Propaganda In 1984

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In the passage from 1984, the nature of the society is revealed at first through the use of the government’s propaganda. Then, the reality of the situation is shown through bleak, lifeless diction which is used to describe how Winston perceives his own situation. Finally, Orwell shows that Winston feels confused by the world he lives in because of the differences between the media’s portrayal of society and Winston’s personal experiences. Orwell reveals both the nature of the dystopian society and Winston’s attitude toward it by contrasting the government propaganda with Winston’s reality. As the passage begins, Winston is being bombarded with government messages stating that everything is improving. Everywhere he looked he saw statistics …show more content…

Orwell shows us that Winston has had a vastly different experience from the propaganda. While the government messages are described as fabulous, Winston’s experience is bleak and lifeless in comparison. The reader also sees that Winston has a disdain for the quality of his life when Winston, “meditated resentfully on the physical texture of life”. And as statistics of progress flash across the television, Winston examines the room he is in, “A low-ceilinged, crowded room, its walls grimy from the contact of innumerable bodies; battered metal tables and chairs, placed so close together that you sat with elbows touching; bent spoons, dented trays, coarse white mugs; all surfaces greasy, grime in every crack”. Orwell describes the setting as cold, disgusting, and lifeless. As Winston is exposed to the propaganda, he is also experiencing the harshness of his …show more content…

He has, “a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to”. He knows he has been robbed of something but doesn’t know what. Winston has an inkling that things could be better but has no idea how anything could ever be different because, “In any time that he could accurately remember, there had never been enough to eat, one had never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes, furniture had always been battered and rickety, rooms underheated, tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces”. Winston honestly doesn’t know any better than to accept what he has been told because he hasn’t the slightest idea of how anything could be different. After all, “Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?”. To the reader, the picture Orwell paints of Winston’s life seems unbearable but it isn’t to Winston because it is all he has ever

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