Control In 1984 Essay

To start, the government in 1984 can be seen as self-serving with the use of physical control. For example, they force their party members to do physical exercise every single morning. In the book Orwell wrote, “The pain of the coughing fit had not quite driven out of Winston's mind the impression made by his dream, and the rhythmic movements of the exercise restored it somewhat. As he mechanically shot his arms back and forth, wearing on his face the look of grim enjoyment which was considered proper during the Physical Jerks, he was struggling to think his way backward into the dim period of his early childhood” ( Orwell Page 34). This quote shows how powerful and demanding The Party truly is. They can make people who do not like exercising,

like Winston, do exercises because of the possible punishment that can come out of not doing it. The Party is forcing their people to do physical labor so that they have an overall healthier society. Similarly, The Party also puts rations on the family’s food income. In the book it also says, “As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April” (Orwell 36). George Orwell shows how a government can use their power to take away something as simple and fun as chocolate. The chocolate symbolizes the people’s freedoms and by putting rations on it, it makes the people less likely to revolt against The Party. Furthermore, The Party also did not allow sexual relations that did not benefit them, hence making kids. George Orwell illustrates this in 1984, “Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party's sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible.

What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put it was: "When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. They can't bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?"(Orwell 25). This quote that Julia stated shows how The Party is truly self-motivated. They do not want their people to have passionate sex, because cause the downfall of Big Brother. They only permit it for two adults to make children that will someday become just like their parents and grow up loving and obeying Big Brother. By controlling the people with physical control they are able to keep the people in a certain physical shape and have total power over them allowing them to keep The Party in

action.
Secondly, the people within the Party in 1984 are controlled by cruel and unusual governmental power. For instance, they use telescreens to watch and surveillance the people for wrongdoing. This is shown in 1984 with a quote that the main character, Winston, said, “It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: face crime, it was called” (Orwell 65). This quote is so important in showing the overall theme of the book and how The Party is so powerful. Another example is the government has people who look for people trying overthrow and destroy Big Brother, they are called the Though Police. George Orwell perfectly showed the audience what the thought police really was by writing, “Winston suddenly realized whose voice it was that he had heard a few moments ago on the telescreen. Mr. Charrington was still wearing his old velvet jacket, but this hair, which had been almost white, had turned black. Also he was not wearing his spectacles. He gave Winston a single sharp glance, as though verifying his identity, and then paid no more attention to him. He was no longer recognizable, but he was not the same person any longer. His body had straightened, and seemed to have grown bigger. His face had undergone only tiny changes that had nevertheless worked a complete transformation. The black eyebrows were less bushy, the wrinkles were gone, the whole lines of the face seemed to have altered; even th3e nose seemed shorter. It was the alert, cold face of about five-and-thirty. It occurred to Winston that for the first time in his life he was looking, with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police” (Orwell 224). Mr. Charrington was someone Winston knew pretty well, as he used his room so often to meet Julia. It was so weird to see him as a Thought Police. That is what happens though, the government possesses and changes someone in order for them to get what they what, to take down the enemy, or wrongdoer. They will do anything to stay powerful and keep the purism of “Big Brother” around forever. Also, the government uses cruel and unfair punishments in their jail system and allowing the inmates to become dehumanized. George Orwell in 1984 writes, "Do anything to me!" he yelled. "You've been starving me for weeks. Finish it off and let me die. Shoot me. Hang me. Sentence me to twenty-five years. Is there somebody else you want me to give away? Just say who it is and I’ll tell you anything you want. I don't care who it is or what you do to them. I've got a wife and three children. The biggest of them isn't six years old. You can take the whole lot of them and cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I'll stand by and watch it. But not Room 101!" (Orwell 236, the old tortured man at the Ministry of Love). As we learn later in the story Room 101 is the room where they kill the inmates, as they killed Winston. They torture them into loving Big Brother and then kill them once they do. By torturing them it makes them turn against the people they love just to stay alive, like Winston had to do with Julia. This process is ultimately worthless, because why torture them if they are going to kill them at the end anyways. In the end it’s always to protect Big Brother, they die knowing that they love Big Brother. With the use of strong governmental power they afflict great fear into every person who is in the party allowing them to control the way they act within the society and keeping the power of Big Brother.
Lastly, the people are also controlled psychologically.

To start, the government deletes and alters the Party’s history. George Orwell reveals, “Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, and the lie became truth. Just once in his life he had possessed--AFTER the event: that was what counted--concrete, unmistakable evidence of an act of falsification. He had held it between his fingers for as long as thirty seconds. In 1973, it must have been--at any rate, it was at about the time when he and Katharine had parted. But the really relevant date was seven or eight years earlier. The story really began in the middle sixties, the period of the great purges in which the original leaders of the Revolution were wiped out once and for all. By 1970 none of them was left, except Big Brother himself. All the rest had by that time been exposed as traitors and counter-revolutionaries. Goldstein had fled and was hiding no one knew where, and of the others, a few had simply disappeared, while the majority had been executed after spectacular public trials at which they made confession of their crimes. Among the last survivors were three men named Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford. It must have been in 1965 that these three had been arrested. As often happened, they had vanished for a year or more, so that one did not know whether they were alive or dead, and then had suddenly been brought forth to incriminate themselves in the usual way. They had confessed to

intelligence with the enemy (at that date, too, the enemy was Eurasia), embezzlement of public funds, the murder of various trusted Party members, intrigues against the leadership of Big Brother which had started long before the Revolution happened, and acts of sabotage causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people. After confessing to these things they had been pardoned, reinstated in the Party, and given posts which were in fact sinecures but which sounded important. All three had written long, abject articles in 'The Times', analyzing the reasons for their defection and promising to make amends.” (Orwell 75). This is how The Party stays so powerful, they lie and manipulate the people of The Party to think and believe a certain way. Later in the story when Obrien is torturing Winston, this is one of the things that he wants Winston to forget. This shows how threatened the government is by someone who believes just a little differently than everybody else. Likewise, they have kids of the party to become spies, so that adults are not even allowed freedom in their own house. This is shown by, "‘Down with Big Brother!’ Yes, I said that! Said it over and over again, it seems. Between you and me, old man, I'm glad they got me before it went any further […]." "Who denounced you?" said Winston. "It was my little daughter," said Parsons with a sort of doleful pride. "She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don't bear her any grudge for it. In fact I'm proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway." (Orwell 233). This quote is so important because it shows how even a perfect example of a citizen of Big Brother can get caught by one of his own kids. He loved Big Brother and because he said one thing in his sleep that he probably didn’t mean, he was going to die for it and his kids will never see him again for it. The government turns families against each other for their own power. A final reason, the government paints a picture making Goldstein look so bad, as to glorifying Big Brother. In the book 1984 George Orwell wrote, “’Does Big Brother exist? ‘Of course he exists. The party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the party’ says O’Brien. ‘Does he exist in the same way as I exist?’ ‘You do not exist’” (Orwell 259). It is ironic that they make Goldstein such a bad guy but they are lying to the people of Big Brother being real. They do not care that they are a bunch of liars, they only care if they have power and that the power they have lasts long. The government in 1984 controls the people psychologically so that everyone thinks a certain way and do not think thoughts about revolting against Big Brother, so that they can ultimately have a long-lasting control.