12 George Orwell: 1984

Dr. Asha N Rubb

1.  About the Author: 

George Orwell, the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. Eric Blair was born in India in 1903 during the British rule of India. After graduating from Eton, Orwell decided to forego college in order to work as a British Imperial Policeman in Burma. But he hated his duties there as he had to enforce the strict laws of political regime he disliked. Because of his failing health he returned to England. Once back in England, he quit the Imperial Police and dedicated himself to becoming a writer. Orwell died of tuberculosis in London.

The Spanish Civil War played the most important part in defining Orwell’s socialism. In Spanish Civil War, Orwell experienced the atrocities committed by fascists. The rise of dictators likes Joseph Stalin in Soviet Union and Adolf Hitler in Germany aggravated his dislike for totalitarian political authority. His writings naturally focused against Fascism and have influenced political as well as popular culture. The term Orwellian has entered the language together with many of his neologisms.

Orwell’s important works are Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier, Burmese Days and other works. His novels are (1934), A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935), Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Coming Up For Air (1939). He is best known for his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) which reflects degeneration in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism.

2. Genre:

The novel is in the genre of the negative utopian or dystopian. A novel of negative utopia does the exact opposite of a utopian novel which portrays the perfect human society.

The dystopia shows the worst human society in order to convince readers to avoid such paths that may lead towards such societal degradation. Orwell’s novel exhibits how language and science can be manipulated as weapons to control mind and abuse power and to turn humans into machines.

3. Introduction to Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

Nineteen Eighty-Four reflects the degeneration of life under the totalitarian rule. It warns of a future world where the social life is completely controlled by the state machine. It is often compared to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

After returning to Europe, Orwell began to develop vague distrust of machine-age and capitalist society that later blossomed into a firm adherence to Socialism. Along with these experiences, in 1936, Orwell travelled to Spain to report on the Spanish Civil War. The atrocities committed by fascist political regimes there made Orwell to express it in his novels. Besides, the rises of dictators like Adolf Hitler in Germany and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union aggravated Orwell’s hatred of totalitarianism and political autonomy. It is this hatred that gets reflected in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In writing the work, Orwell was influenced and inspired by totalitarian regimes of the time, including Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Both regimes glorified their respective leaders as demi-gods and saviours, requiring the destruction of all individuality in order to promote the needs of Party over the individual’s, and demanded absolute loyalty from their citizens, and resorted to violence whenever disloyalty was suspected. He writes about this danger in the novel.

4. Summary

The plot of the novel consists of three main parts – The first part deals with the world of nineteen eighty-four as seen through the eyes of Winston. The second part deals with Winston’s forbidden relationship with Julia and his eagerness to rebel against the party. The third part deals with Winston’s capture and his final surrender to Party rules.

Winston lives in Airstrip One, a part of Oceania – a super state. The opening section of the book consists largely of Winston’s personal reflections on his existence and the world in which he lives. Oceania is a totalitarian state ruled by a Big Brother of the Inner Party and is dominated by the principles of Ingsoc (English Socialism). Eurasia and Eastasia are the  two other super states of the world along with Oceania. These three super states are constantly engaged in shifting alliances and battles.

There are three parties/castes Oceania – Inner, Outer and the Proletariats. The Inner Party members are the ruling elite, and regular Outer Party members are the citizens of Oceania. Outside of these two Parties are the proles. They are the non-Party members living in poverty and are free from Party regulations because the Party least expects rebellion from them. Big posters of an enormous face of Big Brother are everywhere in Airstrip One with the words “ Big Brother Is Watching You” written under i t . The Party is the totalitarian political regime that rules all of Airstrip One, Oceania. The two-way telescreens are installed in every public and private room in Oceania. Through this the Party monitors its citizens both visually and by sound. They cannot be turned off except in the homes of privileged Inner Party members. Oceania is heavily policed and monitored by these two-way telescreens, and the Thought Police. The three slogans of the Party are -“War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength.”

Winston works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth. Winston’s job consists of faking the truth. Winston remembers that no one had heard of Big Brother, the leader of the Party, before 1960, but stories about him now appear in histories going back to the 1930s.

The novel opens with the protagonist, Winston Smith who is a minor member of The Party committing “thought crime” by keeping an illegal diary which describes his nightmarish life and hatred of The Party and Big Brother. Winston develops deeper hatred of the Party and begins to commit “thought crime” on a regularbasis, but he knows that the “thought police” will eventually arrest him.

Besides, he falls in love with a co-worker named Julia who hates The Party as much as he. Both attempt to join a subversive group called The Brotherhood – the enemy of the Big Political Allegory and Satire

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a great allegory with symbolic meanings and underlying messages. Orwell presents the world of the year 1984 as a satiric statement of what the world might come to, if it does not become aware of the forthcoming terrible problems. He wrote it not as a prediction, but as a warning because he felt that society was regressing back to barbarism. In the fight against fascism and other totalitarian systems of government, Orwell witnessed the Western liberal societies too adopting these techniques used by their enemies. Orwell’s dystopian novel offers a devastating view of a society where citizens have to slavishly believe in a single Inner party. Telescreens symbolise the tendency of totalitarian governments to abuse technology to further their own ends instead to improve the living standards of its citizens.

Some of the instances of allegory in the novel are – Emmanuel Goldstein stands for Leon Trotsky, Big Brother for Joseph Stalin, Thought Police for the Russians, Oceania for USSR, and Brotherhood versus the State for Trotskyites versus Stalinists. Winston and Julia acknowledge that the Prole (proletariat) woman as a symbol of hope for the future with her reproductive virility. They see in her the qualities that indicate her ability to give birth to future generations of rebels willing to overtake the Inner Party and its rule. The paperweight, the old man in the prole bar and the calendar of St. Clement’s Church become the remnants of the past because the people of Oceania no longer have a past as they are surrounded by propaganda, party doctrine and contradictory facts. Winston buys paperweight as an attempt to reconnect with his past. His deal with the old man in the bar is yet another attempt to get in touch with history.

The Party possesses extremely negative view of sexuality, and wants it to be as joyless as possible. This can be compared to the traditional view of many religions. Women should just lie back and men should also regard the act as a disgusting necessity with no other purpose than breeding the next generation of Party members.

The Scarlet Anti-Sex Waist Sash represents the devotion of citizens to Party doctrine and Party cause. In the novel it is a symbol of chastity bur Julia’s sash in reality represents her duality. Though a devout Party member by appearance, Julia uses the sash to disguise her true actions as she experiences sex with many including Winston. The novel mourns the loss of personal identity while demonstrating how to effectively rid persons of their independence, particularly through extensive sexual repression and the prohibition of individual thought. Similarly Winston’s varicose ulcer above his ankle suggests the effects of his sexual repression.

Memory Holes are only briefly mentioned in the novel, but they are unimportant. Memory holes are those things in the ground that the Party insists any scraps of paper get tossed into. They lead to a furnace. By destroying paper, the Party destroys documents and therefore evidence of the past.

Winston’s mother appears only in his dreams and memories. She represents better pre-Inner Party days when life was safe and not so oppressive. As the novel progresses, she represents Winston’s intense sense of guilt.

“The Place Where There Is No Darkness” is metaphorically the darkest and gloomiest location. This symbolises Winston’s ultimate doomed fate. Thus the novel is a grim political satire on George Orwell’s time presenting the horrors of the modern totalitarian state along with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union in the 1930’s and Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich in the 1940’s. The novel presents a dystopic vision of a nightmarish future awaiting the world if it ignores modern assaults on human freedom.

A Dystopian Novel

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian or negative utopian genre. Dystopia is the grim opposite to the perfect utopian society. The term dystopia is of Greek origin and it is defined as  an  imaginary  place  or  state  in  which  the  condition  of  life  is  extremely  bad,  full of deprivation, oppression or terror. Dystopia is the worst of all worlds with the loss of absolute freedom, and the submission to power with absolute control over human will include family, sex and independent thoughts. A dystopia is a society where people lead dehumanised and often fearful lives. It presents a corrupted or degraded state of deprivation and oppression while incorporating the fear of technology. It deals with the topic of social classes and the control of human behaviour.  Governmental tyranny and an exploitation of the people are  also prominent in a dystopia.

Orwell creates a perfect dystopia by using a futuristic setting, the fear of technology and by placing the main character in dissent with society with his covert rebellious attitude. Newspeak is used mainly by the Party members and its vocabulary and grammar differs from those of Standard English, or Oldspeak, as they call it. The inhabitants of Oceania do not know anything about the situation in the other states and they are forbidden to learn foreign languages or anything about the foreign countries at all. It is the task of the employees of the Ministry of Truth to alter the data and articles to match the current situation of the war.

Orwellian dystopia controls this situation with the presence of Thought Police and vaporisation. The Thought Police constantly monitors the thoughts of the citizens of Oceania ensuring that they will not disobey The Party or Big Brother. This ensures that the currently established government will stay in control. If the citizens contemplate betraying The Party they will be vaporised and to avoid it the Thought Police captures the citizen and they completely disappear. No one knows where they go but they are erased from all memory and records.

Orwell generates fear by using technology to enhance the theme of a dystopia. It depicts the tale of a Dystopia, in which a hierarchical system known as ‘Big Brother’ and The Party, repress and control everyone in complete despotism. As a novel of negative utopia the novel exhibits the worst kind of human society. What is truly the most oppressive thing that Big Brother do in particular to citizens, is to enforce complete control over people’s thoughts and privacy, having telescreens placed every where, and punishing anyone who dares to think differently and dares to question Big Brother and The Party.

Winston is dissatisfied with his life from the very beginning and he tries to figure out what the world was like before Big Brother. His rebellion against the Party includes writing anti-Big Brother slogans like “Down With Big Brother” into his diary, occasional sexual intercourses with prostitutes and committing thoughtcrimes, thinking about something which is disapproved by the Party. Every day, all members of the Party must take part in the Two Minutes Hate, where there is shown a short movie for them to watch featuring the enemies of the Party, most notably Emmanuel Goldstein. The Party members usually get into some sort of frenzy and shout rude expressions at the top of their lungs at the picture of Goldstein.The protagonist of the story Winston, a 39 year old, average man, who after meeting his love, (the other protagonist of the story) Julia, begins to develop his own thoughts, and who begins with Julia, to rebel against Big Brother and The Party, until being caught and broken by O’Brien. The main antagonist of the story, besides Big Brother and The Party, is O’Brien, who works for Big Brother in the Ministry of Love, and who is a member of the Inner Party. He is the one who after learning of Winston and Julia’s rebellion, sets a trap for them and is ultimately the one who breaks both Winston and Julia.

Psychological Manipulation

One of the most important themes of Nineteen Eighty-Four is governmental use of psychological manipulation and physical control as a means of maintaining its power and controlling its citizens. The citizens are pressurised through brainwashing into adopting radically different ideologies with the help of systematic and often forcible means of political control of communication, distortion of public texts and control of their meaning and censorship. The protagonist Winston, is shown to live in the year 1984 a basic human faculty of free thought is suppressed through mental conditioning by a political power that demands unconditional allegiance to Big Brother. So much so that even facial expressions and consequently thoughts are closely monitored through telescreens, and any signs of mistrust is severely punishable offence under Thoughtcrime. Ironically, the brute force that controls the punishment and retribution of Thoughtcrime, is called the Ministry of Love, for the aim of crushing Thoughtcrime is to invest the masses with unconditional love towards the philosophy of the Ingsoc, and the political figure of Big Brother.

The three guiding principles of Big Brother’s Totalitarian state in Oceania are

• War is Peace
• Freedom is Slavery
• Ignorance is Strength

The lives of the people are enmeshed in a daily existence of rationing, propaganda, thought control and subjugation. Science and technology have only been used to perpetuate the war, to keep an eye on any instance of rebellion or desire for change, and to ultimately brainwash the rebellious to realise that existence beyond the existing political mechanism is impossible.

History is rewritten shamelessly and facts are manipulated, food is rationed, technological progress is abandoned, and leisure time is forced and only possible through state-run community centres. Information is biased and even maintaining a personal diary is a punishable offence. Marriage is only for procreation. Sexual energies are suppressed only to be directed as unconditional and mindless allegiance towards a State that is based on slavery, fear and war. Even language is manipulated through the Newspeak – a language perpetuated by the Ingsoc, where spellings invented and the usage of verbs discouraged.

During Two Minute Hate, the members of the Inner Party brainwash the people to think alike so to make sure there is no independent thought. Other examples of psychological manipulation are Newspeak or using the media to force the people to only think a certain  way. Also Junior Spies put their eyes on parents to make sure they are obeying Big Brother, or else their children will expose them to Party. It took away the freedom in the home and added fear. With the psychological manipulation, brainwashing is also very prevalent in the novel. Emotions would cause the members of the outer party to scream at the screen at their “enemy” Goldstein who went against Big Brother, their master. The most direct form of psychological manipulation is the thought police. It is in such a premise that Winston dares to express his thoughts, seek like-minded people in an attempt to regain his freedom of thought, action and speech. He dares to love but loses all at the hands of a system that is so corrupt  and so widespread that love and trust are only a vehicle to perpetuate the political motives. It is the power of brainwashing.

Orwell brings out how physical pain affects the human mind, and how it grants extraordinary emotional power to the person who inflicts pain. Psychological manipulation of the citizens primarily by the manipulator carried out through concealing aggressive intentions, by knowing the psychological vulnerabilities of the citizens to determine which tactics are likely to be the most effective and having a sufficient level of ruthlessness to have no qualms about causing harm to the victim if necessary. Consequently, the manipulation will be accomplished through aggressive means. Winston’s fear of rats is manipulated by O’Brien who tortures him and Winston perversely comes to love O’Brien. Throughout the torture sessions, Winston becomes increasingly eager to believe anything O’Brien tells him – even Party slogans and rhetoric. In the next section of the novel, Winston even begins to dream about O’Brien in the same way that he now dreams about his mother and Julia.

Orwell consistently argues that physical pain and the sense of physical danger can override human reason. Winston’s torture emphasises the theme of the fundamental horror of physical pain. Winston cannot stop the torture or prevent the psychological control O’Brien gains from torturing him, and when the guard smashes his elbow, he thinks that nothing in the world is worse than physical pain. Though the Party’s ability to manipulate the minds of its subjects is the key to the breadth of its power, its ability to control their bodies is what makes it finally impossible to resist.

Totalitarianism

In “Why I Write” Orwell has written that every line of serious work that he has written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism. As he understood it he believed that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph again. Accordingly his Nineteen Eighty-Four is an attack on totalitarian government where the state controls all aspects of life. Orwell speaks about the mechanisms of power that practices supremacy and tyranny in all aspects of life. Orwell presents a controlled society in which political terror, along with surveillance and propaganda, compel individuals to obey.

The citizens are controlled in every way and every manner of their life including their speech, work, thought and sex. Fear instilled in them by “Big Brother” who is constantly watching them through telescreens – the television screens used for surveillance and constantly showing government propaganda eliminating the fundamental characteristics of a democratic society. There is a complete loss of privacy as individuals are watched even in their homes. The human spirit is thus crushed by eradicating privacy, freedom and individuality.

As the novel opens the main character, Winston Smith, sets his face into the expression of quiet optimism which was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen. Certain programs are in place to take away individualism such as “Two Minutes Hate”. Freedom is eradicated by the government spying, through Newspeak and through the institution of Thoughtcrime.

The Party understood the power of history and that the educated citizen would not allow the Party to survive. Therefore the Party eliminated nearly everyone who remembered the past before Big Brother by creating a new, post-Big Brother history and manipulating history through the Ministry of Truth that it was impossible to ever know what was happening or what had really happened.

Winston hides his diary because it is a crime to express one’s personal thoughts. After he is caught for being with Julia, his diary in which he has written “Down with Big Brother” is confiscated and O’Brien tortures Winston until he finally breaks and becomes convinced that two plus two make five.

The ill effects of totalitarian government lead to psychological imbalance. Orwell consistently argues that physical pain and the sense of physical danger can override human reason. Winston, facing a writhing swarm of rats prepared to devour his face, cannot act rationally.

When the propaganda, deprivation, and rigid guidelines fail to convert someone to Party doctrine of Ingsoc, the government uses torture to brainwash citizens. The fact that the Party turns Winston into believing the Party doctrine and finally crushing his inner-revolt, reveals the ultimate control and power of the Party over citizens. In order to inspire and change the thinking people like Winston with the principles of Ingsoc, the Party uses extreme force and coercion in order to stay in power. Orwell calls upon his readers to recognise the evil of the Party and fight to prevent the spread of totalitarianism.

Reference

• Cushman, Thomas and John Rodden. Eds. George Orwell: Into the Twenty-First Century. Boulder Co. Paradigm Publishers, 2005.
• Howe, Irving. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: Text, Sources, Criticism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.
• Newsinger, John. Orwell’s Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
• Smith, David and Michael Mosher. Orwell for Beginners. 1st Ed. Eng Writers and Readers Pub, London. 1984.
• Steinhoff, William R. George Orwell and the Origins of 1984. Ann Arbor: UMP, 1975.