George Orwell’s 1984 depicts a dystopian society in which every minute detail is controlled by Oceania’s dictator, Big Brother. Big Brother focuses on gaining power and control, slowly destroying citizens’ free will, and destroying their human rights in the process. In 1984, George Orwell explores the vileness of absolute control, revealing that the consequences will inevitably result in revolts and rebellion against higher authority. In book one, Orwell demonstrates the beginning of this theme by communicating the dangers of propaganda. He shows a dystopian land where everything is controlled by the government, illuminating the subtle ways that misinformation leads to control over one’s thoughts and actions. Orwell utilizes dialogue through the character Sime to express the extent to which Big Brother aims to limit and control one's thoughts via Newspeak. When Winston sits in the cafeteria with Sime, Sime begins to explain the point of Newspeak. Sime states “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible…Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.” (Orwell 52). This shows the goal of …show more content…
Winston has been captured by the Government and sent to the Ministry of Love, he is tortured and beaten into submission. O’Brien, his oppressor, fries his mind into compliance. Winston is finally released, content with the state of life and his country for the first time. “But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” (Orwell 298). Before this, Winston had been 100% against the Party and Big Brother. Due to the physical and mental abuse O’Brien inflicted on Winston, Winston’s entire way of thinking was overthrown against his will. O’Brien had physically taken away Winston’s free will- a human
Winston gets caught by the Thought Police and is taken to the Ministry of Love where he is tortured. O'Brien, the antagonist and a member of the Inner Party, completely ch anges Winston’s perception of reality. He tortures Winston with a device until Winston believes in the Party’s version of reality and does not merely agree with it to stop the pain. Winston is forced to relinquish his hatred of the Party, and in the end conforms to loving the Party and the leader, Big Brother. The Party needs to eradicate any thought that is against them to secure their power.
Here he is tortured and forced to confess his actions. The main reason he is tortured is not to punish him, but because the Party wants him to “fix” himself. The Party wants Winston to refine his ways, and once he accepts Big Brother, they will kill him. The final lines of the book show the true power of the Party, “He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache.
In 1984, George Orwell shows how a totalitarian dystopia can mentally control its citizens through devices such as indoctrination and abuse. The main character, Winston, spends the majority of the book trying to gain power back from the Big Brother, the supposed leader of Oceania and the face of the ruling Party. Despite his best efforts, Winston’s rebellion fails and he ends up back under the control of Big Brother. The Party psychologically oppresses the citizens of Oceania, forcing them to believe in their societal values. All rebellion is rendered void because all the people have become Big Brother’s spies.
In the novel 1984 by George Orwell, the overbearing government of Oceania, Big Brother, controls and monitors everything its citizens sees, hears, and believes. In order to gain absolute loyalty from its citizens, Big Brother has control over every aspect of their lives, prohibiting them from using their own minds and causing them to fully depend on Big Brother. Through the use of manipulation and fear, Big Brother and the Party are able to decide what is real and what is not real. Big Brother believes that in order to gain absolute loyalty from its citizens, it must control everything, from the spread of information to media.
In addition, as O’Brien continues to torture and manipulate Winston into believing that Big Brother means well, he stays strong and refuses. However, the many torture antiques begin to bring down Winston. Slowly he catches himself saying things he normally does not agree with. The only thing stopping him from truly converting to a follower of society involves his unconditional love for Julia.
Winston was ready to commit “murder”, “acts of sabotage”, an array of hate crimes, and even take his own life if O’Brien states it to be necessary. However, Winston’s true threshold was put to the test after O’Brien’s betrayal of leading to his capture and imprisonment at the Ministry of Love. During this torture Winston’s lack of morals, and hypocrisy is shown when he tried to claim himself to be morally superior to members of the party. In response to this O’Brien played the tape of Winston promising to commit the most heinous of acts in the name of the Brotherhood. Despite all of this torture and suffering, when asked his true feelings of the party by O’Brien, Winston remained truthful, “I hate him” (Orwell 282).
“Winston feels frustrated by the oppression and rigid control of the Party, which prohibits free thought and any expression of individuality” (Orwell) Winston dislikes the party and has illegally purchased a diary to write his criminal thoughts. He has also become fixated on a powerful Party member named O'Brien, who Winston believes is a secret member of the
George Orwell’s 1984 is a precautionary tale of what happens when the government has too much control in our lives. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is at odds in a world in which he is not allowed to counter the government’s surveillance and control. Perhaps more striking is the noticeable relationship between the novel and modern society. In George Orwell’s novel 1984 the book predicts the surveillance of Big Brother in modern day societies.
After being released from Room 101, he learns that Big Brother can conquer love and anything else in the world. Winston then admits to loving Big Brother, meaning loving everything he stood for
Big Brother was never one to be questioned, and he made the consequences known to anyone who did so. Winston clearly expressed his hatred for Big Brother and all of the restrictions placed on members of society in the beginning of the book. Despite this, he constantly hid his facial expressions and thoughts from the telescreens, in great fear that the thought police would catch him. Contrary to that outward conformity, he was always inwardly questioning Big Brother. He directly broke the law by writing in a journal, especially since
Imagine your TV is always on and always watching your every move. Welcome to 1984. From now on you must be very careful what you think for you must always live in fear of committing a thought crime. Even one negative thought about Big Brother could force the Thought Police to erase you from existence or, as they say in Newspeak, to make you an unperson. This is the daily life of a citizen of George Orwell’s fictional country called Oceania.
Imagine living in a world where people are restricted to basic human rights like having their own thoughts. In the novel 1984 George Orwell creates a dystopian society that controls all the people of Oceania. Orwell uses media manipulation to control what people say and think. Some readers say it is similar to how Kim Jong-un and Yoon Suk Yeol rule North and South Korea. In 1984 George Orwell created a world where there is an abuse of power and technological advancements, similar to the governments North and South Korea, to illustrate the manipulation that people can become victims of.
After being tortured and facing his fear in Room 101, Winston was finally broken and now loves the party’s beliefs and Big Brother. Now we do not see the Winston who was against the party, we see him supporting the party because of manipulation through torture. A stylistic device that is used is pathos. Pathos is shown when Winston expresses his happiness that he was finally broken and free to love Big Brother but the reader feels sorry for Winston for getting extremely tortured and manipulated to support the oppressive party and dictator. This relates back to the thesis as George Orwell is predicting how people will get arrested and be manipulated and tortured to make society follow the government’s beliefs.
Within his diary entry on April 4, 1984, he writes, “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: Thoughtcrime is death,” (Orwell 36). Although Winston fully understands that simply owning this notebook has the potential to get him executed, he continues to disobey The Party because this is his only outlet. The to-go-tactic for maintaining the power of The Party is to shift blame from themselves to other people within the community in order to provide them with the false liberty of choice. The figure,“Big Brother”, is the face of all the propaganda and dictatorship despite his failure to be seen in person. The overlying rule of Big Brother in each propaganda poster provides a feeling of comfort and safety for the citizens, when in reality, through manipulation, The Party takes advantage of the people’s vulnerability and fear in order to force them to conform to any request that they ask of them because “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU!”