The Role Of War In George Orwell's '1984'

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War is the distraction, control is the goal. 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. Say what you want about fear, but it’s almost always a sure-fire way to control people. And war is a great way to make people afraid. Fear blurs out everything but the absolutely necessary, so misery is not as prevalent as it would be in a time of peace. It also drives people to look for a leader to make their decisions for them, someone who seems to know better. “The consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing over of all power to a small cast seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.” (1984, Orwell, page 200)The people are so distracted by the war and how afraid they are it makes it easy for the party to remain in control. …show more content…

“A hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance” (198). And to have poverty and ignorance, you need a shortage of the necessary supplies. “Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.”(198) If the entire population somehow became wealthy and intelligent while the war still raged, they would 1: realize the war only serves to make them miserable and 2: realize the party is making the war, and therefore is, by proxy, making them miserable in yet another way. But since the war eats up all of the products of the people’s labour, that won’t ever happen. War distracts the people from forming anti-party ideas, and leaves The Party to continue to wage

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