1984: Survival is Imperative There is a powerful quote stated by Bob Dylan “No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.” This rings especially true in the fictional land of Oceania, one of the three super continents envisioned in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Orwell depicts a land where no one is free and everyone is part of a brainwashed biomass of people. This unknowing public is constantly bombarded with propaganda such as the two minutes of hate, which as Winston Smith describes “creates a hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness” that turns “one even against one’s will into a grimacing screaming lunatic” (14) it is not surprising that the members of the Party and even those who are not become passive followers. This …show more content…
rule is total. Every aspect of life is controlled and regulated to the highest degree. This is the worst-case scenario fully realized into a dystopia. A dystopia is defined as an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. Oceania is a dystopia; Orwell specifically designed Oceania to be one, in a letter to Noah Willmett, Orwell wrote that: Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not democratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system. With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist…But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. The aforementioned totalitarian society that Orwell has spoken of is the exact world in 1984.
Winston Smith is a member of an unchanging machine and as a result is subject to the atrocities that this society entails. Now, Winston throughout the course of the novel chose to defy the party of Ingsoc and because of trying to stand up to the atrocities, he was devoured promptly by the beast of the Party who has the Big Brother as its figurehead. In the face of this totalitarian rule, it is better to dissent in silence and ignore the atrocities that happen around you. Winston Smith decided to forego the path most traveled by and as a result all the difference to his life. Winston eventually suffered a metaphorical or literal death when that bullet entered in his brain and Winston won victory over himself. While the tangibility of that bullet creates some debate, there can be no debate to the fact that had Winston had not expressed his rebellious thoughts he would have led a natural, albeit, unfulfilling life. I believe that Winston Smith would have been ultimately better off dissenting in silent and keeping his treasonous thoughts to himself in order to avoid the fate of those who oppose Big …show more content…
Brother. Winston Smith’s first mistake was even thinking about dissention. Everything in Oceania is monitored to the heaviest extent. Even thought and expression of these thoughts has also been limited to the point of being unable to express ideas that came before the Party and Ingsoc. The purpose of Newspeak is further delved by the following passage from The Principles of Newspeak, which is found in the Appendix of 1984: The purpose of Newspeak was … to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is, one diverging from the principles of Ingsoc should be literally unthinkable … Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum. (299-300) Winston Smith began to perpetrate a crime and that crime was crimethink. These crimes though were constantly monitored by the ubiquitous telescreens Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it…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.” (3) Because of this system of surveillance, the Thought Police and the Ministry of Love became universally feared. Winston wrote down his thoughts and as he did, Winston committed his first act of defiance. What Thoughtcrime does is it punishes the natural curiosity our minds possess and because of this curiosity, zeal, or even pure intelligence, the party weeds them out just as they did to Syme. Syme was a person working on compiling the eleventh edition of Newspeak and he had such passion and such fervor for this compilation and destruction of language that he was eliminated and no one, aside from Winston Smith noticed. Syme served as a foil to Winston Smith as he was vocal about his ideas to a fault, but Winston was very quiet and reserved. What each of their respective thoughts were about also help to differentiate the two. Syme is a fervent disciple of Big Brother and enjoys destroying the lexicon of Oldspeak. Winston, on the other hand, is rebellious and begins his questioning of Big Brother. Yet, Syme is the one who is eliminated first. This is because the party does not value intelligence, what they value is blind devotion and lack of intelligence due to the devotion, something Syme does not possess. A secondary concept that intertwines itself with crimethink is crimestop. "Crimestop" means to rid oneself of unwanted thoughts immediately, which are in any case, thoughts that interfere or disagree with the ideology of the Party. This is the way a person avoids committing thoughtcrime. Crimestop is not actively practiced by Winston throughout 1984 who allows his thoughts to roam and these thoughts eventually cause him to engage in sexcrime with Julia in a grove of plants with a Wood Thrush singing in the glade where they are hiding. His heart leapt. Scores of times she had done it: he wished it had been hundreds – thousands. Anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild hope! Anything to rot, to weaken, to undermine! He pulled her down so that they were kneeling face to face. "Listen. The more men you've had, the more I love you. Do you understand that?” (125) This lack of restraint and active defiance lead to suspicions around Winston and Julia. This leads to a ruse set up by O’Brien whom Winston put his faith into in regards of possibly rebelling. The other reason why this active defiance works out so poorly when done in Oceania is the weakness of the human spirit. The human is not mechanical in nature. Oceania provides an exception to the rule and creates people into unfeeling robots. The with the higher party members and the dissenters knowing about why people “disappear”, these two selected groups know and why the ruse of being purely is so very important. The fact that humans are machines now working for the figurehead of Big Brother changes the nature of the human dynamic. It creates a sensation of unease and distrust everywhere you turn if you have been exposed to the near constant rewriting of history and denial of fact. This conviction and human want for acceptance and the want for anyone to have the same end goal as you are too alluring to pass up. This conviction is shown in the following excerpt: Momentarily he caught O'Brien's eye. But there was a fraction of a second when their eyes met, and for as long as it took to happen Winston knew- yes, he knew!- that O'Brien was thinking the same thing as himself. An unmistakable message had passed. It was as though their two minds had opened and the thoughts were flowing from one into the other through their eyes. 'I am with you,' O'Brien seemed to be saying to him. 'I know precisely what you are feeling. I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your disgust. But don't worry, I am on your side!' (17) The sting of having O’Brien being a high member of the thought police is almost unthinkable as Winston and Julia promised to kill themselves, the innocent, children, and do many other horrible crimes if need be for the “rebellion.” This disappearance is damning to anyone as the Ministry of love, paradoxically named mind you, deals with all the torturing. It is here in the torturing where the human spirit is broken. This place is where 2+2=5. The place I speak of is Room 101, where everyone is exposed to his or her greatest fear. Not only is one exposed to their greatest fear, they are also completely worn down ahead of time to become a disheveled shell of the person you once were. Even when Winston is subjected to the torturous conditions all the defiance leaves him as he shouts for the torture to be done to Julia and not himself. This moment shows that in the hypothetical totalitarian society that the amount of control needed to maintain requires ignorance. Ignorance is bliss in this world and Winston Smith was not gifted with this. So as a result, he is subjected to diabolical torture that makes us and Winston go through pain and demoralization that is beyond the spectrum that we know in our daily lives. The worst part of it all though is that this has gotten to the point where other humans are not fazed by this level of torture. They simply see it as a part of a job that needs doing, and when you have to combat your entire populace, including, neighbors, coworkers, and your friends, there is no way to do effectively. Therefore, even if Winston Smith had continued the silent dissent, eventually one small mistake would have given him away and he would have experienced the same trauma just in a different road to get there. In the end had Winston dissented at all it would not have mattered how he dissented, but if he did. If Winston Smith did dissent the he was condemned to the same place that all the other roads begin at dissent do, death. The only place this whole story could have been prevented was before Winston, if Ingsoc was stopped, but it was not. The actions that happened to Winston Smith throughout 1984 lead me to the conclusion that Winston should have led a life of ignorance because of the heavy monitoring at every level, and even thought of dissention was death.
In the superstates of Oceania, ignorance is bliss. The story of Winston Smith’s struggle with being stuck in a factually incorrect world and the ignorance surrounding him and the entirety of 1984 provide a cautionary tale. This cautionary tale is what happens when human rights are violated on the most basic of all levels and no one is around to stop that defilation of these rights. There may be conscientious objectors to the many atrocities that the world throw at them but in a world of control, disagreement is akin to death. In a world where difference of opinion causes you to be tried for treason, that is a world that is truly corrupt to the highest of calibers. 1984 not only provides a cautionary tale of what could and would have happened if Stalinism would have gone unchecked, but also when the majority opinion stops listening to the majority of one. In this world of 1984, nothing is free, not even a
bird.
In “1984,” Orwell uses Winston to portray a single individual’s attempt to take action against a powerful government, culminating in his failure and subjugation. His individual efforts failed tremendously due to the overarching power of the Party to control every aspect of social life in Oceania. Orwell uses Winston’s deeply seated hatred of the Party to portray his views on power and social change. Winston’s actions show that even in the direst of situations ...
George Orwell once offered this definition of heroism: ordinary people doing whatever they can to change social systems that do not respect human decency, even with the knowledge that they can’t possibly succeed.
It is said that 1984 is one of the greatest books ever written, a literary work that remains as transcendent as ever since its publishing date sixty-four years ago. It is a grimly realistic story crafted together by George Orwell, who takes upon particularly effective literary elements, such as the limited third-person point of view, to follow the life of Winston Smith, the average everyday, resentful civilian who attempts to fight against the seemingly omnipotent and ubiquitous powers of the Ingsoc Party. The Ingsoc Party, a totalitarian government that governs the fictional country of Oceania, holds a casket of brilliantly intelligent individuals, some of who are members of the terrifying Thought Police and the notorious Inner Party, who employ informal language against the uneducated masses of Oceania civilians. Symbolism is also a key literary element in the novel, for anything ranging from ubiquitous telescreens to the infamous Big Brother ultimately contribute to Winston’s realization of how unbreakable the power of the Ingsoc Party truly is. All throughout 1984, George Orwell exercises the elements of diction, point of view, and symbolism to bring out the novel’s theme of how futile resistance is against established totalitarian governments.
George Orwell’s novel, 1984, is a dystopian literary text that illuminates the tenets of totalitarian and authoritarian governance in most areas where the leaders seek total loyalty and near hero worship. It was published in 1949, but has since remained relevant because its details promoted authoritarian political constructs and the political leadership concepts that evolved in the globe over time. Set at Oceania province in Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, the book displays an omnipresent government that institutes constant state surveillance on the people that it suspects to be a threat to its regime and agitators of rebellion. It infringes on human rights
George Orwell once wrote, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” In Orwell’s 1984, he establishes a government centered on universal deceit to expose the impact of such controls on the citizens, specifically, the revolutionary, Winston. Winston Smith is introduced as a worker of the Ministry of Truth, where he, as well as many others, work to alter or destroy any pictures, pieces of written work, art work etc. that may cause citizens to question the power or truthfulness of their government. Although Smith performs proficiently at his job and complies with the rules of this society, he, unlike most others, sees the lies and manipulation imposed on the citizens of Oceania by Big Brother and attempts to deceive
1984 tells the story of Winston Smith who lives in Oceania, a dystopian nation ruled by a strictly totalitarian government know only as ‘The Party’. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even people's history and language. It uses telescreens which are everywhere-you can’t speak, breathe or sneeze without the government knowing about it. The Party even enforces a new language to prevent political rebellion by eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking rebellious thoughts, known as thoughtcrime, is illegal: "Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death."
“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity” (Nelson Mandela). Throughout the novel 1984, written by George Orwell, there is a severe lack of humanity. During the course of the novel, the level of humanity is tested through the challenges Winston and Julia face in their war against the Party. In 1984, humanity has been impacted by the Party’s control over its members, its lack of control over its members, and its war against love.
Things to know: 1984 was a book written about life under a totalitarian regime from an average citizen’s point of view. This book envisions the theme of an all knowing government with strong control over its citizens. This book tells the story of Winston Smith, a worker of the Ministry of Truth, who is in charge of editing the truth to fit the government’s policies and claims. It shows the future of a government bleeding with brute force and propaganda. This story begins and ends in the continent of Oceania one of the three supercontinents of the world. Oceania has three classes the Inner Party, the Outer Party and the lowest of all, the Proles (proletarian). Oceania’s government is the Party or Ingsoc (English Socialism
He has a decent job and doesn’t look very powerful. Compared to the strong and powerful Big Brother and O’Brien, Winston looks rather fragile and weak. However, his physical - - - - -appearance does not say all. Winston Smith is a very determined and rebellious - - - -citizen. He knows what he wants and he knows what he doesn’t want. He is ready to risk his life in order to beat external forces and defend his society. As the courageous man that he is, he is determined to change all that isn’t right. Unfortunately, his heroic approaches and tendencies are not very stable and resemble more of a brave human -being rather than hero. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The novel, 1984, by George Orwell, depicts a dystopian society where no freedom exists; not even the freedom of thought. The scene takes place in Oceania, a society in which the ruling power called “the Party” strictly controls everything people do: from the way they speak, to how they move, to their very own thoughts. Winston Smith, the main character of 1984, struggles through the day to day life of having to blend into the brainwashed citizens of Oceania, where monitors called telescreens record and analyze every little movement. Anyone not showing signs of loyalty and homogeneity become vaporized, or in other words, cease to exist and become deleted from history. Tired of his constricted life, Winston decides
Totalitarianism is one of the main themes in 1984. In WWII Europe, Oceania became the ruling power with the so called “Party” ruling everybody and have the “Big Brother” at its head. Some examples of totalitarianism is how they make people workout, they put tele-screens everywhere to monitor the peoples actions, also they refuse to allow any sexual intercourse outside of marriage. “Winston kept his back turned to the tele-screen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing” (Book 1, Chapter 1). This quote represents how fearful Winston is that he ...
In the novel 1984, Orwell produced a social critique on totalitarianism and a future dystopia that made the world pause and think about our past, present and future. When reading this novel we all must take the time to think of the possibility that Orwell's world could come to pass. Orwell presents the concepts of power, marginalization, and resistance through physical, psychological, sexual and political control of the people of Oceania. The reader experiences the emotional ride through the eyes of Winston Smith, who was born into the oppressive life under the rule of Ingsoc. Readers are encouraged through Winston to adopt a negative opinion on the idea of communist rule and the inherent dangers of totalitarianism. The psychological manipulation and physical control are explored through Winston's journey, and with Winston's resistance and ultimate downfall, the reader is able to fully appreciate O'Briens reasoning, "Power is not a means, it is an end."
The word emotion is recognized in today’s society as a natural, instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others. With this perception in mind, one can hypothesize that living in unsustainable, corrupted conditions can be the result of man feeling desensitized and unattached from society. Likewise, if a man were to live in a utopia, his emotions would reflect that of happiness, contention, and a sense of belonging. Winston, the main character in Orwell’s 1984 is a prime example of what control and isolation can do to the human mind. Him, as well as the masses of Oceania share monotony in not feeling raw emotion; their mental states of being are controlled and altered by a totalitarian, power driven
The setting is important to the overall novel studied because it helps highlight major themes in the novel, it further characterizes the motivations of the characters, and helps explain the overall message of the novel. In 1984 by George Orwell, the overall setting of the novel is in London, which is called Airship 1 in Oceania.
By enforcing these simple laws and regulations, the government is able to keep a tight grip on its people, with few ever releasing themselves from its grasp. Winston Smith, on the other hand, seeks to know the truth behind the government, he is constantly questioning everything and repressing all the ideas forced upon him. Winston “seeks truth and sanity, his only resources being the long denied and repressed processes of selfhood” (Feder 398). All identity is gone in this place called Oceania, and for the sake of Big Brother and its continuous control of the people, it will never exist again. In 1984, the absence of identity strips the people of all creativity and diversity, as well as takes away any chance the society has to advance as a people or in the area of technology.