Examples Of Doublethink In 1984

Imagine having someone telling you something and insisting it was right but you know in the back of your head it’s wrong. 1984 is a book written by the author, George Orwell, in the year 1949. 1984 is about a man named Winston Smith who lives in a small town named Oceania where there are no laws but telescreens that watch all activity. Winston was a guy that rebelled against the party and didn’t believe in what they did. He worked in the Ministry of Truth where they came up with BlackWhite, and erased what they wanted to be gone. He met a young lady named Julia and they used sex to rebel against the Party. It was great for them for awhile until they were caught and took in for reeducation. BlackWhite is a form of Doublethink. Doublethink is

crucial to the Party’s control of Oceania, because it enables the Party to alter historical records and pass off these distorted accounts as authentic. Doublethink is also having a belief in two contradictory things at the same time. In the novel 1984 Orwell uses doublethink to control the people of Oceania and uses it for the biggest control the Party can have.
Doublethink will always be needed for the Party’s control of Oceania, because it enables the Party to change historical records and make it seem authentic.

The brainwashed population no longer recognizes contradictions. Instead, it accepts the Party’s version of the past as accurate, even though that representation may change from minute to minute. The main explanation for doublethink is the ability to maintain two contradictory ideas in one’s head simultaneously and believe them both to be true. This functions as a psychological mechanism that explains people’s willingness to accept control over their memories and their past experiences. George Orwell explains doublethink

as:
To know and to not know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy is impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy. To forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. (Orwell, page 35).
You first experience Doublethink when it mentions the three Party Slogans, “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength.”(Orwell Pg. 6)
All the workers in the Records Department in the Ministry of Truth, doublethink means being able to falsify and change public records, and then believe in the new history that they have just rewritten.

With the given media it shows the corruption and manipulation, "But the issue still struck her as unimportant. 'Who cares?' she said impatiently. 'It's always one bloody war after another, and one knows the news is all lies anyway.'" (Orwell P.154) In Goldstein's Book, the Ministry's name is itself an example of doublethink: the Ministry of Truth is really concerned with lies. The other ministries of Airstrip One are similarly named: the Ministry of Peace is concerned with war, the Ministry of Love is concerned with torture, and the Ministry of Plenty is concerned with starvation. The three slogans of the Party, “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength” (Orwell P.6), are also examples. Mentioned earlier that these slogans are mentioned very early in the book. By the end of the novel, we come to understand the meaning of these concepts. The last line relates to the concept of doublespeak. As well as to two other associated concepts, crimestop and blackwhite are literally self-disciplining thought crime out of your head, and being able to accept that black is white, even if you would rationally know otherwise. The second line addresses the Party belief that the only true freedom is in the control of the party. The first line is remarkably contradicted,

definitely identifies a core virtue in a fascist society: namely, the need for an enemy that can be used to focus the power of the people. Another major example it mentions in the novel is 2+2=5, it explains how the influence of a majority can affect how one person thinks. A thought that went through Winston's mind was, “For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?” (Orwell P.27) The mathematical sentence 2 + 2 = 5 then becomes a motif linked to the theme of psychological independence. Early in the novel, Winston writes that “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four...” (Orwell P. 17) The motif comes full circle at the end of the novel after the torture Winston suffers in the Ministry of Love breaks his soul; he sits at the Chestnut Tree Café and traces “2 + 2 = 5” in the dust on his table. As mentioned numerous times in the book, if you're told that 2+2=5, then you accept that as being true, even if you actually understand that 2+2=4 in reality.
Orwell refers to the Big Lie theory many times in the novel 1984, The Big Lie is a propaganda technique.