Fear is an emotion brought on by danger, evil, or pain. Sometimes the threat is real and sometimes it can be imagined. A person who is walking through a dark alley in the middle of the night may experience fear because they do not know whether or not it is safe to continue on. The fear of the unknown is also expressed in 1984, The Lottery, and Harrison Bergeron. The government in 1984 uses fear to control the masses. They set strict rules but leave a level of life completely unknown. The Party uses the people’s easygoing, trusting personalities to their advantages. In Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, the government holds an annual meeting where names are drawn and someone is toned to death. Not knowing through the whole process who will be chosen is a way for the government to instill fear in the people. Shirley Jackson used the fear of the unknown just as George Orwell did. In Harrison Bergeron people are afraid of what will happen if they disobey when putting Harrison’s case into consideration. They also do not know what the government does not want them to know because of their handicap. Not being able to finish a complete thought may bring the fear of the unknown as well. The government controls the masses using fear to keep total control over everything in their society, and in each story, Orwell, Jackson, and Vonnegut all use the idea of fear of the unknown to further control the people.
George Orwell and Shirley Jackson create a government in both stories in which their main tool to control the masses, is fear. In 1984 the Party uses telescreens to keep an eye on everything that the community does. The telescreen has no way of being turned off, the screen may be darkened but there is no way of completely shutting it off. Be...
... middle of paper ...
... only keep the population down, but to also allow the government to make the people fearful and easy to control. In Harrison Bergeron handicaps are used to make everyone alike, but when Harrison rips his off his body, the people become afraid of the consequences if they did the same. The fear of the unknown is a regular theme throughout each story and also plays a role in today’s society. An emotion such as fear is a genuine feeling and people make rash decisions when afraid. It is up to the government to either make them less fearful or to take full advantage of them and gain control over society.
Works Cited
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery”. New York City: The New Yorker, 1948. Print.
Orwell, George. 1984. New York City: New American Library, 1949. Print.
Vonnegut, Kurt. “Harrison Bergeron”. New York City: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science
Fiction, 1961. Print
Imagine being watched by your own government every single second of the day with not even the bathroom, bedroom, kitchen and all the above to yourself. George Orwell’s 1984 is based on a totalitarian government where the party has complete access over the citizens thoughts to the point where anything they think they can access it, and control over the citizens actions, in a sense that they cannot perform what they really want to or else Big Brother, which is the name of the government in the book 1984, will “take matters into their own hands.” No one acts the same when they are being watched, as they do when they are completely alone.
In Harrison Bergeron story, the people are made equal by debilitating the ones who seem to have higher abilities and th...
The most important theme that we can easily notice in the story is the lack of freedom, which is extremely significant to the American ideals, and Harrison demonstrates it as his escapes from jail, remove his handicaps, and influence others around him. In order to have a completely equal society in Harrison Bergeron’s world, people cannot choose what they want to take part in or what they are good at because if a person is above average in anything, even appearance, they are handicapped. These brain and body devices are implanted in an effort to make everyone equal. However, instead of raising everyone up to the better level, the government chooses instead to lower people to the lowest common level of human thought and action, which means that people with beautiful faces wear masks. Also, people with above average intelligence wear a device that gives a soul-shattering piercing noise directly into the ear to destroy any train of thought. Larger and stronger people have bags of buckshot padlocked a...
Imagine an overbearing government with a tremendous amount of control over its citizens; it sounds like a theme taken out of a traditional science fiction novel, but this was the reality of the countries that were fighting in WWII. Although Vonnegut did not consciously attack governments in his novel Slaughterhouse- five, he brutally satirized the concept of overbearing governments in his two short stories. In “Harrison Bergeron,” the government controls everyone’s senses using handicaps. The world government in “Harrison Bergeron” does not allow its citizens to have advantage over one another; therefore, the government enforces handicaps on the perfect citizens in order to make everyone equal. Vonnegut begins the story like this, “THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before G...
In the dystopian text, 1984, by George Orwell the reader is exposed to an environment where the government or ‘party’ exerts complete control over the public. They maintain this power through the use of technology and depriving the public of any privacy or personal opinions. Throughout the novel we experience different character’s views and uses of technology; O’Brien’s use of technology to establish control, Charington use of technology to prevent rebellion against the party and Winston and Julia’s avoidance of technology to try to establish their own lives, away from the control of the government.
The laws that are set in 2081 which were originally put in place to eliminate opposition and create total equality, but results in an opposing outcome which leads to the elimination of an environment with freedom or individual indentity.Its ironic that equality is seen as equality ;The government uses propaganda to brainwash and manipulate the citizens living under the government at the time.Harrisons father George Bergeron is one out of the many citizens that has a mental handicap device implanted in his head.A radio is used to disrupt and prevent pro-longed thought.Heavy metal weights are strapped around Georges neck leaving him incapable of doing any task that wil...
This impressive invention has done this without surrender to government control. Vonnegut reveals in both stories how the government has power on mostly everything in both societies, and how each story was demanded to follow the government rules, or else they die. Showcasing how at the beginning of both of the stories the author mentions how the society is perfect. Vonnegut states “ and everybody was finally equal. They weren't equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way.” (Vonnegut, H.B, 1) This line discloses how our society evolves in "Harrison Bergeron," people are greatly affected by the role of the government. The society believes in and depends on complete equality amongst all of the people. To accomplish this, people must use handicaps. If a person is above average in intelligence, they are forced to have sounds played loudly in their ears frequently to disrupt their thoughts. If a person is beautiful, they have to wear ugly masks. If a person is strong or fast, they have to wear weighted bags to counteract their strength. The goal of this is to make everyone feel equal and so that no one would feel inferior or superior. Overall, this change takes away everything that made a person an individual. It makes it so that what once could
“Harrison Bergeron” is a story about Big Government forcing equality on citizens by the use of handicaps; in doing so they hold everyone back from their fullest potential. The year 2081 is oppressive to say the least; people are punished for being above average in intelligence, beauty, physical abilities or any variety of capabilities. No one is supposed to be more attractive, stronger, more intelligent or quicker than anyone else. The quest for egalitarianism is faulty; people who are born gifted are hindered by ridiculous weight bags, glasses to cause blindness and headaches, ear radios that send nerve racking noises every twenty seconds courtesy of a government transmitter and hideous masks are a few objects implemented to make everyone equal. The government, in trying to even the playing field to give everyone the same, fair chance, handicapped the gifted far beyond the point of making them equal to the average citizen. In the story “Harrson Burgeron,” Hazel is developed primarily through her average intelligence, limited imagination, and empathy toward her husband as well as others to suggest the central idea that a totalitarianism government leads to the degradation of one’s humanity.
Ultimately, common ideas found in the novel 1984, totalitarianism, surveillance, and lack of privacy are also ubiquitous in modern society and government. Big Brother and modern day government have been able to control its citizens through surveillance equipment, and fear all for a little more power. There is much to learn from such an undesirable form of society much like the one of Oceania in 1984. Examining Big Brother government closely, alarming connections can be made to real-world government actions in the United States and the cruel world within Orwell's book.
Vonnegut uses Harrison in this short story to display that remarkable people will protest, rebel, and work against the handicaps until this brutal system is abolished. He writes, “Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds,” (Vonnegut, 5). Due to the mandated handicaps that prevent the citizens from becoming their aspirations or reaching their full potential, no competition is permitted. Without competition in any shape or form, there can be no improvement in any area of life. In this dystopia where individual disputes are non-existent because people have stopped competing with each other and cannot think for themselves, the result is a stagnant, deadpan society where universal normality is valued above all else. All innovation that requires individual thought will be halted, all critical thinking will end, and the economy will eventually collapse due to the lack of improvement. Vonnegut’s form of equality where everyone is the same will never succeed in any way because it demoralizes and dispirits the human race and stops all creativity and originality. Vonnegut wrote this story to show readers that all people should not be equal, but rather, individual strengths and weaknesses making
Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell, is a superb novel with outstanding themes. One of the most prominent themes found in this novel is psychological manipulation. Citizens in this society are subject to ever present signs declaring “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” (Orwell 1). Along with psychological manipulation, physical control takes place. The Party not only controls what people in Oceania think, but what they do as well. Technology is another important theme. Without the constant telescreens, microphones, and computers, the Party would be all but powerless. Big Brother is the main figure of the Party. The main symbol that drives these themes is the telescreens. It is representative of the party always watching and controlling everyone at all times.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” former United States of America president Franklin D. Roosevelt once stated. This statement is completely false according to the various characters in the novel The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. The major fears that change the characters in the novel include Sophie Wender acting un-brave and cautious because someone finds out about her deviation, Joseph Storm who is treating his son, David, cruelly because he asks something of Satan, and Emily Storm who goes as far as calling her niece a monster because she is afraid. Fear of the unknown and fear of things that are different can make people act in ways they normally would not.
It is feasible that in the future machines may be more powerful than man, to such an extent that machines control mankind, mechanizing human life. This is seen in Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano, a post-World War III society in which machines are more powerful than mankind (Ponniah 229).The Technology in 1984, by George Orwell, has a similar influence. 1984 portrays a totalitarian society, powered by the icon of Big Brother. Big Brother and his Party use many methods to keep their citizens suppressed and to give them false hopes, some of which include Thought Police and technology. One such form of technology in 1984 is the telescreen –an instrument used mainly for issuing propaganda and observing citizens. Propaganda is directed at the Party members’ emotions of safety; while the close scrutiny of the telescreen is aimed at the Party members’ sense of fear. In George Orwell’s 1984, citizens are programmed, by the Party, into instinctively subjecting themselves to Big Brother through the different uses of telescreens.
Totalitarianism is one of the main themes in 1984. In WWII Europe, Oceania became the ruling power with the so called “Party” ruling everybody and have the “Big Brother” at its head. Some examples of totalitarianism is how they make people workout, they put tele-screens everywhere to monitor the peoples actions, also they refuse to allow any sexual intercourse outside of marriage. “Winston kept his back turned to the tele-screen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing” (Book 1, Chapter 1). This quote represents how fearful Winston is that he ...
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel, the government blocks almost all forms of self-expression in order to assert its authority over the people. Those within the society who show signs of defiance against the set rules, even those who act unwillingly, are seen as a threat to the success of the regime are wiped from existence. In Orwell’s 1984, the government uses different forms of propaganda and brainwashing to achieve complete control of society for their own personal benefit.