The book “1984” written by George Orwell shows the life of an average person in a totalitarian state. The book explains the problems and dangers of a totalitarian government (Big Brother) staying in control and holding power over people. For a totalitarian government, especially in this novel to remain in control over their citizens, they need to get into the heads of everyone by “brainwashing” them. Big Brother successfully achieved that by manipulating the English language, rewriting world history, and by constantly reminding everyone that the government is watching them.
Language allows people to freely express what they think and feel. However Freedom of speech is something Big Brother despises. If there is freedom of speech anyone can express what they feel about the government. In the novel, George Orwell shows how Big Brother invents “Newspeak”, a dulled down version of the English language. When Syme was talking to Winston he stated “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” Pg.49 The main purpose of Newspeak is so no one will be capable of conceptualizing or able to question the power of Big Brother. Another statement Syme made to Winston is "By 2050, earlier, probably – all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron – they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be.” Pg.50 Changing the English language is like mind control because now no one will have the phy...
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...osest are against them. If person has no one to trust except the government, no wonder why Big Brother was influential over the minds of their citizens.
For Big Brother to have complete control over the minds their citizens they just have to keep doing what they are doing. When language is forcefully changed people can’t express themselves. When history has been rewritten, people only have the government to trust and to turn to for answers. When someone is always under surveillance by the government, people will feel like they may be doing something wrong, which produces anxiety. With all these controlling tactics Big Brother used is why they have such control over a population. If Big Brother did not control a population this way, then they would not be in power because citizens would know that what they are doing is inhumane and rebellions would over throw them.
“"Propaganda is as powerful as heroin, it surreptitiously dissolves all capacity to think” by Gil Courtemanche connects to the sad fact of using propaganda as a deadly weapon to feed people with false information and stop them from thinking. George Orwell’s novel, 1984, describes a totalitarian dystopian society where the Party is constantly brainwashing its citizens with information that is beneficial to its own rights. On the opposite side, people are working for the party just like dominated slaves for their masters without knowing what’s going on. But, in order for the party to achieve this goal, they have to use different techniques of propaganda in Oceania to create fear for people so that they can obey the rules. The use of propaganda in the society of 1984 takes away freedom from individuals because of the absence of privacy, thinking and making decisions.
Imagine the world we are living in today, now imagine a world where we are told who to marry, where to work, who to hate and not to love. It is hard to imagine right, some people even today are living in the world actually have governments that are controlling their everyday life. In literature many writers have given us a view of how life may be like if our rights as citizen and our rights simply as human beings. One day the government may actually find a way to control and brainwash people into beings with no emotions like they have in the book 1984 where they express only hate, because that’s what they have been taught by the party.
The novel, 1984, written by George Orwell, gives readers an insight to a possible frightening future where one government has complete and definite control of the people. But “control” might not be the term to describe such a rule. The Party dominates every aspect of life. There is not a single thing that is not under the Party’s rule. Feelings, history, language, statistics, and even human nature are submissive to the Party. They corrupt the mind so much that there is no longer a line that separates truth from a lie. Slogans are repeated through telescreens on a daily basis so the people are gradually forced to believe in illogical statements. Upon first glance, it may seem that a 1984 society is not even imaginable in the world we live in currently. But is it really logical to make such an assumption so quickly? Do we know that what we see on the news and read in our history textbooks is completely accurate? The Internet is one of the most powerful technologies our world has, consisting of an insurmountable amount of information, which is not always what it seems. Ultimately, there are so many things that we do not know, some of which is being held a secret from us. Modern day society shockingly has evidence of a transformation into a menacing 1984 society because of similar government actions and abuse of advanced technology.
It is the way of life in this age, to search the internet for leisure, research and general amusement. When you are not able to communicate with someone face to face, you pick up the phone. When you venture out of your house for any reason and into populated areas, you are recorded by businesses, photographed by red light cameras, and recorded by traffic cameras. The government has the capacity to watch all of this use. Last year, Edward Snowden’s leaked documents proved it that Big Brother is indeed watching. (Orwell 1)
...ailed as a system of government. Perhaps in Orwell's socialist commentary he failed to take notice of the trends being embraced by capitalism. Behavioral psychology states that reward is a far greater incentive than punishment is a deterrent. In society today thought control is much more pleasant, subtle, and diverse than it was in Orwell's vision.The media, television, the internet, computer games, and movies serve to indoctrinate us into the norms of society in a way which is much more complex than Big Brother's propaganda. We are depoliticized, kept away from the real issues by superficial diversions, much like the proles. Big Brother may not exist, but his name is everywhere. Perhaps Aldus Huxley's Brave New World would have better served as a predictor of modern society's fall. Orwell predicted that the truth would be concealed and that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley thought that the truth would be drowned in irrelevance and that what we love will ruin us. Orwell's political commentary and philosophical issues are still relevant, but we live in a world far more complex than he could have ever predicted. Big Brother isn't watching. He doesn't need to. We're watching him.
In the book “1984” by George Orwell, the book deals with government power. In the book, it debates about how the power of the government affected the people. Too much power by the state creates a dystopian world where everyone is forced to follow the government’s rules.
...Ministry of Love, once said, “The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power” (Orwell____). All Big Brother wants is a continuous flow of power, and they will stop at nothing to get it; even if it means wiping out all the identity and diversity in the millions of people in Oceania.
Big Brother uses manipulation of language in order to limit expression. If one can't express feelings through language or literature, then self-expression is suppressed. In 1984, “Big Brother” wished to eliminate “Oldspeak” or standard English with Newspeak, which is a much diluted and simplified version. If the terminology isn't there, then the result would impact all literature that the common man comprehends. That being stated, people wouldn’t be capable of rebellion since they don't know what it is.
In 1984, George Orwell presents an overly controlled society that is run by Big Brother. The protagonist, Winston, attempts to “stay human” in the face of a dehumanizing, totalitarian regime. Big Brother possesses so much control over these people that even the most natural thoughts such as love and sex are considered taboo and are punishable. Big Brother has taken this society and turned each individual against one another. Parents distrust their own offspring, husband and wife turn on one another, and some people turn on their own selves entirely. The people of Oceania become brainwashed by Big Brother. Punishment for any uprising rebellions is punishable harshly.
The citizens are brainwashed into thinking that everything the government does is for the better of the citizens and society as a whole. Big Brother said that the chocolate rations went up even though they didn’t change. Also, they said that they wanted to make the English language shorter to help save time and make it easier to speak. The real reason is to make the citizens less educated so they cannot figure out what the party is really up to. For example, while Syme is talking to Winston he says, “’you think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words-scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone’” (Orwell 51). The job that Winston’s companion, Syme was given a job to cut the dictionary lots of words instead of adding to them. Syme is
...t came out, and now there are times that I believe Orwell was right. We have not been completely overrun by the government, but there are instances that we might have to fear Big Brother in our own society. Oppression is not something I have faced in my lifetime, but fear of what could be is also its own form of oppression.
1984, a novel by George Orwell, represents a dystopian society in which the people of Oceania are surveilled by the government almost all the time and have no freedoms. Today, citizens of the United States and other countries are being watched in a similar way. Though different technological and personal ways of keeping watch on society than 1984, today’s government is also able to monitor most aspects of the people’s life. 1984 might be a dystopian society, but today’s conditions seem to be moving towards that controlling state, where the citizens are surveilled by the government at all times. The 1984 community provided many ways to surveill its citizens, one being The Thought Police.
Big Brother is watching you (Orwell 3). Why is Big Brother so concerned with the surveillance of its citizens? In 1984, the journey of one individual, Winston Smith, is narrated. His life characterizes the recklessness and deprivation of totalitarianism governments have on not only individuals but communities by revealing the transformation of one monopolizing power to create a society of mindless, controlled civilians.... ...
believe they can take down “Big Brother”, a system implemented to control the populace, by
... Therefore, Big Brother’s regime and Stalin’s regime are similar. In each scenario, each party implements a psychological and physical manipulation of society through the control of information and language with the help of technology. George Orwell’s 1984 psychologically and physically manipulate society through the control of language and information. The Party controls all the activities and all the information reaching the people.