Society is made up of multiple factors including individuality and opposition. George Orwell’s 1984 is a novel that depicts a communist dystopian society. Orwell wrote this novel to show what will happen to society under Communist control—more specifically, Joseph Stalin’s control. Orwell presents the reader with a protagonist, Winston, and through Winston, the reader can see the effects of extreme, forced conformity in a society. Through 1984, the reader can conclude that a society as a whole cannot thrive when constrained.
Easily, the largest theme that comes through in 1984 from start to finish is psychological control is the way to a totalitarian government. By controlling the minds of the people who are in their country, they can keep everyone in check with no chance of revolution. The Party, or the main government has a motto. It goes, “Those who control the past, control the future: who controls the present controls the past.” (32). What this is saying is in order to stay in power, they have to manipulate the records of the past. That is actually one of Winston’s jobs as a follower of the Party. There was an instance when a person turned on the Party and was soon erased from history. Winston and others went back into official documents such as speeches and literally deleted the officer. By controlling the past this way, they control the future. The future that they are controlling is a future when no one can look back because there isn’t anything to look back to. There are small rumors of how life was before the start of the Party, but again they are just rumors. With nothing to compare their current life to, there is nothing to fight for. They have complete control of all aspects of life by controlling history. Another quote proving this is, “And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted because there did not exist, and never again could exist,
Brave New World and 1984 are both books about a dystopian society. Dystopia meaning an imagined place in which everything is bad, or unpleasant. In Brave New World, the people are controlled by excessive pleasure which leads to violence, and in 1984 the people are controlled more blatantly by violence.
Community, Identity, Stability. These are the ideas that are thrown at you from the very beginning of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. However, it is quite ironic that this is the motto chosen to represent the world state. Community is understood to be a group of diverse individuals coming together as one, yet in brave new world they predestine their citizens and sort them into different castes. Identity is understood to show individualism, yet the caste system limits anyone’s capability to be an individual. With community and identity, stability is supposed to be achieved, but the novel makes you question if stability is an actual thing that can happen in society. In Brave New World, many things are done to ensure stability, three of them being the tyranny of happiness, drugging the population, and the mass production of children. With these three factors, it is eerie how close Aldous Huxley came to predicting the impact of these in the future of society.
The book 1984 is based off of the ideas that there is some greater being that oppresses the people of the society. In a way someone might look at our government and think that they are the greater being that is oppressing the people it watches over, but that is not true. Although the government creates and enforces laws onto the people of our communities, we the people still have numerous laws that allow us to be free and do what we like. Although there are many laws regulating the world today, these citizens are undeniably free from any
In the Brave New World, a book written by Aldous Huxley,, he writes about a utopian future where humans are genetically created and pharmaceutically anthesized. Huxley introduces three ideals which become the world's state motto. The motto that is driven into their dystopian society is “Community, Identity and Stability.” These are qualities that are set to structure the Brave New World. Yet, happen to contradict themselves throughout the story. Some of the characteristics of the Brave New World include citizens being conditioned to their social groups, they are conditioned to fear the outside world, are deprived of human qualities, are under constant surveillance and in this case, the figurehead worshiped in the Brave New World is Henry Ford.
The novel 1984 by George Orwell and the movie V for Vendetta are both dystopian themed works of fiction. Both depicted the dangers of a totalitarian type of regime and the horrors that come along with it. In 1984, Winston Smith the main character, lived in a poverty-stricken country called Oceania wherein the government controls all aspect of the people 's lives. On the contrary, in the movie V for Vendetta, the main characters named V was a vigilante who sought to overthrow the totalitarian government of London. He met a girl named Evey Hammond, who just like Winston Smith in 1984, was stuck in a country ruled by despotism. The two main similarities between the two works of fiction are both tackled the idea of rebellion and the dangers of a totalitarian government. Additionally, the main difference between the two pieces is the conclusion of both stories.
The utopian society in the Brave New World can be compared and contrasted between our contemporary society using individualism, community and the human experience. The fictional novel by Aldous Huxley, published in 1932, is about a utopian society where people focus stability and community over individuality and freedom, but an outsider is introduced to intervene with the operation of the utopian state. In the contemporary world, people need to show individuality in their communities in order to survive, and to be human, one must show emotion, which is the opposite in the Brave New World.
George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts a dystopian totalitarian society and explores the interlinking concepts of time, memory and history through the examination of the ability to manipulate by censoring information and via propaganda. It also examines the power of memory and history in influencing and controlling people’s lives. This essay will explore these themes through the disillusioned protagonist Winston and his life under dictator rule. In the novel the Party controls every aspect of their citizen’s lives. They tell them what to think, how to behave and who to love all through the help of the Ministries of Truth, Peace and Love. The Party manipulate history and alter the truth so much so that Winston loses track of time and is unable to accurately recall past events or rationalize his own history. This constant manipulation also results in a loss of faith in his own memory and the unreliability of his own thoughts. Eventually culminating in Winston becoming brainwashed and wholly devoted to the Party.
1984 was written by George Orwell in 1948 and it is a dystopian novel. The novel takes place in a futuristic time period in a section of the world called “Oceania”. Oceania is led by the Party, whose leader is Big Brother, and they control everything that happens in Oceania. The Party and Big Brother are constantly watching their citizens through telescreens, which are large screens that are placed throughout Oceania like modern day surveillance cameras. This gives the illusion of a dystopian society. George Orwell’s novel 1984 conforms to the conventions of dystopia by using propaganda, depicting people who are dehumanized, and the citizens conform to uniform expectations in order to showcase the complete control of the Party.
In the novel 1984 by George Orwell, the main theme is of conformity to the wants of society and the government. Themes of dehumanization of our species, as well as the danger of a totalitaristic state are repeatedly expressed. Orwell demonstrates this theme by using setting and characters in the novel. The setting helps to convey the theme because of the world and kind of city that the main character lives in. Winston’s every move is watched and controlled by the governmental figurehead known as “big brother”. The characters in the story are used to show the theme in the sense that most are essentially brainwashed by, and therefore loyal to and under control of, the overbearing government. The main conflict of the story is between the main
Individualism and the realization of one’s inner thoughts are the most important things someone can possess. In 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 there are a lot of similarities and differences. The biggest similarity between the books is that they both take place in a dystopian society where the government has total control of the people. However there are many other similarities such as the main characters, desensitized natures, and no privacy. The biggest difference between the books are the endings and how the government regulates the ideas and thoughts of their people.
These novels have some glaring structural similarities, especially in character development. Both ‘1984’ and ‘Fahrenheit 451’ are collated into three parts centring on a man who lives a bland life until one day he meets a girl who changes his life. The oppressive nature of the regimes that Orwell and Bradbury have created is also very similar. These totalitarian states are governed by higher powers that are ambiguously personified into an image. Under Orwell’s dystopia, the population are oppressed by the image of ‘Big Brother’, whose appearance fits that of Joseph Stalin . ”the face of a man about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features.” This shows Orwell’s highly politically charged views against Stalin.
Winston reflects back on how the party alters the history of the country: “the lie passed into history and became truth” (Orwell 34). Although Winston knows that Oceania and Eurasia were in alliance before, he also believes that they did not have an actual alliance because of what the Party imposes onto the citizens’ memories of the past. Orwell’s use of the word “passed” possibly shows that the lies they create can easily to history and be masked as the truth. It can be inferred that Winston now knows exactly how the party paralyzes anyone from actual thinking, which is by changing the history. This can be linked to American society since doublethink in America is demonstrated in big supreme court decisions. For example, after the Supreme Court passed the gay marriage law, they received criticism that “if gay marriage is a civil right, then anyone who opposes it is guilty of a civil rights violation” (Jeffress). The legalization of gay marriage would cause much of the population to forget the past laws regarding marriage, requiring them to retain new beliefs that the government imposed on them. This can be troubling to citizens since they are almost forced to think in the opposite way of what they believe in. This takes away a part of the idea of freedom of thought since they are encouraged to
Our history or our past is what defines our existence in the present. It decides what measures we should take to safeguard our future. Through history we identify with who we are, where we come from and what defines us as a person. Take our history away from us and we are left alienated and confined to a world that is meaningless. George Orwell 's novel 1984 is a 20th century political novel, that depicts a dystopian society built on a totalitarian ideology. In the novel, the lives of the people of Oceania is controlled and confined to a world based on the rules set out by the totalitarian government under the rule of the Big Brother. The history and the past is changed and altered in such a way that people do not even realize