A Repressive Society In George Orwell's 1984

Winston, in the novel 1984, is struggling with a repressive society and trying to understand his place within it. He feels disconnected from the people around him and powerless within his own existence. As Winston ruminates about the forces controlling his life, it becomes clear to him that he needs to both think and act freely in order to be true to himself and his humanity. According to Joel M. Charon, freedom “depends on a society that allows and encourages it, on social conditions that do not oppress it, and on the continuous efforts of the individual to actively and intelligently pursue it.” (Charon 2010:138) Winston unquestionably uses his intellect to pursue his freedom and, after commencing a relationship with Julia, he attempts to

Party members need to be careful of how they act, feel, and even think, since any deviation from the party line will result in being vaporized: all evidence of their existence being erased so completely that it is as if they had never existed at all. Still, Winston is able to think against the Party. During the Two Minutes of Hate he is even able to redirect the hate in his thoughts against Big Brother, the ostensible leader of the Party. However, he still acts in the same manner as those around him, shouting and jeering at the image of Goldstein projected before them. Winston believes that “the horrible thing about the Two Minutes of Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in.” (Orwell [1949] 1992:16) The culture of hate within the Party creates actions without the need for conscious thought. This behavior appears again at the end of the Two Minutes when the assembled workers chant of B.B. is “as a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise.” (Orwell [1949] 1992:18-9) The Party understands that “to act without thinking is to act without freedom,” (Charon 2010:113) and the more that they can influence people to act without thought the greater the power that the Party

“Knowledge about the universe as well as an understanding of that knowledge is important for our freedom. It is necessary for choice, working out situations we encounter, and rationally controlling our actions appropriately.” (Charon 2010:125) Winston’s job goes to the heart how the Party manipulates information in order to control the populace. He rewrites and otherwise adjusts books, newspapers and articles so that they conform to the current views and beliefs of the Party. His instructions never actually refer to these actions as making changes or rewriting, but instead “the reference was to slips, errors, misprints or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy.” (Orwell [1949] 1992:43) The Party’s control over the information is so great that even the language that refers to the changes reflects that the current view is the accurate one. Knowledge is what we use collectively to create our reality. If that knowledge, and therefor our reality, is always changing, then it follows that the behaviors required by the Party become even more essential to being able to function within society, and personal freedom declines that much