“The only genuine dangers are the splitting-off of a new group of able, underemployed, power-hungry people, and the growth of liberalism and skepticism in their own ranks” (Orwell, 171). Liberalism is founded upon equality. Whereas the society they live in is ruled by a dictator. The party can’t have their members begin to question the system and start their own groups. That would put the idea in other’s minds and give them the option to follow; individual thinking is not allowed. If a new group were to start up they could steal the power from Big Brother and turn the people against them, causing the society they currently live in to crumble. To insure that this does not happen, education is key. The less people are taught, the less likely they are to become conscious and revolt. Big Brother is at the top of the totem pole in the structure of the Oceania society. He is the symbol of dictatorship, the image of control. “His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt toward an individual than toward an organization” (Orwell, 171). The party does not want you having these feelings towards another person. Through that connection, your loyalty would lie with them and not with the party. They teach you to channel these …show more content…
It is extremely important for the party members to think that they are equal. To believe that times have only gotten better since Big Brother. If they think otherwise, they could form a rebellion. Unlike the proles, they have the means to revolt. Although the Thought Police makes it nearly impossible, they have the intelligence and resources to do so. They are considered as “the brain of the State” (Orwell, 172). A party member is taught to not think for themselves, to focus all of their energy on the hatred of their enemy. By doing so, this reduces their possible rebellious
“BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” The party uses this slogan to make the people of Oceania feel safe, when, in reality they are constantly in danger.
There is also no hope of rebellion from actual party members, this is one instance where Thoreau’s ideas falter. Even Winston admits early on in the novel that the government could never be brought down from the inside, “If there is hope…it lies in the proles.” (Orwell, p. 69) The Party could not be destroyed from within, because the Thought Police are all powerful and all watching. But the proles are not educated and generally don’t care whatsoever about the Party. The only time the Party is of interest is the lottery, but even that is rigged. “Until they become conscious they will never rebel.” (Orwell, p. 70) Because the proles are ultimately unaffected, they will never rise up and take hold of the opportunity to overthrow the Party. Thoreau was correct on the ignorant and unaffected not taking charge or making change, and he was also correct on the government being unable to correct itself, but in the case of wanting those to put their own conscience before the law it is impossible in the world of 1984.
Propaganda also plays a central role within the Party's infrastructure and it is used to gain support for Big Brother, stir patriotism and induce hate towards the chosen "enemy" country. Workers in the Ministry of Truth work to change the past, making Big Brother seem to have always been right. Also, the Party seeks to stifle any individual or "potentially revolutionary" thought by introducing a new language, Newspeak, the eradication of English and the deployment of "Thought Police" who terrorize Party members by accusing them of "Thought Crime" (ie. to think a crime is to commit a crime). The introduction of this new language means that eventually, no-one is able to commit thought-crime due to the lack of words to express it.
it has operatives all over keeping an eye out for cops or law enforcement, this
George Orwell has created two main characters that have conflicting traits believe in the idea of love in a world where it is forbidden. Although both are secret rebels of the Party and share the same hatred for the Party’s totalitarian power, Julia and Winston display a remarkable number of differences between each other. The differences between them include their morality, their motivation towards the rebellion, and their personalities.
They have no idea people are getting tortured to death, or that the Party is turning families against each other, or that the upper classes are watched at all times. If they did know all this, then maybe they would revolt. But because the Party is strong and knows exactly how to control the proles, this lower class will always be clueless and will never think of overthrowing the Party. The Party gives them what they want to satisfy their needs and desires. The proles are happy with their ignorance. All this shows that due to the proles’ ignorance, the Party gets to keep its strength and continue its
...en into organizations that brainwashes and encourages them to spy on their parents and report any instance of disloyalty to the Party much like Orwell’s experience in the Civil war. The fact that a portion of the populations suffered poverty while others bathed in wealth reinforces the strong hierarchal system imposed. Orwell’s attitudes surrounding sociocultural context are prominent throughout 1984 and strengthens the invited reading that power is problematic.
“The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery". Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone—free—the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he IS the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body—but, above all, over the mind” (Orwell 273). O’Brien argues that the Party and “Big Brother” had control over reality externally due to the fact that nothing exists outside the mind, and in cases of freethinkers, they would be taken care of by the teachings of “doublethink”. Doublethink is the power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs, for example holding up four fingers and claiming that you have five up, and simultaneously making one accept both of them. So if a society was entirely based off of the idea of doublethink as it’s way of forcing lies and reasons of hate on people, then it could work. But the one counter-argument to that
...ns absolute power over the citizens of Oceania, because he needs to remain in power. Absolute power ensures that Big Brother will not lose control of its citizens and risk being taken over by Eastasia or Eurasia. By eliminating sex and physical contact Big Brother is able to demolish the bonds that partners form. To further his power Big Brother uses child spies to control parents and to further destroy the family bonds. With these bonds destroyed Big Brother is able to fully control his citizens because they are only loyal to him and are more wiling to support him. In the end Big Brother only cares about gaining absolute power and will do anything to achieve his goal. In a totalitarian world, human relationships can easily be manipulated and the same can happen in any other world as long as humans do not know they are being taken advantage of or being manipulated.
one of the most important aspects of the Party's reality is Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, come directly from his leadership and inspiration. Nobody has ever seen Big Brother in person. He is a face on the wall, a voice on the screen.
Through its effective psychological manipulation tactics, Big Brother, also known as The Party, destroys all sense of independence and individuality . Everyone wears the same plain clothes, eats the same nasty food, and lives in the same dirty apartments. Life is uniform and orderly. No one can stand out, and no one can be unique. To have an independent thought would make you commit a thought crime that creates you into a criminal. For this reason, writing such as Winston does in his diary has been outlawed. People are only permitted to think what the Party tells them to think, which leads to what Syme refers to as "duckspeak" (Orwell 129). Independent thought can be dangerous, as it might lead to rebellion.
At the time, the Party has demanded that all love and loyalty be only towards for Big Brother and the Party. The great and fulfilling bonds between the parents and children are broken, due to this ‘law’. Even beyond that, children are most commonly to be reporting their parents to the Thought Police. The Party believes that there is no such room for love unless that love is directed with to Big Brother and the
One of the motto’s in 1984 is “ignorance is strength.” After seeing what the Party does with ignorance, it is reasonable to assume that ignorance makes the citizens stronger because with it, they can’t rebel, keeping them away from any consequences, and keeping the Party in power. Because ignorance is unhealthy for a society or nation, when people discover that they are being kept in the dark, they are outraged. In places with censorship similar to the Party’s, like Burma, people riot against the government in an attempt to end the censorship. News can be modified or based on a bias to make a nation seem better to its citizens, similar to what the Party does, albeit less exaggerated. Considering the fact that George Orwell wrote this over 60 years ago for a world over 20 years ago, he did very well in predicting what our world would turn out to be, which is alarming because it is supposed to be a gross exaggeration of the world. Looking at his world, in 1984, gives us an idea of what is wrong with the world and what will get even worse so that it can be
In Orwell’s 1984, ‘ignorance is strength’ is a motto of the Party, their government, while in our society, the government imposes the adverse belief: ignorance is weakness, and knowledge is strength. The phrase ‘ignorance is strength’ in 1984 can have many meanings, and it does mean different things to different people. No matter what, though, it gives one social group an upper hand over the other. This proves that today’s culture is the flip of Orwell’s futuristic one. In actuality, all social groups have the same rights as well the same control. The government works with the citizens to give them natural, equal opportunity. In 1984, the Party simply controls its citizens, who are forced to live with strange rules that give them almost no opportunity or authority.
For Big Brother to stay in control there cannot be individual identity. The ‘Party’ strives to strip away people's identities to have power over a group of emotionless individuals. Big Brother believes that the past must be controlled in order to regulate the present. Since Big Brother “is in control of the present” ( 20 ), they decide how everyone lives their everyday lives. The reason why the Party breaks links between the past from the present is clear. Therefore, citizens will fail to remember their individual identities from the past, and way of life was far better than is it now. “Oceania” lacks diversity, all their citizens are thought to be like emotionless robots. They all live in the same style apartment buildings, wear plain clothes, and eat stale food, everyone has to be uniform. This uniformity causes their citizens to act how they are told to which is the reason for their uniqueness and lack of personal identity. All over Oceania are posters reminding their citizens “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING [THEM]” ( ). This is the ‘Party's’ way of telling citizens there is never a time they can be alone or be by themselves. They always have to act in accordance to how the party expects them to. To make sure of this, the government is constantly monitoring their citizen via ‘telescreens’ that are found in every room. Big Brothers obsession of complete control leads to the destruction of individual's