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An essay about the book george orwell in 1984
Psychoanalytic view of 1984 orwell
The psychology of totalitarianism in orwell's 1984
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Imagine everything you know being a lie, if every belief you’ve ever had was suddenly changed. The Party is in a position of such power, that they can force anyone to follow their ideas in order to ensure your safety. They are capable of portraying any information in a such way that it will benefit them and their stigma. In George Orwell’s novel, 1984 , the Party uses fear and control not only for methods of torture but a way to manipulate the minds of people all across Oceania.
The Party uses their overarching power in their favor by changing the way people think about certain ideas. The Party has the belief that staying in a war will be the only way to maintain peace in Oceania. They put up the phrase “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength “ all over in order to instill
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It is also a way to introduce doublethink to the people. Doublethink is a way for the Party to give the people two completely contradictory statements that they are supposed to believe as true. It gives them a sense of power in a way that they can control the beliefs of general population. According to the Party, there is no external reality and no one should be thinking. They’ll propose to you an absurd idea and force you to believe it. Like when Winston “picked up the children’s history book… as though some force was pressing down upon you- something that penetrated inside your skull… persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses. In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it”(Orwell 80). They have the ability to persuade you to follow any order they have. And when it boils down to it, they have absolute control of not only Oceania as a country, but the minds of every citizen as well. Human feelings in Oceania are forbidden and the act of
Eventually, the lack of privacy and freedom leads to a suppression of people’s thinking. In 1984, people’s thinking was controlled by lies, invented stories and false information. The stories of the past are all altered and the information is constantly changing every day without any sign of change. The party uses propaganda as a deadly weapon to control its citizens’ minds.
The Party and its leader Big Brother play the role of authority in 1984. The Party is always watching the citizens of the Republic of Oceania. This is exemplified in the fact that the government has telescreens through which they can watch you wherever you are set up almost everywhere. Even in the countryside where there are no telescreens, the Party can monitor its citizens through hidden microphones disguised as flowers. The Thought Police are capable of spying on your thoughts at anytime, and can arrest or even kill you on a whim. Not only does the Thought Police find and hunt down felons, but it also scares others into being good citizens. The Party strives to eliminate more and more words from people’s vocabularies. Thus, the Party can destroy any possibilities of revolutions and conspiracies against itself. Its ultimate goal is to reduce the language to only one word, eliminating thought of any kind. The Party makes people believe that it is good and right in its actions through the Ministry of Truth and through the slogans printed on the Ministry of Truth:...
In 1984, the manipulation of the body is an effective practice that oppresses a population. The Party maintains absolute control over Oceania’s citizens by manipulating their physical state to better repress them. This leads to them being more about their own pain and physical well being, thus distracting them from the suffering that is happening in the world around them, and distracting them from thought of rebellion. The Party uses physical manipulation via overworking them to exhaustion and torture methods.The Party keeps their citizens in a state of exhaustion as they are easier to control, as the narrator explains while Winston works in the Ministry of Truth:
Through showing different ways the Party exercises its supreme power, Orwell marginalizes the outer party. The Inner Party uses its power to attempt to control the thoughts of the outer party. Firstly, they keep the Outer Party (and the proles for this matter) uneducated when it comes to wars and other events Oceania is involved in, for example, the wars with Eastasia and Eurasia. Throughout the novel, the Party goes back and forth with whom they are at war with. Whether, they tell the citizens that they are against Eurasia or Eastasia, they claim to have been at war with that nation and only that nation.
“No one is free when others are oppressed” (www.civilfreedoms.org) said Aishah Shahidah Simmons who is a producer and a writer, probably not knowing the relationship between the quotation and George Orwell’s novel 1984. The quotation explains that when some people are being oppressed or denied of their right without any relevant reason, the remaining people are not free. Connecting the quotation to the novel it means that when Big Brother is oppressing someone from Oceania the other citizens of Oceania are not free. Big Brother misuse their power by denying the people of Oceania from their rights, they also use newspeak and non-written laws to suppress the people of Oceania and they use their power to change history and control information. Modern totalitarian leaders and Big Brother misuse their power to oppress people by denying them of their individual right. This is significant because every human is meant to be given their right without discrimination but when the leaders are denying
The Party employs slogans to convince the ignorant that what they want is what they already have. “WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, “ (Orwell 4). There is no desire for freedom, because they are told it is slavery. If freed, they would be unhappy and would not live the way in which they do. In doing so, society is to believe that war establishes peace and serenity. Just changing a few small items in history can alter human belief. By constantly feeding the people fraudulent information and hiding the truth, the Party can get the people to believe almost anything; eventually leading to complete dominance over the mind.
In 1984 however, the manipulation which takes place is much more prevalent in the modern world. 1984 features manipulation on a grand scale. Nearly everything that the citizens of Oceania know about The Party is quite possibly a lie fabricated by the government to keep the populous content and working hard. Production statistics, war reports, arrests, and all means of propaganda are all created to manipulate the people to keep them ingenuous to the injustice they face. This is much more present in modern society, as on a constant basis, some new corruption scandals are uncovered.
It is not an easy feat to control an entire population such as Oceania. They must monitor their people through the use of telescreens, microphones, and cameras 24 hours, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year, to prevent the spread of “false” information, that is not part of the party’s strategy. Not only do they monitor their people, they control the media, control their emotions, control their feelings, and they instil fear into the people; who do not conform to the Party’s beliefs. The people of Oceania believe that they will be taken, tortured, and/or vaporized by
Orwell took inspiration from the world around him when writing 1984. In 1937, Orwell arrived in Barcelona to fight General Franco’s fascist ways and joined a socialist group, P.O.U.N., but Russia wanted to use their own socialist views to fight against Franco. Russia then went on to denounce P.O.U.N. as a fascist supporting group (“Famous Authors: George Orwell: 1903-1950”). Orwell witnessed first hand how the government is able to distort the truth in order to gain power. Winston also witnessed the party claiming that they had created helicopters and then when Julia got to school the party claimed to create airplanes (Orwell 153).This is crucial because whoever controls the past also controls the future since they have the power to change both. From his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell gained a sense of the ineffectiveness
They are the ones that are represented as the workers. They work in the ministries and government. People usually think that the Inner Party is the big boss and controls everything but that is wrong, the Outer Party members are the ones who control everything. Winston works for the Ministry of Truth which is the ministry that controls the past history of Oceania, they rewrite the past. Making everybody think what Big Brother wants them to think. The Outer Party members don’t get everything that Inner Party members do. They get all their food in the rations that the government controls. Victory everything, Victory gin and Victory Cigarettes. Like the Inner Party, the Outer Party wears blue to distinguish them from not being an Inner Party
After all, in 1984 the masses are manipulated and ignorant to the point that they believe that ‘WAR IS PEACE’, ‘FREEDOM IS SLAVERY’, and ‘IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH’ which is the Party’s slogan. Throughout 1984,
“Ignorance is strength” is true considering the fact that the party is outnumbered by the rest of the population, especially the proles. The proles have the least amount of knowledge as to what is actually going on in their world, which is why the Party easily gets away with all of their manipulative tactics. Since the proles are disregarded from society, but more notably, are unbothered by the Party, they have no desire to rebel against the strict hierarchical structure imposed by Big Brother. The Party makes their own reality by holding the power to alter the past in whatever way they please and the people do not have the mindset to object. “But by far the more important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the Party." This explains why manipulation is crucial for the Party to stay in absolute power. They want the masses to believe what they are told in spite of what they might think otherwise. Doublethink is the most effective way the party manipulates their people to avoid free thinking. Doublehink is a practice that keeps individuals free of their own thoughts. This is how the Party gets away with all the lying they do in the Ministry of Truth. Through the propagandas and the Ministry of Truth, the Party also define what is true and what is false. O’Brien once said to Winston, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present
In George Orwell’s 1984, the strategies used by Oceania’s Political Party to achieve total control over the population are similar to the ones employed by Joseph Stalin during his reign. Indeed, the tactics used by Oceania’s Party truly depicts the brutal totalitarian society of Stalin’s Russia. In making a connection between Stalin’s Russia and Big Brothers’ Oceania, each Political Party implements a psychological and physical manipulation over society by controlling the information and the language with the help of technology.
In George Orwell’s 1984, The Party uses conflict as a tool to distract the people of Oceania from the misery of their own lives, and in doing so, they maintain control over the public. By using the by-products of conflict, like propaganda, ignorance, and fear, the party has come up with an undeniably brilliant plan for population control that could last for a long, long time.
Nineteen Eighty-Four was written in the past yet seems to show very interesting parallels to some of today’s societies. Orwell explains many issues prominent throughout the book in which his main characters attempt to overcome. He shows how surveillance can easily corrupt those in control and how those in control become corrupt by the amount of power. Those with power control the society and overpower all those below. The novel shows what could potentially happen to our current society if power ends up leading to corruption.