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by George Orwell
Posted on May 24, 2013
No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky. Bob Dylan said
this probably not knowing its profound connection with George Orwells novel
1984, but the as well could be in 1984. Orwell depicts a totalitarian
dystopian world where there is no freedom and citizens are being
brainwashed constantly. Without any sense of individual fairness, people work
for the party just like the gear wheels in a machine. In order to achieve this,
the politicians in 1984 suppress peoples thinking and eliminate their
freedom by creating fear through propaganda, strict laws and incessant
surveillances.
In 1984, lies, myths and false information controls the thinking of the
citizens. The Party uses propaganda as the deadliest weapon of control.
Propaganda increases the citizens morale and makes them think that what
the party tells them to do is always right. There are mainly two types of
propaganda, one changes truth, so-called doublethink, and another creates
fear. Doublespeak can be seen frequently in the world of 1984. The partys
big slogan WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS
STRENGTH. (George Orwell, 4) is an good example. The idea of the slogan is
to convince the citizens that what they want, is what they already have. Only
war can make peace and harmony, so peace is no longer peace, it becomes
war; anyone who is slaved and wants freedom, he already has freedom; you
can only strengthen yourself by not knowing things and being ignorant. The
slogan changes truth and make the citizens believe that anything they want
other than what their government wants can only make them unhappy,
therefore, no one will consider rebellion because they believe the Partys way
of governing is the best and only way. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU
(George Orwell, 3) is another core slogan. It is nearly everywhere in the
country and usually presented beneath the picture of Big Brother on a poster.
It creates fear of obliterated privacy among citizens by alerting them that
they are watched all the time. At the same time, the slogan also emphasizes
Big Brothers power to tells the citizens that they are indeed safe and
protected. The party uses this to make them believe that within the party
nothing can go wrong, and without Big Brother they will not have such lives.
Everyone thinks he is safe in Oceania because of the Big Brother, but they
are in fact in danger, all the time.
arrested any time for committing thoughtcrime by even a tiny facial twitch
suggesting struggle, and his nervous system literally becomes his biggest
enemy. Since there is no written law, the Party can change and adjust the
strictness of laws freely as it wants, citizens never know if they have
committed any crime, therefore no one is brave enough to defy the Party by
any level, so fear is created. In addition, Newspeak is another law that is
enforced to solidify the Partys control. Humans use language to express their
ideas, by eliminating words and replacing emotional words such as
excellent, wonderful and fantastic by a single word good and its
comparative degrees plusgood and plusplusgood. Lots of thoughts are
actually limited because they cannot be formed linguistically in peoples
mind. Citizens then cannot have their own critical thinking, and only do what
they are told to do, they work just as computers, which surprisingly only have
two words.*