“1984 is not the book you breeze through in a weekend, skipping on to your next read without offering a moment’s reflection. It is a very serious work with a very serious message. I think most people are aware of its less than cheerful ideas—it is overwhelmingly dystopian—and while I read it previously in high school, I do not recall Orwell’s gravity and cautionary tone; I remember merely labeling it depressing. (I believe it was simply a condition of my age and nothing lacking in Orwell’s novel.)
Written in the 1940’s, Orwell’s classic describes a grim future ruled by an oppressive government identified as “the Party,” whose ideology is “Ingsoc” (English Socialism) and whose leader is Big Brother. Taking place in 1984, Orwell’s world is divided into three powers that are more or less equal in strength: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. The novel centers on Winston Smith, who lives in Oceania and works as a clerk for the Outer Party. His tasks involve the literal rewriting of history so that it conforms with the current events of the government, meticulously ensuring that the Party is never documented as being in the wrong. Since Winston is a member of the Outer Party, which comprises approximately 13% of the Oceanic population, his activities are supervised, and he is surrounded by teleprompters, posters of Big Brother and banners with slogans. Furthermore, he is banned from reading, writing or socializing unless expressly permitted by the Party, and sex is forbidden. The Inner Party (the powerful, elite members of government) accounts for less than 2% of Oceania’s population, and 85% of the population is made up of the uneducated Proletariat, or Proles, who are viewed by the Inner Party as insignificant animals.
Winston attends work each day and performs his duties diligently, but as his mind starts to probe into the morals of his job, and as he starts to question the motives of the government, his resentment of the subjugation and cruel conditions blossoms into a deep hatred for the Party. He craves freedom and refuses to accept the absurdities that are forced upon him, such as one day believing that Oceania is at war with Eurasia, and the next believing that Oceania is and always has been at war with Eastasia. Encouraged by the fear of being captured by the Thought Police and hauled away and tortured, he does his best to remain camouflaged with the rest of the party members—seemingly patriotic and obedient. Yet, something in him attracts the attention of fellow Outer Party member, Julia, and eager for human contact and companionship, they become sexually involved. It is not long, however, before they are discovered.
Part of Winston’s job entails gradually incorporating the Party’s new language, termed “Newspeak,” into the literature he revises. The primary purpose of Newspeak is to displace English or “Oldspeak,” eliminating words that serve no purpose to the Party and replacing them with words that reinforce the Party’s authority. Examples include the words “Ingsoc,” “doublethink” (defined below), and “crimethink” (thought-crime, or having disloyal thoughts). Newspeak is one of several of the Party’s tools for implementing mind control:
By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like ‘freedom is slavery’ when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
Whatever change that occurs in the present (and is ironically constituted with the help of Winston), everyone must accept it as though it were no change at all. Yet, as Winston reasons, the Party is essentially asking him to believe that 2 + 2 = 5, but 2 + 2 does NOT equal 5. As O’Brien explains, “nothing exists except through human consciousness,” so the Party bends reality in order to control thought. It is later that the true ideology of the Party is revealed: “Power is not a means; it is an end...The object of power is power.” Thus, the Party operates under the guise of socialism, much as Stalin did, but it wields power only for power’s sake—to maintain the Party’s endless, supreme control.
1984 is a complicated system of mind games. At first glance, its plot seems absurd, and the reader might feel much like Winston, wondering, ‘How am I supposed to believe this?’ Yet, to his great credit, Orwell renders 1984 quite believable. I am not sure whether Orwell believed that the events in his novel could actually come to pass, but given that he formed his thesis while WWII was still underway, he might very well have. Either way, he is undoubtedly cautioning against the mechanic disuse of the mind, which could lead to the shedding of our humanity and evolution into unthinking machines. Fortunately, there is hope, even for the inhabitants of 1984: “They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.” It is a frightening novel, but I still feel everyone should read it.
Doublethink: To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed.”
Jamie wrote this review Friday, February 10, 2012.
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