Was the Novel’s Ending Appropriate? How did the party and big brother manage to stay in power? Emmanuel Goldstein, the enemy of the party, is used as a scapegoat for all of the party’s problems, and is used as an excuse to always be at war with one of the surrounding empires of Eastasia and Eurasia. In the end of the book, Winston comes to accept the party over all aspects of his life, even coming to believe that he loved big brother, who he had hated at the beginning of the book. Readers are often angered by the ending of 1984 because of Winston’s betrayal of his previous life for the acceptance of the party.
Oceania and USA Society Analyzed George Orwell’s fictional dystopia, Oceania, was the setting of his novel Nineteen Eight-Four. As its government was totalitarian and ruled by the dictatorship of Big Brother, the dissimilarity of its society is already assumed to be drastic compared to our federal constitutional republic government. In the following text I will compare the society of Oceania to our modern-day society of the United States of America. Big Brother’s corrupt system of de-humanizing mankind is an unthinkable and terrifying idea to any citizen who is accustomed to living in the USA. The USA’s citizens are entitled to their right to vote.
The Monster controls everything, even the owners. The owners will do anything for the three dollars a day. They will even destroy a families home to make a little more. “Some owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold… And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves.”(p.32) The owners were controlled by the Monster. When they got on that tractor, they became a part of the Monster.
The “Thought Police” are similar to how the government uses our private surveillances such as, phone records, emails, and wiretapping to know what we talk about and whom we talk to. Another example Orwell says, “The command of the old despotism was ‘Thou shalt not.’ The command of the totalitarians was ‘Thou shalt’. Our command is ‘Thou art.’ No one whom we bring to his place ever stands out against us”(255). He explains how in 1984, their depositions are less accurate than the original ones in our government. There are more similarities between our two societies, including lack of privacy, brainwashing, lack of concern for others that we do not associate with, and most importantly, the lack of creativity and thinking for one.
This results in dictatorships, with leaders like Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. They (and others) get ideas in their heads how things should be, and their self-motivation and their own ideas are where they draw their inspiration from when they make decisions. In the novella Animal Farm, Napoleon starts out small, being on the opposing side of all arguments, staying behind and fulfilling his own desires, for example when he drinks the milk that was for all the animals. He takes advantage of all the animals. He gets bigger ideas about how things should be, and eventually goes against all the principles that the animals had all agreed upon at the beginning of the rebellion.
The persistence and resistance shown by Winston against the Thought Police cannot be understated by merely looking at how he finally gives up when he is tortured by the police: “His body was being wrenched out of shape; the joints were slowly being torn apart" (Orwell 257). This does not disqualify Winston as a hero because the pain that he undergoes through the torture is unbearable. The pounding and being pumped with electricity, which the police use to torture him, impose a lot of physical and emotional pain on him. “O’Brein will not stop the torture until Winston succumbs to the fact that he is holding up five fingers (Mega Essays 1). Even as Winston gets unbearable torture from O’Brein,
Napoleon’s dictatorship is further evidenced when he sets the dogs against Snowball to increase his political power. Eventually, Napoleon becomes a corrupted dictator and exploits the other animals through violence and tyranny. Evidence of a communism begins with Old Major’s vision that all animals could share in the wealth of the farm without a distinction of “classes”. After Old Major’s
The novel 1984 by George Orwell and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood both discuss the conflict within the balance of freedom and security in their respective dystopian society. In the realm of Big Brother, the slogan that is propagated to citizens clearly defies the principles of Airstrip One. “Freedom is slavery” as it is presented oxymoronically. The civilians are given freedom under the price of slavery. The Old Soviet concept that Airstrip One abide to makes all the decisions for its civilians, leaving people with freedom to not have to choose.
Mr. Charrington, the owner of the antique shop, was an undercover Thought Police agent who caught Julia and Winston in their secret room they rented out above his shop. The Spies encourage children to report thoughtcrime if they have witnessed it as well. Parsons’ daughter reports him to the Thought Police when he unknowingly talked ill of the Party in his sleep. Surprisingly, Parsons was proud of his daughter since she was so loyal to the Party and, to him, it shows how well he raised her (Orwell 233). These ways of surveillance should never take place.
The single party in power led, by Big Brother, controls mass media and uses the fear of death, to create obedience. This depicts Oceania realistically enough to remind readers that such a society has indeed existed, for example in fascist Spain, Stalin's Russia, and even in North Korea. All these governments are totalitarian, they have removed all humanity, by removing all freedom: drastically changing the lives of every citizen. Worse yet, if people forget the lessons history has taught them, about each of these dictatorships, we will have a society as brutally repulsive as the society Winston Smith lives in.