|
Themes The Power of Big Brother The sinister, mustachioed face symbolizing the Party's power is completely inescapable in George Orwell's parable of the future. When Winston Smith comes home to Victory Mansions, he feels the eyes of Big Brother on him thanks to posters on every landing in the stairwell. It is the same when he looks at a coin or cigarette packet. Each day, at the end of the Two Minutes Hate session directed at Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, all Party workers return to a state of calm when Big Brother appears on the giant telescreen, illustrating the near−hypnotic hold he exercises over the masses. It is just as Winston reads in Goldstein's The Theory of Oligarchic Collectivism: "[Big Brother's]function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt toward an individual than towards an organization." When Winston is arrested and separated from the corrupting influence of Julia, O'Brien strives to make the rebellious civil servant an empty vessel that will once again surrender to Big Brother's all−consuming love. And in the end, Winston gives in: "He loved Big Brother." Orwell uses this figurehead for tyranny to powerfully illustrate the effect totalitarian government can have on the human spirit. Freedom and Enslavement/Free Will Orwell’s 1984 is set in Oceania, a totalitarian state ruled by a god−like leader named Big Brother who completely controls the citizens down to their very thoughts. Anyone who thinks subversive thoughts can be turned in by spies or by Big Brother, who monitors them through highly sensitive telescreens. If someone does not have the proper facial expression, they are considered guilty of Facecrime, so all emotions must be extremely carefully guarded. It is even possible to commit Thoughtcrime by being overheard talking in one’s sleep, which Winston Smith fears will happen to him; it actually happens to his neighbor Tom Parson. Freedom exists only in the proletarian ghetto, where crime and hunger are commonplace. Winston feels he could not live in this ghetto, even though his life is almost as grim as that of the ghetto dwellers. The punishment for even minor crimes is severe, yet people occasionally choose to break the law. The Party knows that people instinctively want to have sex, form loving bonds, and think for themselves instead of accepting unquestioningly whatever the totalitarian government tells them. As long as people choose to exercise free will, the Party must be ever−vigilant against crime and make their punishments severe in order to remain in control. Appearances and Reality In totalitarian Oceania, it seems as if everyone is slavishly devoted to Big Brother and believes everything the government tells them. However, as we can understand from Winston’s thoughts, all is not as it seems. Some people secretly feel and believe differently from how they behave; of course, they are extremely careful not to betray themselves. Moreover, the Party is in control of all information and revises history, even yesterday’s history, to reflect their current version of events. Winston is very much aware of this, because it is his job in the inaccurately named Ministry of Truth to change the records of history. He cannot ignore what he remembers: Oceania was at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia yesterday, and not vice versa. If anyone else remembers differently, they certainly won’t say so. Only the old man, a powerless prole who lives on the street, speaks about what really happened in the past, but in short and irrelevant snippets about his personal experiences. It is Winston’s need to reconcile what he knows with the Party’s version of reality that leads to his downfall. The Party cannot allow people to have a perception of reality that is different from theirs. As Winston writes in his diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” Loyalty and Betrayal In order to remain all−powerful, the Party destroys loyalty between people: co−workers, friends, even family members. Children are encouraged to betray their parents to the state if they suspect them of Thoughtcrimes (thinking something that goes against the Party line). The Party has outlawed sex for pleasure and reduced marriage to an arrangement between a man and woman that exists only for procreation. Sexual urges must be repressed for fear they will lead to love, human connection, and personal loyalty, all of which threaten the Party. Winston believes that love like the love he and Julia share will eventually destroy the Party, but he underestimates the Party’s ability to destroy that love and loyalty. Winston and Julia both give in to torture and betray each other. When they are released, their love and loyalty to each other has been destroyed. Because the Party can easily detect Thoughtcrimes, people always act as if they are completely loyal to the Party. No one trusts anyone else completely. Winston makes fatal mistakes when he trusts O’Brien and Charrington, both of whom betray him. His misjudgment is almost understandable, given the subtle cues both give him to indicate that they are fellow subversives. But as it turns out, they are deliberately setting a trap for him and Julia. In the end, no one can be trusted. Utopia and Anti−Utopia 1984 is clearly an anti−utopian book. As O’Brien tells Winston, the world he and his comrades have created is “the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined.” Instead of being a society that is a triumph of human spirit and creativity, the society the Party has created is full of fear, torment, and treachery that will worsen over time. O’Brien gives Winston an image of the future: a boot stomping on a human face, forever and ever. Such a pessimistic vision of the future serves a purpose, as Orwell knew. He wrote 1984 as a warning in order to make people aware that this type of society could exist if trends such as jingoism, oppression of the working class, and the erosion of language that expresses the vastness of human experience continued. Readers are supposed to see that this is only one possible future, one they must work to avoid. Orwell’s anti−utopian vision captured the horrors of World War II and the fears of the cold war in the same way that earlier utopian novels, from British author Thomas More’s Utopia to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, captured the hope and self−confidence after the end of the medieval era. Patriotism The blind patriotism that fueled the dictatorships of German leader Adolf Hitler and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s inspired Orwell to write of Oceania and its leader, Big Brother. Just as the Germans fanatically cheered and revered Hitler, treating him as a beloved father, the citizens of Oceania look up to Big Brother as their protector, who will watch over them just as a real brother would. The huge pictures of Big Brother that can be found everywhere in Oceania are reminiscent of those of Communist leader Mao Tse−tung displayed by the Chinese. As in real totalitarian regimes, the children of Oceania play a large part in maintaining the loyalty and patriotism of the citizens. Just as German children joined the scout−like and militaristic Hitler Youth organization, the children of Oceania enjoy wearing their Junior Spies costumes, marching around, and singing patriotic songs. Orwell depicts how sinister it is for a government to use children to promote their policies when he portrays the Parsons’ children as holy terrors, threatening to denounce their parents to the authorities if they don’t give in to their childish demands. In the 1960s, the Chinese under Mao would indoctrinate an entire generation of children to be loyal to the state by taking them away from their parents for long periods in order to insure that the government’s message could not be contradicted by the children’s parents. Information Control There is no better proof of the Party's quest to dominate the mind as well as the body than the existence of the Ministry of Truth, where Winston works. By creating a sort of collective amnesia, wiping out the memory of unpleasant truths and always casting the Party's actions in the best light, the totalitarian government of Oceania can survive the present and ensure its future. The Records Department of the Ministry plays a significant role in this process, destroying or editing books, magazines, films and photographs that contradict the current orthodox Party view of the world. Winston, adept at this work himself, can step back and see how the masses are being manipulated. In fact, he is horrified by it, and his rebellion against the Party is motivated in part by a hunger for objective truth. But the futility of resisting the Party's information control is illustrated by Julia, younger and more politically naïve despite her cynicism. She cannot even remember the fact that four years earlier Oceania had been at war with Eastasia rather than with Eurasia, because the Party has propagandized her into believing that Eastasia was always the enemy. As an observer and chronicler of early 20th−century socialism, Orwell was well aware of the power of propaganda driving the movement, both positively and negatively. In 1984, he shows his disgust with the revisionism and overriding orthodoxy that consumed the Soviet Union under Stalin. Personal Rebellion When the state exercises total control over the military, the economy, the press, and the very lives of its citizens, it is no longer possible for the individual to spark a large−scale political rebellion. When Winston and Julia meet with O'Brien, who tempts them with tales of a Brotherhood resisting the Party's hegemony, Winston is eager to believe that such a mass uprising might come someday. But of course, that hope is dashed. So any acts of defiance that he can muster against the state are limited to the personal sphere. These are simple things that someone not living under totalitarianism would take for granted: keeping a diary, renting a room, making love with a girl. But they are cardinal sins for a Party member and ultimately attract the deadly attention of the Thought Police. Orwell shows why in his description of the aftermath of Winston and Julia's lovemaking: "Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act." When personal rebellion is crushed in this world, hope for a grand liberation likewise perishes. The Degradation of Language One of Oceania's most distinctive features is its official language, Newspeak. Though only projected to supersede Oldspeak (standard English) by the year 2050, Newspeak reflects the state's desire to reduce the critical thinking abilities of its subjects. Using words like "thoughtcrime" and "doubleplusgood," Newspeak eliminates shades of meaning with the intention of "narrowing the range of thought," as Winston's acquaintance Syme explains. A smaller vocabulary offers less opportunity for political or moral deviation. Also, it enables the Party to cover up horrific crimes or radical shifts in policy by the use of well−known catchphrases. In many respects, Newspeak reflects the concerns Orwell expressed in his famous 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language." There, he gives numerous examples of how jargon can leave people with a distorted sense of reality. Certainly, a society in which leaders babble phrases like "complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism" has come to that sorry state. The Triumph of Drudgery The overall atmosphere of 1984 is dreary, depressing and murky. The moments of color and power occur during Party rallies and martial celebrations. Otherwise, life consists of "boiled cabbage," "old flats," and "the sordid swarming life of the streets." The proletarians are obsessed with playing the Lottery and getting drunk. Lacking intellectual stimulation and culture, they are in no position to rebel against the Party. They are led to believe that things have never been any better than at present. Most, except the very oldest, simply swallow the notion that capitalism did nothing but oppress the lower classes. Women and men alike go through life as tiny cogs in a great machine, replaced easily when they die. This inertia is another powerful means of maintaining state control. Orwell's picture of drudgery and inertia was largely adapted from the conditions he saw around him in post−World War II London. It was his fear that a state of perpetual war, such as depicted in 1984, would lead to this becoming a reality throughout Europe and perhaps the world. Soviet Communism promised the liberation of the masses, but its actions more often mirrored the philosophy of Oceania's Party: "WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH." |
