A motto is essentially all-powerful. It has the ability to gain or lose support, reflect a set of values, and portray the intentions of a group of people. Some mottos are more ominous than others, which is a common theme in dystopian novels. George Orwell’s 1984 depicts the dangers and consequences of a totalitarian government. The plot follows Winston Smith, a middle-aged commoner, who is residing in Oceania or present-day Great Britain. Constant war and destruction has left The Party to rule Oceania and its inhabitants. Smith lives in a society structured from social caste, physical and mental surveillance, and loyalty to the oppressive regime. His interactions with other insurgents result in an unlikely chance for love and rebellion. At …show more content…
The three superpowers in this futuristic world are Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia, and wartime between them is constant. No territory is more powerful than another, so it is inevitable that no competitor will ever experience a total victory. Winston reads The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein, the Party’s sole scapegoat, which O’Brien gives to him. The text states: “It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting, and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference” (Orwell 186). Oceania is at war for no reason other than to unite its people with a common enemy. The society members are able to put their hate into another country, rather than their own government. People are trained to hate the war enemy with forced propaganda and thought speculation. If a member of society were not participating in the hatred, he would likely be accused of treason and would face evaporation. The government seems to emphasize emotional rather than intellectual thinking. An example of members’ lack of intellect occurs during the week of hatred against Eurasia, Oceania’s current battlefield rival. During a rally, an official simply mentions Eastasia as the enemy instead of Eurasia. Winston reflects: “The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed” (Orwell 181). The …show more content…
A majority of the Party’s success can be attributed to the brainwashing techniques that it uses. Like many other dystopian novels, the older generations are harder to convince than the youth being born into the Party’s ideals. A technique that Oceania’s government uses frequently involves using the past to display the beauty of the present. Winston reads a child’s history textbook and describes a passage about the previous government: “The capitalists owned everything in the world and everyone else was their slave” (Orwell 73). This history book depicts capitalists as selfish monsters that make life miserable. Generations that have lived during this particular era know that many liberties have been abandoned. The Party then correlates freedom with a selfish government and unhappiness. The more the Party frightens people of the past, the more grateful they are for the present. This is another tactic the Party uses to gain support from its members. While O’Brien interrogates Winston during his treatment at the Ministry of Love, Winston reflects on the lies the Party has fed to its citizens: “That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better” (Orwell 262). The Party claims that the constant surveillance, oppression, and severity are to maintain the happiness of mankind. O’Brien admits to Winston
If we take a look at what Winston’s does in the Party, his job is to keep the people ignorant about true facts and statistics in order to keep everyone happy. This allows the party to keep everyone ignorant about everything and make them always feel strong in the progress. If the people were to find out the true facts and their manipulation, they would rebel against the Party. So, the people’s ignorance is the Party’s strength. Through the use of War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength, the Party is able to distort people’s human nature and keep themselves in
In George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, we follow Winston Smith through the challenges of society controlled by the Party; he echoes a warning not to lose your freedom to a higher power. Orwell accomplishes this with many rhetorical devices found in both the book and the current presidential election. Reality control is used to maintain authority over society. In 1984, while Winston is imprisoned in the Ministry of Love, the party slogan,”Who controls the past controls the future.
Winston also had a secret notebook that he would write down his thoughts in which was not allowed by the party. Those who were younger than Winston had no memory of what life was like prior to the Party. The party's role on their people may be seen as irrational authority. Fromm gives an example of irrational authority when he writes, “The interest of a slave and master are antagonistic, because what is advantageous to one is detrimental to the other” ( Fromm 577). This is exactly what is happening between the party and the people.
Oceania, where war is peace, slavery is freedom, and ignorance is strength. In this dystopian society the majority is controlled by the minority and they have complete authority over not only the people but the past future and their minds. Oceania does many things to control the minds and actions of its population. These issues include the hiding of history, the creation of enemies, and the control through silencing and tricking the people.
Winston was never a devoted follower, constantly questioning the world around him. Even when in custody, Winston continued questioning motives and denouncing the Party and Big Brother, despite the futility. He knew no societal changes would result from his actions, but desperately wanted to share his ideas with someone, and since he was already being tortured, he was capable of speaking freely in the jail area. The purpose was to rid him of his rebellious mindset, and to do so, O’Brien needed to know everything Winston honestly thought in order to ‘correct’ it fully. For example, O’Brien forced Winston to recognize that whatever the Party said was true by holding up four fingers and saying there were five, “But there had been a moment- of luminous certainty, where each new suggestion of O’Brien’s had filled up a patch of emptiness and had become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily five, if that were what was needed (Orwell 258).
To commence, the Oceanian society Winston lives in, is entrenched with irony. The party’s slogan is “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” (Orwell, 6) is an example of verbal irony. In addition to being ironic, the party's slogan is an oxymoron, a statement which on the
Patriotism is the love that people feel for their country; in the novel 1984, George Orwell consistently utilizes a three sentence slogan to illustrate a world with patriotism taken to the extremes. These sentences are “War is peace” where individuals accept the constant warring, “Freedom is slavery” where the people ignore their own thoughts, “Ignorance is strength” where the individuals blindly follows the Party’s orders. Through this slogan, Orwell describes a future where the ignorant and loyal prevail and support an endless war. The first phrase “War is peace” advocates war because it promotes patriotism and devotion to the country.
The society of this novel was a dystopia and it is how George Orwell viewed the world. In the novel 1984, Orwell portrays the acts of betrayal and
One of the themes of 1984 by George Orwell is how it represents living in a dictatorship. There are many troubles that come with living in a dictatorship. In the book, everyone is ruled by a dictator called Big Brother. No one knows if he is real or not, but he makes all of the rules. An example from the book about dictatorship is, “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.
Joseph Goebbels once said,”Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their freewill”. This statement is proven to be true in 1984. The author, George Orwell, creates a fictional dystopian society in which the population is manipulated into thinking they live in a great world, whereas the government has full control over them. In 1984, George Orwell’s prime message, supported by the article called Liberty in North Korea by Hae Re, was the lack of individualism gives power to the applicable leader, which is conveyed using the characters speech and symbolism. Orwell’s dystopian society showed the author 's message through what a character was saying and symbolism.
Throughout the book the slogans of “war is peace, freedom is slavery, [and] ignorance is strength” is a forced acceptance by all citizens (Orwell 16). These particular slogans, that exemplify doublethink, are plastered everywhere. The illogicalness of doublethink completely surrounds the citizens, constantly exposing them to it. The second characteristic of monopoly over mass media is quite evident in Winston 's life. Government employees run the internet, newspapers, and radio/tv announcements.
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge” - Stephen Hawking. People tend to believe they know more than they really do. They turn to the news, books, music, or even art to learn about the world surrounding them. What people don’t understand is everything you learn from the media is being told by another person just like yourself. Someone with feelings and emotions and most likely a different opinion and agenda than most people.
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.
O’Brien speaks in a kind and encouraging way; his words are encouraging in that he is pushing Winston to realize the how the Party has utter control over history and society itself. O’Brien explains that “[The Party controls] life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us” (Orwell 269). In reality, Winston is actually being unreasonable by not accepting that the Party has total control. O’Brien reveals his true identity as a friend by pushing Winston to accept this total control, justifying Winston’s torture to see five of O’Brien’s fingers instead of
In 1984, a dystopian novel written by George Orwell, proles are represented as being generally incompetent in the ability to think and rebel against their stolen rights. However, as the story progresses, Winston comes to a realization that proles are the only ones with the character of human beings and the strength to gain consciousness to overthrow the party. Through this characterization of the proles, Orwell satirizes the detrimental effects of Stalin’s totalitarian government in employing total control and perpetual surveillance of the people in USSR to maintain an established hierarchy. The nature of how the system views the proles is clearly visible through the treatment and description of the proles in the eyes of Winston.