1984: The Party Has Many Slogans

1984: The Party Has Many Slogans

In George Orwell's 1984, the Party, the government of Oceania, has many slogans. One of the sayings is “Big Brother Is Watching You”. Despite the fact that the slogan is only mentioned a few times throughout the novel, it embodies the government that Orwell has created.

We first learn of the slogan when the setting is described on the first page of the book. Orwell depicts, in explicit detail, the sights, sounds, and smells of Oceania. When illustrating the hallways of Victory Mansions, Winston

Smith's and other members of the Party's apartment complex, Orwell writes:

On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. Big Brother Is

Watching You, the caption beneath it ran (5).

This poster shows Big Brother as having a face. Big Brother was not an individual person so he did not have a “face”. The face, however, gives Big

Brother a human quality. By doing so, the government puts itself on the same level of humanity as the citizens that it governs. The people are supposed to feel more comfortable with a ruling party that is just like them. The billboard is also found on every landing and every streetcorner. The overbearing number of posters is a way for the Party to continuously remind its citizens of its presence and ingrain the message into the people's conscience and subconscience minds. "Big Brother" is another name for the Party. It's an ironic choice of words for the Party's second name. First, the notion of a “big brother” connotes a child's big brother. One thinks of comfort and protection, fun and trouble, and love and other feelings when thinking of a brother. One of the

Party's goals is to rid Oceania of these emotions. Second, the brother is part of the family unit. The Party is trying to destroy the family and the feelings associated with it (Kalechofsky 114).

The phrase "Big Brother Is Watching You" is the Party's way of showing its control over the citizens of Oceania. The Party displays its power over both the history of the world and over the citizens of Oceania's everyday life in many different ways.

"Who controls the past," Orwell writes, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past'" (23). The Party sh...

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.... No matter how little you give credence to what the Party says in the beginning, you eventually come to accept everything.

Winston comes to believe that two plus two equals five. He also learns to consider the following statements as true:

WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

(7,17, 26, 87, 152, 166)

Everyone is under constant surveillance. There are telescreens in the houses and other buildings of every Party and Inner Party member. The following exert displayssome of the telescreens' power:

Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard.

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment...... You had to live- did live, from habit that became instinct- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized (6-7).

The Proles didn't have telescreens in their houses or edifice