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Commentary On Orwell'S 1984
Essays regarding telescreen 1984
Commentary On Orwell'S 1984
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Connor Zundel Mrs. Monzel English 14 August 2014 1. Title: 1984 Author: George Orwell Genre: Fiction 2. In George Orwell’s 1984, a man named Winston Smith, whom is an Outer Party member lives in Oceania and is constantly being watched by telescreens and the Thought Police, and is strictly controlled by Big Brother and the Inner Party. In the beginning, Winston feels disgusted by the Party and is sick of the tight control. At this time, Winston goes and purchases a diary to write about his thoughts towards Big Brother. One day while working at the Ministry of Truth, the branch of the government responsible for production of information, he runs into a pretty dark-haired girl staring at him. Soon after, thinking that she is involved in the …show more content…
As a result of this, the two begin a secret relationship, knowing that they will most likely get caught and imprisoned sooner or later, and they realize they share the same thoughts about the Inner Party and express great hate towards it. Then one day Winston receives an important message from O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party, who tells Winston and Julia that he also expresses great hatred toward the Party and is apart of the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is an organization supposedly founded by Emmanuel Goldstein, and consists of people against the Party and who eventually wants to attack them. Winston and Julia soon become members of the Brotherhood after reading, Emmanuel Goldstein’s book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Unexpectedly while Winston is reading the book soldiers from the Party crash into the room and capture the two. Winston and Julia get split from each other and taken to the Ministry of Love, where they are punished and abused. Winston frequently has to visit Room 101 where he is punished and also attacked by rats. Winston and Julia finally get …show more content…
Winston tried to stay away from the telescreens “by sitting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so far as sight went.”(6) By doing this the telescreen wouldn't be able to watch what Winston was doing and therefore he could write in his diary and express hate towards Big Brother. Several times throughout the novel when Winston is talking to O’Brien, he mentions “the place where there is no darkness.”(103). When O’Brien says this he is referring to a dark prison cell with no lights, where Winston eventually goes before getting brainwashed. 8. In the novel, the reader constantly come across the slogan of the Party which is “War is Peace Freedom is Slavery Ignorance is Strength”(4) This is very significant because the slogan weakens the people’s mind and makes them easier to control, and goes with the entire novels theme and having a dangerous totalitarian government. Another very important quote in the novel is said twice and gives the Party an advantage to controlling the people. The quote is “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.(248) This is very important because the Party can change history and provide false information to the people, and then with this they can very easily control the
...vages in the book. As a whole both quotes support the governments control of Farenheit 451's society behind the scenes, which is mentioned constantly through irony, contributing to the theme as a whole.
He purchased a small journal from a shop and began to write in it out of view of the telescreen in his house, which allows anything in front of it to potentially be seen or heard. At first he had some difficulties as he could only manage to write jumbles of some of his memories, but then he began to write things like “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER (Orwell, page 18).” He later had an encounter with one of his fellow coworkers, O’Brien, which got him thinking that there might be others out in the world who see things the way he does, including O’Brien himself. Winston eventually decides that his diary will become a sort of letter to O’Brien, and to a future or past where things might have been different. In these diary entries he wrote things such as, “To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone—to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone…(Orwell, page 28).” This refers to how citizens think and act the same and previous events are not written as they happened, but altered to Big Brother’s benefit. He also wrote, “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death (Orwell, page 28).” This can be further explained by Winston’s previous thought, “The consequences of every act are included in the act itself (Orwell, page 28).” Winston
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.
Big Brother - Big Brother is the enigmatic dictator of Oceania. In the society that Orwell describes, everyone is under complete surveillance by the authorities. The people are constantly reminded of this by the phrase "Big Brother is watching you", which is the core "truth" of the propaganda system in this state. In the novel, it is unclear if Big Brother is a man or an image crafted by the Party. In a book supposedly written by the rebel Emmanuel Goldstein, it is stated that nobody has ever seen Big Brother. His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence.
In the beginning of the book, Winston has some fear of the party. Throughout the book, he commits numerous crimes ranging from committing thought crime, purchasing a diary and writing in it away from the view of the telescreen, sneaking away to meet Julia, reading Goldstein’s book, and even going to O’Brien’s house. All of these are against the law which shows Winston’s lack of fear for the Party. One way Winston shows that he has very little fear for the Party is when he gets a day off from work just to go see his love, Julia, which is shown in the quote: “Finally both of them managed to secure a free afternoon on the same
The novel and the movie portray how life or the future would look like if the government had absolute and complete control over citizen’s lives. They picture life under the government control in detail by describing everyday life of two men.
Book One uncovered how the government attempted to restrict any kind of expression to gain absolute control, but there are still strains of people who were unwilling to be subordinate to it’s power, such as Winston. Im the first few chapters, Winston, an seemingly ordinary worker in the Records Department took his first step of rebellion by writing in a diary. Just this simple act of writing your thoughts into a book could be dangerous, because it would generate individual thoughts. It was very true too as seen in this quote “ His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large neat capitals- DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER ” Unknowingly, he had written this down, and this was a thoughtcrime of high caliber. Even if he had tried to stop himself, his inner thoughts couldn’t help but want to defy the government. The party had destroyed all records of the past and altered...
The arguments of the three men triggered something in Winston’s mind. As though a switch was flipped a memory began to come back to the surface of his thoughts. He was emerging his apartment building into a street ripe with tension. Winston was in a building he did not recognize with his sister nearby him, and his parents currently out of sight. Winston seemed to be in an apartment, but a different one form his other memories. This apartment was cleaner and bigger, as though it was truly meant to accommodate more than just two small children and his small mother. The environment was tense and dread hung in the air as Winston remembered that familiar feeling of hunger, twisting in his gut.
In 1984, George Orwell repeatedly presents the government’s slogan “War is Peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength” (3). The significance
In this case, the government has to use severe actions to ensure they will never act in this way again. Winston Smith, is a minor member of the ruling Party and is aware of some of these extreme tactics. Since Winston is not completely brainwashed by the propaganda like all the other citizens, he hates Big Brother passionately. Winston is one of the only who realize that Big Brother is wiping individual identity and is forcing collective identity. He is “conscious of [his] own identity”(40-41) . Winston continues to hold onto the concept of an independent external reality by constantly referring to his own existence. Aware of being watched, Winston still writes “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER”(21) in his diary. Winston believes whether he writes in his diary or not, it is all the same because the Thought Police will get him either way. Orwell uses this as a foreshadow for Winston's capture later on in the novel. Fed up with the Party, Winston seeks out a man named O’Brien, who he believes is a member of the ‘Brotherhood’, a group of anti-Party rebels. When Winston is arrested for thought crime by his landlord, Mr.Charrington, who is a member of the Thought Police. Big Brother takes Winston to a dark holding cell, to use their extreme torture strategy to erase any signs of personal identity. Winston's torturer is O’Brien, the man he thought to be apart of the brotherhood. Winston asks
Everyone has a refuge where they feel free. A place where they can relax,let all of their troubles from the world flow away and for a brief moment each day, truly be themselves. These refuges or safe places come in all kinds of shapes and forms, mostly physical places, like rooms. In 1984 by George Orwell, the room above Mr. Charrington’s shop is seen as a major, plot impacting setting for the story and its’ characters, specifically Protagonist Winston. The room progresses along with Winston in the story and becomes a main factor in his battle for freedom from the party. Throughout 1984, Orwell develops the room above Mr. Charrington's shop to show its’ significance for Winston and highlight the true meaning of the story for the reader.
George Orwell uses Winston to represent truth in a deceptive world in his novel 1984. In Oceania, Big Brother is the omnipotent and all powerful leader. Everything the government dictates is unquestionably true, regardless of prior knowledge. Even thinking of ideas that go against Big Brother’s regime, or thoughtcrime, is punishable by death. Winston serves as the dystopian hero, longing for freedom and change. Orwell uses Winston to emphasize the importance of individual freedoms, as they give us the ability to fulfillingly lead our respective lives.
Psychological manipulation the Party uses on the citizens is one of the first themes Orwell exposes in this dystopian society. The Party maintains this manipulation by constantly overwhelming citizens with useless information and propaganda. And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested. (Orwell 82) Winston Smith, the protagonist, is having a frustrating conversation with an old man about life before the Revolution.
He broke at the end and ends up loving Big Brother but even though this was due to because of O 'Brien 's torture and mind control, he still failed to fight back against Big Brother and the party and eventually betrayed what he believed.“Which do you wish : to persuade me that you see five, or you really see them? Really to see them”(Orwell 251). This showed that Winston did infact double think, showing how he gave him to O’brians torture and he was slowly breaking down to what he truly believes in. He always knew that this would be the outcome because of all of the diary entries he did, conversations with Julia and his observations of Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford. “Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don 't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones, Not me! Julia! Not me! “ (Orwell 286).
In conclusion, through Orwell’s uses of literary devices to imagine the abuse of power and living under a totalitarian government. Also to understand the theme of an indestructible totalitarian government throughout the novel. Orwell creates a different and a new world where there is limitation of freedom, expressing feelings towards others, and human qualities.