Jennifer Rosas
Ms. Tobenkin
AP English Literature
14 August 2015
1984 Analysis Paper 1984, by George Orwell is a novel depicting life within a totalitarian government, where there is no freedom and they control all features of human life. George Orwell exposes the ways of this system through the point of view of, Winston Smith, the main character. Big Brother represents the oppressive figure and the Party. The Party conducts numerous experimental methods to implement their totalitarian system to its participants, methods such as manipulation to the language they spoke and the way they thought. The party frightens the citizens by threatening them with violence and torture and the government controls everything and everyone. The technology
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Removing certain words created difficulties for the individuals to express their ideas and thoughts. Adjustments are continuously being made by the Party to improve their language and suppress the way of thinking of their citizens. “We’re destroying words ---scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won’t contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050”. (Orwell, 51) Syme explains that their government is not only creating a new language but they are also destroying their culture by doing this future generations will no longer understand due to phrases no longer existing. In order to stay in control the government manipulates the language there is very little to no possibility that anyone will question or overthrow the government because they will be at a loss for words. “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it”. (52) Another significant issue in this book is thought crime, in which the citizens are not allowed to be individuals and come up with their own ideas but instead must follow those created by the
In 1984, Orwell talks about how language can be misused to deceive the people. Today, political precision and euphemism are equally inescapable and ridiculed. The novel also discussed the corruption of verbal progression under the direction of Big Brother. The formation of the Newspeak dictionary is mentioned very often in the book. The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a moderate form of expression for Oceania but to make sure that all additional methods of thought impossible. This is shown today by many public figures who speak on behave of the United States. For example, “Politically correct” language is a form of speech that stumps thought. Autocorrect and autocomplete functions frequently command our phrasing and the language of texting is a skill that has become increasingly more
Orwell designed Newspeak to demonstrate the importance of language to ideas. Orwell thought literature was dying out, which he connected with dying language (Kazin 235). Language is not only the means by which an idea is expressed, but also the means by which an idea is thought. The purposes of Newspeak are to allow for the expression of thoughts Ingsoc deemed proper and make impossible the expression of thoughts Ingsoc deemed heretical (Kendrick 344). According to Orwell, control of thought follows control of language. The government in 1984 means to control the language, and
In the novel 1984 George Orwell demonstrates how the government maintains power through mind control and manipulation of the masses. Orwell hints that when the government (Big Brother), holds too much power they become crooked and devious towards the rest of the population. In a nutshell Orwell is conveying that a corrupt government destroys all chances for an ideal society. Collectively, George Orwell made a prediction of what was going to happen, and it has become a reality to some extent. Overall this is a great book for the current political state.
“1984” is an imaginary novel wrote by George Orwell in 1949. The novel takes place in a fictional country called Oceania. In 1984, the society is a mess in the control of the “big brother”, people are leveled by three three classes: the upper class party, the middle outer class party, and the lower class proles. But the lower class make up 85 per cent of the people in Oceania. Winston is a outer class party member working for the “big brother”. This novel uses Winston as an example to show how the “big brother” takes the control by mind, manipulation and technology.
The government created a new form of English which was called, “Newspeak, in which vocabulary is strictly limited by government fiat. The goal is to make it increasingly difficult to express ideas that contradict the official line.”
The government is clearly trying to change everyone’s vocabulary/the way they speak. They are trying to make everyone speak “newspeak”, this is vital to the government’s manipulation so they can take more control over us. The exact same thing happened in real time after the war in 1948, this form of manipulation is called “Logocracy”.
“Don 't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it” In 1984 every thought is considered a threat towards the party.
The novel 1984 by George Orwell is an eye opening novel which showed how Big Brother had full control over his citizens. He created a sense of fear into the minds of the manipulated. Protagonist Winston Smith went through a series of challenges for trying to go against Big Brother due to the fact that they used physical force and psychologically manipulated their citizens to gain authority against their citizens.
Changing the language to such an extent allows the government to limit the thought of the people, preventing possible talk of
In Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four the power of language empowered the Party to solidify their control over the citizens. The politicians isolated the citizen’s state of mind instructing them to do what was asked of them. They were not able to have their own critical thinking because they worked like machines who were functioned by the Party. Throughout the entire novel, Newspeak was used by the Party to take the citizens of Oceania to such an extent where their state of mind was isolated from their own self and they were only able to describe their actions with one word that was already “decided” by the government in the language of Newspeak. The citizens are isolated from their lives not only through the use of Newspeak but as well as the
1984 is a problematic world where conflict is carried throughout the whole novel. Orwell’s depiction of society is shown and what he believed would become if events grew worse: the spread of communism. Instead of being forward and using communists as the enemy, Orwell creates a protective and intimidating image of the government and uses the coincidental name Big Brother. This wicked party promotes a totalitarian society and erases all truth, forcing Winston Smith’s to conceal his
Written by George Orwell in 1949, 1984 introduces the reader to the totalitarian country of Oceania, ruled by the all-knowing Big Brother and the Party. Winston Smith, a single man quietly opposing the Party, sees Big Brother two different ways in the novel; for almost the entire novel he hates everything that Big Brother is. After his capture, the original hatred of Big Brother is changed to absolute love, through the use of highly developed torture methods. Thus the reader, through the eyes of Winston, is able to make connections between the two sides of Big Brother and the similarities to God.
The book, 1984 by George Orwell, is about the external and internal conflicts that take place between the two main characters, Winston and Big Brother and how the two government ideas of Democracy and totalitarianism take place within the novel. Orwell wrote the novel around the idea of communism/totalitarianism and how society would be like if it were to take place. In Orwell’s mind democracy and communism created two main characters, Winston and Big Brother. Big Brother represents the idea of the totalitarian party. In comparison to Big Brother, Winston gives and represents the main thought of freedom, in the novel Winston has to worry about the control of the thought police because he knows that the government with kill anyone who
In George Orwell’s “1984”, Orwell is cautioning his readers of the dangers of totalitarianism and the loss of language.
Undoubtedly, the political aim of Newspeak is to surround people in a conformist reality and to isolate them from the real world. For the Inner Party, the goal is to produce an unquestioning reality and make “thought crimes” impossible. By manipulating the language, the government can alter the public’s way of thinking. This is possible because without language there is no way to express a thought. So when words that define a specific thought are entirely erased from a language that thought becomes more challenging to imagine and communicate. This is why the government in Nineteen Eighty-Four essentially tries to reduce the Newspeak vocabulary. One of the Newspeak engineers says “we’re cutting the language down to the bone . . . Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year…In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible,” explains the Newspeak engineer, “because there will be no words in which to express it” (Orwell, 55). To control language, as with Newspeak, is to control the variety of thought. It is consequently perfect for a totalitarian system, in which the government needs to rely on a submissive public which lacks free thought and which has an unlimited acceptance of mistakes, both past and present. Such constricted social thinking is what the Inner Party