Theme Of Irony In 1984

In the novel 1984 by Orwell, an extremely controlling totalitarian government called The Party, rules the society. They have introduced Telescreens which monitor your every movement, conversations and any other action. The citizens of Oceania, located on Air Strip One, are psychologically manipulated to believe in the three main slogans of the party: ‘War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength’ (1948, Orwell). The citizens of Oceania are so brainwashed that they don’t question anything the party tells them or any new law they make. Thought crime occurs when someone does not fully agree and follow what the Party has said.

And yet- !” This particular quote made me frustrated. The proles have the capabilities to stand up against the party and rebel against them, yet they focus only on petty, small, insignificant matters. I wanted to shake these proles by the shoulder and tell them to wake up and realize that the Inner Party are exploiting and oppressing them. To me, the hardships and sufferings in their lives are brought about by themselves and their ignorance. As I read the novel, I felt troubled.

Humans, being a visually oriented species, lack objectivity in their actions and observations; two people could interpret any particular incident in countless ways. Joseph Conrad’s attitude towards imperialism in Heart of Darkness ignited a flame of controversy. Cedric Watts and Chinua Achebe, two prominent writers, took different sides on this seemingly endless debate; a debate originating from the “darkness”. In Watts’s Indirect Methods Convey Conrad’s Views of Imperialism, Watts argues that Conrad is an artistic anti-imperialist, subliminally conveying the “corruption and hypocrisy of imperialism” (Watts, p.1). Achebe interpreted Conrad’s intentions in a completely opposite manner compared to Watts; Achebe’s critique of Conrad’s novella – Conrad’s Racism – revolved around the imperialistic aspects of Conrad’s personnel, and the imperialistic-byproducts that were notable in Conrad’s novella.

These problems however, are exasperated by the society he lives in. 'Thought crime', punishable by death, goes so far as to prohibit freedom of thought, nevermind speech. The Party want their people to be simply hate machines, incapable of love or even original thought, it wants them to live by slogans instead of natural instinct .By the end of the first chapter Winston believes that what he is thinking and feeling will eventually get him killed, and by the middle of the book he takes to repeating the dogma "we are the dead". Right from the beginning we see this fatalist thinking in all Winston does, as if he lives his whole life under a self imposed death sentence. At times it seems he actually does know he will be caught and has just trained his mind to accept this as inevitable.

Add into the equation his treating of foreign terrorists as common criminals and a Congress that long ago abdicated its responsibilities of war, peace and border security; and we have a country sinking into an abyss that may never again rise to the world prominence and national security we have for so long taken for granted. Americans are no longer secure within our own borders, and our leaders are doing nothing to remedy the circumstances; rather, they are doing everything in a reactive, politically correct manner that is causing greater damage. Congress allows the President to write his own laws while they shrug with their indifference. It is utterly essential that we unite, coordinate, and network with conservatives across this great land. Every group regardless of size, location, name or political party affiliation, must come together as one conservative voice at ... ... middle of paper ... ...t do is organize the turnout at the polls.

Vladimir Nabokov once said “It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail”. This quote connects to the themes of both 1984 and Brave New World. 1984 and Brave New World are both books about a totalitarian ran state. This also shows that neither of these novels care if there are lives taken as long as the world is perfect and everything is the same. Both governments in 1984 and Brave New World express how government control negatively impacts the lives of everyone.

Deceit in 1984 extends beyond uttering a statement that is untrue. Rather, it is a blend of uncertainty and manipulation at the hand of the state that annihilates all possibility of resistance. This wholesale quelling of the potential of dissent often involves the destruction of one’s personality and cognitive ability at the hands of the Ministry of Love and the destruction of the mutual trust needed in a society to pursue any objective at the hands of the Secret Police. Without any underlying unity and a real, unadulterated perspective on how the world around them happens, the people are lulled into a sense of complacency and thus have little desire to seek or imagine another way of life outside of the tyranny of Big Brother.

1984 written by George Orwell can be described as one of the most dramatic and realistic displays of writing, presenting the jeopardy of one's lives and society through an oppressive government. The book forces the audience to face their own thoughts that make them see themselves in Smith's position. Orwell purposefully creates such a dystopia where there is no hope and all freedoms are nonexistent in order to show how different a government can be if it is allowed to. The novel was written following World War II, at the start of the Cold War and before major media advancements. Orwells prediction of totalitarian governments is surprisingly true even in America as the government is able to monitor anyone anywhere.

But he is not the same person, just a hollow shell. Winston had once said in the novel that if he could die hating Big Brother, then he would have won. But when Winston is finally killed, the only thing he can think is that he love... ... middle of paper ... ...ten path in search of a greater truth. The novel also caused myself to reflect upon how important it was that such tyrannical dictators such as Hitler have been stopped, sometimes with great costs, from making life unbearable. Reading this novel gave me a great sense of hope for human kind, as we have been able to keep totalitarian movements under control.

1984, by George Orwell, is a novel that is ultimately about a totalitarian form of government and it's negative aspects that it imposes on society. The readers clearly see that George Orwell opposes this form of government because it limits not only freedoms, but the idea of freedom itself. The idea of pure freedom is shattered as we see the protagonist's mission to overthrow Big Brother fail. Big Brother may have not even been real. However, the fear that this imaginery person/ organization imposed on society was real.