The Trials and Tribulations of 1984

749 Words2 Pages

In the age of Big Brother, hiding the truth was the status-quo. One of its slogans was “Who controls the past, controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.” This illustrated the deceitfulness of the government. Big Brother was constantly altering the truth to exalt the Party’s accomplishments and eradicate the Party’s errors. The Party placed this enormous responsibility in the capable hands of the Ministry of Truth. However, where there is deception there is always an opposition to the deception namely the Brotherhood. Goldstein was the leader of the Brotherhood and undermined Big Brother’s dogma. In the employment of the Ministry of Truth was Winston Smith, who after several years of servitude was a disgruntled employee because of the constant altering of documents for the Party’s benefit. Winston sought to commit revenge on his employer and Big Brother by maintaining an illegal journal where he writes to the future by warning them of the dangers that lurk in his society. To express his anger Winston scribbled “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” repeatedly on several of the pages. By doing so, he committed one of the most treacherous crimes conceivable, thoughtcrime. Winston knew what followed traitors, he acknowledged that “thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death”. Winston knew the Thought Police would come for him but he did not know how or when they would apprehend him. The television in his own home was an instrument of the Thought Police, an agent of the Party that persecuted thought criminals. Between the time Winston first committed thoughtcrime until the time he was apprehended, he developed a relationship with one of his fellow comrades named Julia. Julia, a young party member who harbored r... ... middle of paper ... ...e both Julia and Winston purged from the planet, but O’Brien went a step further and appeared to turn off the television in his house tricking Winston into believing that they could speak freely. Winston then took this liberty and voiced his disapproval of the Party. Given that O’Brien is an undercover agent of the Party, he meets Winston after he has been apprehended and since O’Brien befriended Winston he was placed in charge of breaking him. Once Winston claimed that he was an enemy of Big Brother, he had to be re-shaped to conform to society’s rules and to love Big Brother. The process that followed consisted of breaking their spirits through manipulating their fears. The revolutionary attempt was terminated by Big Brother, but it was one-step in the liberation of the people of Oceania. Works cited Orwell, George. 1984. New York. Signet Classics. 1949

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