WARNING! SPOILER! IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK, WAIT UNTIL YOU HAVE!
Mike Sutherland
“WAR IS PEACE”
“FREEDOM IS SLAVERY”
“IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”
1984, George Orwell
1984, by George Orwell, is an amazing book that is realistic, rich, and compelling. The book is based around a future humanity in the year 1984, where a totalitarian regime rules the continents of North and South America. The story’s protagonist is a man named Winston, who, in secret defies the Party, the name of the regime. All around, the Party is monitoring their citizen’s every move using “telescreens,” or televisions that have cameras embedded in them that can hear, see, and recognize writing that is against the ideals of the regime. Everyone is under the watchful eye of “Big Brother,” the face of the party; it is doubtful if big brother even exists. In fact, Big Brother is powerful and invincible, a symbol of the everlasting and unbreakable power of the Party. Civilian’s actions are closely monitored by members of the “thought police,” who are ruthless Party members who arrest those guilty of “thoughtcrime,” or thinking against the ideals of the Party. Winston, however, knows how to outsmart the telescreens, and tries to join The Brotherhood, an underground organization that secretly defies the Party. When he meets the woman he loves, named Julia, his actions become more and more rebellious. He lives in constant fear of being found out, but still loves Julia and continues to rebel against the Party. However, Winston does not know that he is being watched and betrayed by those closest to him. He meets O’Brien, a man who claims to be a loyal follower of The Brotherhood. Soon, however, he is arrested by members of the thought police, and is taken into a jail cell, where he is tortured until he admits to the crimes he has committed. After a while, they stop torturing him and begin “curing” him, and he walks into a room where O’Brien is. He realizes that O’Brien is a member of the thought police, and has been monitoring him for a while, even before he met Julia. O’Brien puts him through a series of questions, and when Winston lies in his answers, he is administered pain through a machine, and through this “treatment” he begins to adopt love for the Party and is brainwashed into conforming to their ideals and abolishing his rebellious ways. The final step is when he is being tortured in “room 101” and finally betrays Julia, ratting her out for her crimes, something he has not yet done. This step is the turning point—the final step in giving in and conforming to the Party. Then, he is “cured” and released. The story ends him expressing his love of the Party.
This story is set in a world where there are three superpowers—Eurasia, Eastasia, and Oceania—Winston living in Oceania. The three powers are constantly at war with each other, and each having a central, totalitarian Party that rules over their people by censoring their media, not allowing their actions, words, thoughts, and ideas to be against the ruling Party. The Party has an ingenious way of ruling over their people—by making sure that instead of enforcing their rules using brute force, they simply let their loyal followers rat out the people who are against the Party, and the thought police simply eliminate those people that were against the Party—by eliminating all record of them, like they never existing. That way, enemies of the Party have no martyrs, no one to look up to, so that nobody ever rebels. In this way, the Party can stay in power for as long as they want. The Party is simply a more efficient version of Stalin or Hitler’s totalitarian regimes. In Hitler’s regime, he got Germans to rat out their Jewish friends. In fact, his power was so extreme that he got ordinary Germans to commit atrocious crimes against the Jews. This can be likened to the children ratting out their parents for thoughtcrime in the novel 1984.
The Party’s Slogan is:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
These three phrases are the Party’s ideals.
The first, WAR IS PEACE, represents the holding of power in the Party. The Party has an ingenious way of holding power—through war. By keeping the civilians working for companies that build technology for war, the civilians are not contributing to the quality of their own lives, and so they do not gain power or access to good products. Only by working for the Inner Party, or the group closest to the ruling officials, is it possible to have a better quality of life. There are no entrepreneurs, no capitalism, and the government controls the life of all the people, thus making it impossible for people to have the funds to make a rebellion, unless they are a member of the Inner Party, in which case they would not have the need to revolt. In this way, the poor are controlled, and peace is maintained.
The second phrase, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, directly corresponds to the Party’s belief to keep the common folk as “slaves” to the party. This phrase basically means that there is no way to keep their power unless the people agree and adopt the Party’s ideals. By keeping the people slaves, they are free to do anything they want; and the people will agree, and actually want to do what the Party wants. If this principle were not included, people, instead of doing what the Party wants because the people want to, would do it only out of fear of arrest. Eventually, people would become organized enough that they would stage a revolt—and overthrow the Party. This rule is in place to keep the public believing in the Party’s ideals—no matter how ridiculous they are.
The third and last phrase is the most important. INORANCE IS STRENGTH refers to the complete censorship and constant bombardment of propaganda infused by the Party. Generation by generation, the people become more and more brainwashed, as the Party is their only source of information, and so, as they grow, they learn to believe anything the Party says, because there are no other conflicting sources of knowledge. There is constant evidence of this idea everywhere in Oceania—on billboards, posters, telescreens (the equivalent of a modern-day television), radio, books, flyers, rallies, parades—everywhere, people’s patriotism and love of the Party is being grown by the endless stream of propaganda. Also, people follow any of the party’s orders, no matter how ridiculous they are. People’s children tell the thought police if they are doing anything against the party—even if it is a simple remark. In this way, the Party is making people do their work for them; the people find anyone who is against the party and expose them, and the party simply eliminates them and removes them from all their records—as if they never existed. In this way, the people actually want to do whatever the party has on their agenda, and will blindly follow them. By constantly keeping people poor and uneducated, the party is able to very easily keep control. Some evidence of this massive effort is present in Winston’s Job. He works for the Ministry of Truth; he replaces the old news with the “new” news. For example, he takes a book that says that Oceania is at war with Eurasia, and replaces it with a book that says Oceania is at war with Eastasia. The party wants everyone not only to think, but to know, to agree, that Oceania is at war with Eastasia, and has always been, because there are no records that say otherwise because they have all been destroyed and deleted. The people then have no choice to agree because there is only evidence that supports the Party’s claims.
These ideals are already present in many countries, including the United States. The interesting irony of the story is that Winston lives in London in the story, and today, London is the most watched city in the world—there are video cameras on every street corner, in every building.
North Korea is an excellent example of these principles at work in society. In North Korea, in Pyongyang, the central library contains only works approved of or written by Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-Il, the totalitarian leaders of the country. Additionally, No one in North Korea is allowed out of the country, and no news from the outside world. The North Korean Government has convinced their people that the country is still at war with America, and uses this as a device to create hatred for the Americans. They use this hate for Americans to make the people hate capitalism and eliminate entrepreneurs and capitalists. All other sources of news are strictly filtered; North Koreans are almost never aware of what is going on other than what the government tells them. In this way, North Koreans are kept under control, and despite the complete economic failure of the country, their rulers, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung maintain their god-like status due to the endless propaganda. North Korea is close to a modern day London of 1984.
The concepts of this book have been utilized throughout history as well. For example, in Nazi Germany in World War II, for the majority of the crimes committed against Jews, it was not German soldiers, but German civilians. Adolf Hitler used these principles to make German civilians believe that what they were doing was completely right. By using endless streams of propaganda, Hitler’s Nazi Party was able to “dehumanize” Jews; basically, the Nazis made Jews sub human in the eyes of Germans. By utilizing these tactics, the German government used their people to commit these atrocious crimes. The Nazis had the civilians of Germany under a complete spell for the entirety of World War II; only after, did they realize what they had done. These examples prove that Orwell’s Novel is entirely true, and the concepts outlined by the Party in the novel can be used to run a very large group of people, and they have.
The last instance of these concepts being used outside of the book is in America. In the modern day War in Iraq, major newsgroups and the government are using words like “insurgents” and “terrorists” to label the enemy, and they have been successful at making the American people associate these words with enemies of America, Freedom and Democracy. However, aren’t the members of the American military doing the exact same things as these “terrorists?” If this issue is looked at from the viewpoint of Al Qaeda, aren’t Americans invading their country and fighting them, while killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process? The only reason why people tolerate this war is because the people they are fighting are labeled, and converted to sub human status. Americans never hear about the innocent civilians being killed every day as a result of their occupation of the country. George W. Bush labeled Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Palestine, and Afghanistan, among others, as “the axis of evil” in one of his speeches; couldn’t the United States be viewed the same way by people from these countries? Unfortunately, there are not that many choices for balanced news in America. Similar to the government in 1984, many people in the United States only know FOX News as their source of information. The education system in the U.S. is so impaired, 21% to 23% of adult Americans are not "able to locate information in text", can not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and are unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information." These people depend on the news on television, and much of the newscasts found on T.V. are biased and not entirely accurate. In addition, many of these stations promote labels such as “terrorists” and “insurgents.” Also, there aren’t many stations that do not support this type of labeling. In this way, the war in Iraq is justified, because the people the United States are fighting are not “people” they are “terrorists.” This type of labeling has made the American People go with the American governments’ agenda, because they are not fully aware that their enemies are human and that they have families and lives; they are simply “terrorists” and this thought has been perpetuated by the American media.
Another way that American society mimics 1984 is in the recently discussed wiretapping bill put forth by the bush administration. These wiretaps can be compared to the telescreens of 1984, and the startling thing about the real-world wiretaps is that the American people are beginning to accept them and actually want them passed. Similar to the telescreens, people simply will accept them as a way of life rather than question them, because the government has convinced them that they are for the public’s own good. What if these wiretaps were used to spy on the American public and invade their normal lives? Although many people would agree that it would be an invasion of personal privacy, many more would think that personal privacy is a small price to pay for the catching of these “terrorists,” whose existence might never be proven by these wiretaps. It would be wiser to invest that money in foreign relations and for perhaps making an agreement with the enemy. One should wonder why the government is using their funds in such a way. If we are fighting terrorists overseas, in the Middle East, why do we need these wiretaps at home?
This novel is probably the most profound and thought provoking piece that I have ever read. It has raised questions about the United States government, history, and the future that I have never thought of before. The book is an amazing story; in fact, it is not simply a story, but a prediction, one that spans across all time periods, and one that is becoming truer and truer as time goes on. It is the textbook for a totalitarian government, and a world within a book—one that does not ignore any subtle detail. The striking realism of Orwell’s prediction paints a picture in the reader’s mind, and inspires the reader to draw comparisons to the world around them. This novel is more than a novel, and has a deeper meaning than the foreshadowing, symbolism, and irony usually contained within a bestseller, although it is rich with those as well. This book challenges the mind and transforms the reader into a world of thought, and makes important points and inferences about society. It is unlike any book ever written, in that it is the most accurate prediction and observation of human society; the more I think about it, the more I realize how applicable the concepts of this tale are in the world. It poses the reader many questions of how to interpret it, and yet more come up even by simply thinking about the story. Although it was negative, it serves as a warning and as a reminder, of what human beings are capable of in the past and in the future. This book could only be written by a genius such as George Orwell; I rate this book 6 stars out of five. This story is the most accurate prediction ever cast about human society, and, despite being written in 1949, it still applies to today and Orwell’s concepts are still acclaimed, talked about, and, unfortunately, utilized. This story far surpasses any of its kind, and, in my opinion, is the cleverest book ever written.
Labels: 1984, Book Critiques