1984 by George Orwell“If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable - what then?”
1984 by George Orwell portrays a nightmarish world of dystopia, psychological manipulation and reality control. Dystopia refers to an imaginary place where people are unhappy and terrorized. In the dystopian world of the novel 1984, Mr. Orwell depicts what it truly means to live in a world where people spend their lives in fear and above it, they are ignorant of their own fear, so they never try to fight against it. Written in 1948, the book is so defiant in its content that it has been banned several times across various countries, and is still one of the most popular bestsellers.
The novel illustrates an imaginary superstate called Oceania. Oceania is controlled by “The Party” called Ingsoc with the mysterious cult leader called “Big Brother.” The streets of the state are daubed with the posters which read in big bold letters, “Big Brother is watching you.” Every house, building, nook, and corner of the state is flecked with secret microphones, cameras, and telescreens through which the members of the Party maintain constant surveillance over the masses.
There are four ministries in the Party. The Ministry of Truth deals with lies by altering past and history; the Ministry of Love deals with torture, psychological manipulation and deception; the Ministry of Peace deals with wars; and the Ministry of Plenty deals with cutting off ration supplies and starvation. These ministries work on the principle of “Doublethink,” which refers to holding two contradictory thoughts in the mind at the same time and accepting both of them. The Party uses “Doublethink” to bumfuzzle and confuse the minds of the people to gain control over them.
There are mainly three parts of the state. The members of the Inner Party, who are most loyal to the Party; the members of the Outer Party, who are lower than the Inner Party members; and the rest of the people, the common masses, called “proles.” Proles are believed to be dumb-minded, foolish and useless. The Party believes that proles would never rebel against it till they are provided with food, clothing and shelter, and their thoughts are constantly monitored by the telescreens.
The children of the families living in Oceania, are trained from the very young age to discard their feelings, distrust their basic instincts, and become members of the Spies. After becoming the Spies, they would abandon their loyalty to their family and to their parents, and remain loyal only to the Party.
There are three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
which are again based on the principle of “Doublethink.”
The Party has invented a gibberish language called “Newspeak,” the goal of which is to erase most of the words from the English language dictionary. This is done to limit the mass communication by manipulation of language. Since language and human thought are closely connected, the Party utilized the weapon of language for the purposes of mind control, breakdown of identity, limiting people’s capacity of reasoning and intellect, and prohibition of freedom of expression.
The Party includes a troop of “Thought Police” who catch and punish the people who betray, oppose or disobey the rules of the Party. These persons are then purged out of the state and they become “unpersons.” They cease to exist any longer. All their records are meticulously erased and wiped off from the state’s history. And any person who tries to rebel against the Party, even in their thoughts, is said to do a “Thought Crime” for which they would be punished sooner or later.
The plot of the novel revolves around the character of Winston Smith, who is a low-level worker of the Outer Party, and who secretly hates the Party. He expresses his rebellion to the Party by keeping a secret diary, which is forbidden and a “Thought Crime.” Winston works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth where he works in altering the records from “The Times” newspaper and replacing them with the lies that are convenient to the Party. If he is ordered to remove the name of some unperson from the records, he does so by dumping the records in something called “memory holes,” where the records are vanished, and the history is altered for the entire state. This is how the Party controls the past.
The novella is divided mainly into four parts. The first part describes the daily life of Winston Smith as he spends his life working in the office of the Party. The second part delves into his life when he falls in love with a woman named Julia. The third part deals with the time when he gets arrested by the Thought Police and he is tortured. The fourth part deals with how his mind begins to change and transform as a result of Party’s psychological manipulation and mind control techniques.
While Winston dreams of the Golden Country, sunlit meadows, singing birds, and happiness, wherever he moves his attention, he finds terror, surveillance telescreens, and wars with the neighbouring states. He secretly wishes to rebel against the Party, knowing very well that he is already a Thought Criminal, and one day, he will be arrested and punished for his Thought Crime.
To express his rebellion, he maintains a secret diary that he keeps in a drawer which is slightly away from the vision of the telescreen. He writes in his diary, his childhood memories, his thoughts, and his experiences of everyday life, although he knows that one day he and his diary will be caught by the Thought Police.
One day in his office, while he was returning to his cubicle after having lunch in the grimy cafeteria, a woman employee, named Julia secretly slipped a note in his hands. In the note she had written that she loved him. Julia worked in the Fiction Department of the Ministry, operating the novel-writing machines there. She too secretly hated the Party.
Gradually, Winston and Julia fall in love with each other. But love is forbidden and a Thought Crime, according to the Party. Soon enough, they come across a secret resistance group called The Brotherhood dedicated to another mysterious leader called Goldstein, who is the rival of the Big Brother.
Both of them start meeting secretly in a room located above an antiques shop run by a man named Charrington, who is a prole. They also meet a Party member named O’Brien who tells them that he too is against the Party and works for the Brotherhood. He also gives Winston a book by Goldstein, which makes Winston become certain that O’Brien is indeed against the Party. He starts liking O’Brien as a guide and a guardian.
However, one day, Winston and Julia look shocked with horrifying glances when they discover that Charrington was an undercover agent of the Thought Police, and O’Brien too was a loyal member of the Party. O’Brien was just trying to deceive them by extracting information about their thoughts of rebellion against the Party.
So Winston and Julia are separated. Both of them are arrested. The following part of the novel describes Winston’s experiences as he is taken to the Ministry of Love, a building where there are no windows and where Thought Criminals are tortured and psychologically manipulated.
In the first few days, Winston is ruthlessly tortured, beaten and psychologically broken by the Thought Police. All his screams and whimpers go into a void, and he completely breaks down, confessing even the crimes he never did. In the next few days, O’Brien takes him to another room, where there are huge dials and levers attached to Winston’s body. If Winston disobeys O’Brien, he immediately presses the dials, which hurts Winston’s spine, and he screams out in pain.
O’Brien tells Winston that he was brought in the Ministry of Love so that his mind could be broken and erased, and in place of it, a new mind, a reprogrammed mind would be created so Winston would surrender to the Party with his own free will. Their mission was to control his thoughts so not even a single thought distortion could exist in the universe against the Party. He also told Winston that by the time his training would be complete, he would totally lose all his humanly feelings, the instinct of love, and his capacity to think and reason against the Party.
For days and days, O’Brien bombards his mind with confusing thoughts, blasting his existing mind and reprogramming it with new thoughts. For instance, he tells him that “two plus two equals five.” When Winston disagrees to this, O’Brien presses the dial, and Winston’s spine tilts and bows down. Eventually, after some more days, Winston accepts the fact that “two plus two equals five.”
O’Brien tells Winston that with secret surveillance equipment, he had been tracking Winston’s actions, and thoughts for seven years. And now that he was caught, he would have to surrender to the Party with his own free will. He must not have a thought of rebellion against the Party, no feelings of love or loyalty towards anyone except the Big Brother, and no identity of his own. He tells him that the goal of the Party is to preserve its power.
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing,” he tells Winston.
He programs Winston that the memories he has in his mind are all false memories, including his childhood memories. He brainwashes him to think that God is nothing but Power. He also educates him to think that the state, the thoughts, the reality, the past, and even the physical matter, all is controlled by the Party only. He breaks down Winston’s willpower by telling him repeatedly that he can’t do anything even if he wishes or thinks to, and proles won’t help him either. So, he has only one choice, to surrender to the Party and to love only the Big Brother, nobody and nothing else.
After a period of repetitive psychological manipulation, brainwashing and extreme physical torture, Winston becomes totally broken, with no will or identity of his own. He looks in the mirror and find that his body has reduced to an old man’s skeleton, and he begins to cry.
For the next few days, O’Brien shifts Winston to another room where he starts to get food, fresh clothes and supply of water to bath. He starts regaining health, building muscles and looking younger. But then one day O’Brien catches him murmuring Julia’s name, expressing his love for her. Winston is then taken to a grimdark room called “Room 101”. O’Brien brings a cage filled with wild mouses. He threatens Winston that he is going to open the cage and release the mouses on Winston’s body that was tied with strings.
Winston was to betray Julia by transferring his punishment to her, or he would die getting scratched, and bitten by the wild hungry mouses. Frightened horrifically, Winston sees the cage coming closer and closer to him. Finally, he betrays Julia, and he is spared. To torment him even more, O’Brien then tells him, “Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
After betraying Julia, Winston really feels empty and hollow, with no feelings or identity of his own. He becomes a shadow, and then after all this torture, he is released by the Ministry of Love.
In the latter part of the novel, Winston is shown to be living a life where he falls in love with the Big Brother, which showcases that the Party’s mind control over him was complete. When he meets Julia, he finds that she too has changed in body and mind, and she too had betrayed him to avoid the torturous punishment. They no longer feel love for each other.
In a nutshell, the novel represents a harrowing world where the people don’t even have authority over their own thoughts and feelings. The main themes illustrated through the novel include totalitarianism, dystopia, reality control, psychological warfare, and brainwashing. The story of Winston is a cautionary tale describing how language, which is so strongly interconnected with thought, can be easily corrupted to gain authority over someone’s entire thought process.
If you remove words from someone’s dictionary, it also erases their capacity of freedom of expression, and the capacity to think critically. Once a person loses the power of critical thinking and intellectual contemplation, they lose the power to create their own life too. It is then that the external agency interferes, establishes its agenda of power, and gains complete control over another’s mind.
The novel, although, might just be a piece of fiction, but it actually is a warning for the human race; to wake up and know who you are. Because, as a quote reads from the book,
“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
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