The Power Of Totalitarianism In George Orwell's 1984

“The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that 's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes” (Hitchens 53). By stating this, one can understand that Orwell biographer Christopher Hitchens strongly believes that totalitarians are every individual’s enemies. In 1984, the concepts of liberated enterprise and individual free will no longer existed; hence in the novel 1984, George Orwell demonstrates that totalitarianism could take over one’s personal freedom if not fought against. Through a third person limited omniscient narration, using the perspective of Winston Smith, Orwell elucidates the conflict between an individual and a totalitarian government; in the end, Winston Smith

If he is ever able to express his feelings, he would be committing a Thought Crime and would become brainwashed or even vaporized by the Thought Police. In 1984, Winston is in conflict within himself over the ideas of humanity and liberty. The Party works to deprive Winston and other individuals of their own thoughts through coercion and the use of a principle called doublethink. In the novel, Orwell defines doublethink as: The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one 's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies. (Orwell 214) At the end of Two Minute Hate, Big Brother 's face appears (the incredible dictator of the Party and an invisible force that controls Oceania whose secret militia is

How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever the wanted to. You had to live- did live, from habit that became instinct- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized” (Orwell 98). The failure of the people to distinguish all these negations reinforces the power of the totalitarian regime. Winston believes that the Party cannot control physics; however, O’Brien (Winston’s chief) responds to him and sums up 1984 in the grim statement while he is torturing Winston: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-forever” (Orwell 267) to pronounce that the Party controls all reality. Through multiple third person limited omniscient excerpts in 1984, one gains glimpses of terrifying possibilities of how totalitarianism takes place against an individual; Winston Smith is defeated by the Party due to totalitarianism. Since Orwell is omniscient, he describes things from the perspective of Winston so readers