Themes in 1984 Essay

In Orwells novel, 1984 control is a major theme appearing over and over again, both in physical and emotional forms. Psychological control is a major theme occurring in 1984 and Orwell shows how a totalitarian government could gain psychological control using their power to control history and technology. Orwell's bleak tale portrays a future in which society is strictly regulated by the Party, a political body which continually emphasizes three slogans. Those slogans offer insights into Orwell's principal cautions about the danger society can pose to the rights, will, and freedom of the individual.

The citizens in 1984 are told that Big Brother is the leader of their nation and the head of the Party. The motto of the party is, Those who control the past, control the future: who controls the present controls the past (32) and the party does this by employing people like Winston to rewrite the past and edit things so that Big Brother is always right and viewed in a positive light. Big Brother used a totalitarian government to control history and technology to maintain psychological control over the citizens of the nation. The party went back and rewrote everything in history from a simple death to a new enemy in war, "People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word." (19)Information given to citizens is usually formatted to fit what the Party wants people to think, and since there are no pictures to prove anything a persons mind suffers and everything in their head becomes fuzzy and accept everything said to them. And when memory failed and written records were falsifiedwhen that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested (79). With the Party having the upperhand in this situation and having people like Winston to constantly rewrite everything, the party has the power to control the past and ultimately control the future. With this power to control the future, "The past was dead, the future was unimaginable." (28) and they use this to manipulate the human mind and enforce beliefs to fit the partys needs.

Technology is used to control the physical and psychological nature of the people in the nation. With telescreens everywhere with microphones in them constantly monitoring them, society is constantly in a paranoid state, "Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom." (64) a simple twitch may be viewed by the Party as a nervous or guilty reaction to something you thought of, and you would be killed in an instant theyll shoot me i dont care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother" (20). This kind of psychological control is frightening because the citizens are not only being watched by authorities, but anyone can turn them in for suspicious activities, even children, "Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it... All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children." Beginning at an early age, children were brainwashed and encouraged to spy on their parents by an organization called the Junior Spies. This organization destroyed family structure by having children report any instance of disloyalty to the Party. The telescrenes and children are a perfect example to how the totalitarian government abuses technology for its own purpose instead of using their knowledge to improve civilization. Another example of a way the Party has psychological control is through newspeak, "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?... Has it ever occurred to your, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?... 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." (52) with newspeak becoming more and more limited every year, the Party will have more control because they will limit peoples thought more and more every year.

Another theme in the book is the Partys absolute disgust in love and sexuality which causes the nation to be isolated from one another. Since there are few bonds stronger than those developed from loving relationships among family, friends, and lovers, the only entity acceptable to love in Oceania is the face of the Party, Big Brother. This restriction is necessary to achieving complete power and control over its citizens, as the Party must dissolve all loyalties derived through love, sex, and family and redirect them upon itself. By this means, the Party has managed to wedge itself between one of the most powerful instinctual bonds to turn parental devotion into fear and children into faithful machines of the Party as an extension of the Thought Police. Winston's memories of his mother's love "in a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason"(28). Technically, consorting with prostitutes is forbidden, but it seems to be tacitly encouraged just the same, as a means of relieving natural tensions and Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema. (65) the Party even has the Junior Anti-Sex League which is used to control the revolting desire and teach sexual orthodoxy to the young and is another way in which the Party is limiting relationships with one another so that a persons only relationship would be with Big Brother. The Party does not wish to allow the development of loyalties to any other acts or persons than itself, All marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose and though the principle was never clearly statedpermission was always refused if the couple gave the impression of being physically attracted to each other (57). By the Party doing this they are completely eliminating feelings of trust, so that people have to put complete trust in the Party. Through its control of marriages and sexual mores, the Party resembles a conservative religious institution. By attempting to control people's loyalties and loves, and redirect those towards itself, the Party posits itself as the end and the ultimate salvation. Katharine even calls sex "our duty to the Party," and it is a weekly ritual almost like a martyrdom, in which both she and Winston are uncomfortable but must suffer through it anyway. Clearly, Winston's desire to have a woman of his own with whom sex could be pleasurable is yet another instance of his heretical tendencies. It does not seem something that he has experienced yet, since his encounter with the prostitute was somehow dirtying in every sense. His desire to evoke desire is itself thoughtcrime, due to the fact that "the sex instinct creates a world of it's own"(110) and is therefore out the Partys control and has to be alienated. Love, is the clear anti-thesis to everything the Party stands for, has heavy ironic meaning in 1984. The language along with the emotion is manipulated by the Party to gain control and more power of and over the people. The Ministry of Love, for example, "concerns itself with torture", and the destruction of the individual is referred to as "love for Big Brother".

The three slogans of the Party, War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. (3) are all contradictory. The Party would view ignorance as an incredible asset for a person to have, because then they would just roll with everything Big Brother is saying, even though last week something completely different was reported. This means that the people of Oceania are kept ignorant to what the party is really doing and how poor the conditions they live in truly are. This level of ignorance is achieved through three main tactics. The first of these is the restriction of language. The Party created a new language known as Newspeak which essentially limits the thoughts of people and suppresses memory so that there is no possible way to rebel against the Party. The second is method of keeping people ignorant is the falsification of the news, and events that took place in history. The book explains it as And when memory failed and written records were falsifiedwhen that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.

In the novel 1984, Orwell uses technology, love/ lust, sexuality, and family and psychological and physical manipulation to have the Party gain complete totalitarian control over the people of Oceania. Orwell used these things because we all take these items for granted, and even now in this day and age we have cameras watching us in stores and schools and even on the street for protection against criminals, or, to catch criminals. Orwell uses lust/love, sexuality and family because it is something you never think about. People never think that some day love wont exist, or that their closest relatives will turn them in to the police for a committed crime, and I believe Orwell chose to use sexuality because it is such a raw, animalistic urge all humans have and we simply cannot imagine it being taken away. George Orwell used psychological and physical control partly because that is what he was around when he was writing the novel and partly because humans dont really think about what it would be like if every movement and thought you made you could be killed for, even something as ridiculous as an eye twitch.