell, the city of London is taken over by Big Brother and renamed to Oceania; citizens living under the authority of Big Brother live in constant fear as they are constantly controlled and ministered while forced to respect the Party. By analyzing the novel using a symbol, a motif, a theme, a conflict and reading the novel through psychoanalytic lens, citizens clearly suffer from the influence of the Party. The character Winston Smith is revealed as the protagonist in the novel; he despises the Party and desires the citizens of Oceania to obtain more privacy and freedom from Big Brother. Winston and Julia are in …show more content…
“They can’t get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them” (Orwell 166). This quote supports the topic because Winston exclaims that citizens don’t own much of anything because of the Party but they still own their judgment, which involves hatred of Big Brother. The Party always can surveil a person, but thoughts are private to one. Thoughts are the last thing one has that truly belongs to them, therefore it’s important to use them wisely. Another piece of evidence that backs up the subject is when Winston is exclaiming his hatred of the Party’s rules towards O’ Brien and accuses the Party of being too controlling towards its citizens: “You are ruling over us for our own good… You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves” (Orwell 262-263). This quotation encourages the subject because Winston makes his opinions of disagreement with the Party known. Citizens receive no privacy due to the Party’s use of spying; this way, the Party is aware of the whereabouts of its citizens and can use them whenever needed. The Party is demolishing the right to freedom because they have complete control and refuse to let people fend for …show more content…
Citizens own nothing personal to them besides their own thoughts: “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull” (Orwell 27). This citation supports the focus because their mind is the only privilege that citizens still possess control over, which isn’t plentiful. Even though the Party takes control over every citizen’s possessions, they can’t acquire away their thoughts or memories. Past memories can’t prove any physical evidence against the Party; therefore the Party doesn’t seize it like all physical rights. Citizens aren’t allowed to display emotion, yet can feel emotions mentally. Besides, the Party constantly spies citizens on using telescreens: “The Party controls the home as well. The Thought Police monitor a citizen’s sanctuary through telescreens that record everything that occurs in any given room” (“Individual” McLaughlin 1). This text aids the topic because due to continuous spying by the Party, citizens possess no right to their own privacy. The continuous observing using the telescreens renders it impossible for citizens to perform activities they select that would be disapproved by the Party. If a citizen worries about the undertakings they perform at home due to distressing about the telescreens, then they basically receive no rights to anything. Equally important, Winston is repetitively spied on while
In London, There is a party also known as “The Party” in the book. Winston is a low ranking member of the ruling party which is in the nation of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes the party watches him. Can you imagine what its like to have everyone watching you? Trained kids, coworkers, neighbors? You can never have any privacy or be to yourself. Everywhere he looks he sees the face of the knowledgeable leader known to everyone as Big Brother. The Thought Police have telescreens in every household and public area to watch your every move, also they have hidden microphones and spies. The Party controls everything in Oceania even the peoples language and history. They implicated, forced and invented there own language called Newspeak. Which attempts to prevent rebellion against the politics and the government. It ties into why they control everything...
I strongly agree with Fromm’s viewpoints and interpretations of Orwell’s 1984 text. He warns that the future federal powers will dehumanize society and leave everyone alienated. Thus, I agree with Fromm to the extent that he acknowledges the fact that humanity can indeed cease to exist as a result of our own self-destruction as well as the effect of our actions. Many of his opinions and warnings expressed by Orwell to an extent appear in contemporary society.
Between the poem, ¨ No one died in Tiananmen Square¨ by William Lutz and the novel, 1984 by George Orwell there are multiple similarities. Subjects such as their government, their denial of history, and the use of doublethink and re-education are all parallel between the novel and the poem. For instance, both the governments have a highly strict government. Their governments are so controlling of their people that they use brute force in order to help re-educate them. For example, in 1984 the main character, Winston Smith was trying to go against their government, The Party, and because he tries to do so, he is placed in The Ministry of Love and brutally beaten by the man whom he assumed was a part of the Brotherhood, O'Brien. O'Brien claimed
The main character Winston Smith was a very curious and rebelliousness individual. He wondered how and why the gove...
He expresses the views that no few in the society will. Winston rebels against the government to find meaning in his life. His journey into finding individuality shows his expression of freedom, which no one else has expressed. Alex McGuinnis, a professional academic writer part of the Professional Development Collection, discusses the “Allness” language used by Big Brother to control a populous and perpetuate conformity within a society. As McGuinnis states, “Allness thinking is especially dangerous because those who influence our minds most frequently are the people who are constantly using allness” (108).
George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 follows the psychological journey of main character Winston. Winston lives in a utopian society called Oceania. There, the citizens are constantly monitored by their government coined “Big Brother” or “The Party”. In Oceania, there is no form of individuality or privacy. Citizens are also coerced to believe everything and anything the government tells them, even if it contradicts reality and memory. The goal of Big Brother is to destroy individual loyalties and make its citizenry only loyal to the government. In Orwell's novel 1984, he uses Winston's psychological journey to stress the dangers of individuality in a totalitarian regime because it can result in death. Winston’s overwhelming desire to rebel
“The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery". Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone—free—the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he IS the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body—but, above all, over the mind” (Orwell 273). O’Brien argues that the Party and “Big Brother” had control over reality externally due to the fact that nothing exists outside the mind, and in cases of freethinkers, they would be taken care of by the teachings of “doublethink”. Doublethink is the power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs, for example holding up four fingers and claiming that you have five up, and simultaneously making one accept both of them. So if a society was entirely based off of the idea of doublethink as it’s way of forcing lies and reasons of hate on people, then it could work. But the one counter-argument to that
To accomplish this, Orwell utilizes the theme of individuality versus tyranny, foreshadowing, and irony, in order to fully extract all possible motives behind Winston’s actions.Many countries, such as the United States, are founded on principles of individuality reigning over tyranny, more specifically, the freedom of choice. However, in the futuristic Oceania, run by “Big Brother”, such freedom and individuality is, for the most part, completely suspended. To act impulsively, or choose to oppose Big Brother, is a “thoughtcrime” of dire consequence. This is the basis behind the Inner Party’s control of Oceania. Winston however, from the commencement of the novel, showed that he was not willing to conform to such a tyrannical society. From his writing “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” in his diary as the novel opened, to his relationship with Julia, which was considered sexcrime in Oceania, Winston proved his thoughts were antiparallel to those of the Inner Party.
George Orwell creates a dark, depressing and pessimistic world where the government has full control over the masses in the novel 1984. The protagonist, Winston, is low-level Party member who has grown to resent the society that he lives in. Orwell portrays him as a individual that begins to lose his sanity due to the constrictions of society. There are only two possible outcomes, either he becomes more effectively assimilated or he brings about the change he desires. Winston starts a journey towards his own self-destruction. His first defiant act is the diary where he writes “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER.” But he goes further by having an affair with Julia, another party member, renting a room over Mr. Carrington’s antique shop where Winston conducts this affair with Julia, and by following O’Brien who claims to have connections with the Brotherhood, the anti-Party movement led my Emmanuel Goldstein. Winston and Julia are both eventually arrested by the Thought Police when Mr. Carrington turns out to be a undercover officer. They both eventually betray each other when O’Brien conducts torture upon them at the Ministry of Love. Orwell conveys the limitations of the individual when it comes to doing something monumental like overthrowing the established hierarchy which is seen through the futility of Winston Smith’s actions that end with his failure instead of the end of Big Brother. Winston’s goal of liberating himself turns out to be hopeless when the people he trusted end up betraying him and how he was arbitrarily manipulated. It can be perceived that Winston was in fact concerned more about his own sanity and physical well-being because he gives into Big Brother after he is tortured and becomes content to live in the society he hated so much. Winston witnesses the weakness within the prole community because of their inability to understand the Party’s workings but he himself embodies weakness by sabotaging himself by associating with all the wrong people and by simply falling into the arms of Big Brother. Orwell created a world where there is no use but to assimilate from Winston’s perspective making his struggle utterly hopeless.
Every part of life is regimented and controlled, but the only crime is ‘thought crime’: independent thinking and individualism. Big Brother is the figurehead of the Inner Party, and throughout the book, it is heavily implied that he may not really exist. The people are divided into Inner Party members, who control the government, Outer Party members, who make up the middle class, and Proletarians, or Proles, who make up the uneducated lower class. He utilizes strong but vague descriptions of the world around Winston to hint at the state of the world without directly saying it. He describes a bright cold day, which seems to perfectly depict the world's bleak state in a sort of indirect way (Orwell, 1948).
If one does not have the capability of controlling what they think, do, or even what they say then, according to Orwell, they cannot possibly remain “human”. However, according to Winston, staying human was possible. There were ways in which a person could refrain from falling into the clutches if the Party. In 1984 Winston says, “’They can’t get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them’” (Orwell, pg.166). Winston is among one of the only people to believe that there is still hope for the world. He wholeheartedly believes that there is a way to beat the Party; that there is a way to survive and hold on to whatever makes someone human. In 1984 free will and free thinking were extremely hard to come by. The Party was in control of every single thing their citizens were exposed to. They controlled the past, the present, and the future. Whoever is in control of the past; what is being said of the history of the world
The novel 1984 by George Orwell is a fictional future where The Party controls everything. The Party is lead by a larger than life figurehead named Big Brother. The main character is Winston Smith. The story is divided into 3 parts and chronicles Winston’s rebellion against and then re-entering of The Party.
The Invasion of Privacy is also used to control people. Devices called Telescreens are setup everywhere for the use of your entertainment and the party’s. They are objects that not only allow you to watch them and hear them like a television but in return you yourself are watched and heard by the party. Other ways in which privacy is taken away is by the use of little sound devices called “Bugs.'; In one scene Winston and Julia are talking and Julia says, “I bet that picture’s got bugs behind it'; (Orwell 122)1. When she says this she is implying that the party is listening to everything they say and do. The final way the party invades privacy is by The Thought Police. The Thought Police are members of the party that control life through the telescreens and bugs. When you are caught by them for a crime you must then go to prison for as long as it takes to purify or make you sane enough to work for the party once again.
In this case, the government has to use severe actions to ensure they will never act in this way again. Winston Smith, is a minor member of the ruling Party and is aware of some of these extreme tactics. Since Winston is not completely brainwashed by the propaganda like all the other citizens, he hates Big Brother passionately. Winston is one of the only who realize that Big Brother is wiping individual identity and is forcing collective identity. He is “conscious of [his] own identity”(40-41) . Winston continues to hold onto the concept of an independent external reality by constantly referring to his own existence. Aware of being watched, Winston still writes “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER”(21) in his diary. Winston believes whether he writes in his diary or not, it is all the same because the Thought Police will get him either way. Orwell uses this as a foreshadow for Winston's capture later on in the novel. Fed up with the Party, Winston seeks out a man named O’Brien, who he believes is a member of the ‘Brotherhood’, a group of anti-Party rebels. When Winston is arrested for thought crime by his landlord, Mr.Charrington, who is a member of the Thought Police. Big Brother takes Winston to a dark holding cell, to use their extreme torture strategy to erase any signs of personal identity. Winston's torturer is O’Brien, the man he thought to be apart of the brotherhood. Winston asks
As the man’s lips grasped the edge of the cup and slurped the hot drink, the reflection of two eyes in the darkened coffee grew tremendously. The man immediately puckered his lips and placed the cup atop the wooden surface with dissatisfaction. His hairy arm was revealed from underneath his cotton shirt as he reached for the glassware containing packets of sweet crystals. He picked up the packets labeled Stalin, Hitler, and World War II, and dumped them into the caffeinated drink. Within seconds, a thick, redolent cream labeled, ‘Totalitarian Governments’ crashed into the coffee with force. A tarnished spoon spun around the outer edges of the cup, combining the crystals and cream together, and, unknowingly creating the themes for the book in which Big Brother would become a regime—this was the cup of George Orwell. Written in 1944, the themes in 1984 are reminiscent of the fascist and totalitarian governments formed in the early twentieth century.