1984 Comparison Essay

With the power hungry Party and the most acknowledged face of Big Brother watching and monitoring everybody, the story of “1984” by George Orwell expresses the utmost control over their people and have the absolute power with their country Oceania. The Party believes that Big Brother will live on forever, because of the constant removal of those who are unfaithful and the rewriting of history. However, with the example of the main character showing disobedience against the Party, there is a chance for this type of ruling to fail and be destroyed by the people. The main possible cause of the fall of Big Brother is most likely the underestimation of the power of the people.

1984, a novel by George Orwell, represents a dystopian society in which the people of Oceania are surveilled by the government almost all the time and have no freedoms. Today, citizens of the United States and other countries are watched in a similar way. Though different technological and personal ways of keeping watch on society than 1984, today’s government is also able to monitor most aspects of the people’s life. 1984 might be a dystopian society, but today’s condition seems to be moving towards that controlling state, where the citizens are surveilled by the government at all times.

In George Orwell’s 1984, the strategies used by Oceania’s Political Party to achieve total control over the population are similar to the ones employed by Joseph Stalin during his reign. Indeed, the tactics used by Oceania’s Party truly depicts the brutal totalitarian society of Stalin’s Russia. In making a connection between Stalin’s Russia and Big Brothers’ Oceania, each Political Party implements a psychological and physical manipulation over society by controlling the information and the language with the help of technology.

During Joseph Stalin’s regime of the Soviet Union, 1984, the Classic Dystopian novel by George Orwell, was burned and banned, because the book shone a negative light on communism. The book, 1984, follows the life of Winston Smith, who lives in a country called Oceania. Oceania is a totalitarian society, ruled by a government known as The Party, whose leader is called Big Brother. In Oceania, every movement and sound every person makes is constantly surveillanced, and one wrong facial expression, statement, or action can cause the ‘Thought Police’ to take the person away to never be seen again. A small percentage of the population questions The Party’s dictatorship, and the novel follows Winston’s struggles to keep his hatred of The Party

1984 by George Orwell is a novel set in a dystopian near-future London, the chief city of Airstrip One, Oceania. The people in Oceania are under the control of the Party. Big Brother, or BB, is the face of the Party and the leader of this great power that rules over Oceania. He is a dominant figure who acts as a trustworthy entity for the people he governs, but ironically is their worst enemy in many ways. His posters, captioned “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”, can be seen everywhere in the streets of London. These posters give the reader a physical description of what one can imagine Big Brother to look like. He is a man of about forty-five with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features that make him look scary but leader-like. Most people in this society are unaware of how they are brainwashed and controlled by the Party. Big Brother controls Oceania with various carefully designed techniques, some of which are: keeping the Outer Party in control with the 24-hour surveillance, Reality Control and by controlling the proles -- by keeping them ignorant and luring them through privileges.

Stalin like Hitler “used propaganda, censorship, and terror to force his will on the Soviet people. Government newspapers glorified work and Stalin himself. Secret police spied on citizens, and anyone who refused to praise Stalin and the state faced severe punishment, even death” (“The Soviet”, n.d.).

Considering that the book was published in 1948, in the start of the Cold War, the political connotation of this book was instantly interpreted as a criticism to the Soviet Union and their autocratic rule, mainly because of the parallels and allusions Orwell brought from this country. For instance the resemblance of Big Brother which is describe as “the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features”(Orwell 4) is an accurate description of the 1948 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, hinting a parallel Orwell established between both of them. Common practices like cult of personality and his rivalry with previous party members (in Stalin’s case Trotsky and in Big Brother’s case Goldstein) show that the character is not only physically similar, but that Big Brother is an allusion to the Soviet leader. Hence Orwell also alludes the alteration of history and photographs in Winston´s working place to the similar practices made in the USSR under Stalin, where photos were edited when people condemned by treason appeared on it. The constant wars the country is facing alludes to the multiple wars that took place during the first half of the twentieth century, as the author states that their society was constantly at war, which is an allusion to his present. By alluding to the present and to the USSR, Orwell convinces the western reader of the dangers of these dictatorial societies, by drawing a parallel between 1984 society and their cold war

Since the beginning of humanity, there have always been the rulers, and the ruled. The rulers have always been the government, and the ruled has always been the people. One would believe that the government would be truthful and be interested in their people's well being, but clearly, this is not the case. In fact, lies are often more common than the truth. Facts are changed based on the governing party's current needs. The government wants to control their people, to have an unquestioning, thoughtless population that make them more powerful, as this is their main priority. As a generalisation, the government is more interested in their well-being than that of the people who drive it.

The description of Big Brother himself bears a physical resemblance to Stalin and his cult of personality. Orwell's Big Brother is an all-seeing, all-knowing figure with ultimate authority. Soviet Russia was Orwellian in the sense that individual thought was eliminated and all emotion was directed towards the nation and the figure of Stalin himself. It is difficult to find accurate accounts of specific relationships that occurred in Soviet Russia. However, Orwell’s 1984 bears such close resemblance to Soviet Russia that it gives an accurate example of the ultimate failure of love between two individuals in a totalitarian regime. In 1984, the goal of the Party was to eliminate love and loyalty because these two qualities create bonds between two people. It is these bonds that are the biggest threat to the Party because they result in Ownlife. The Party

In every realistic situation in a Communist state, there will always be people who run the government and have more wealth than others leaving a pure form of Communism impossible to obtain. In 1984 a Communist culture is shown and represents a society that isn’t structured to look exactly like Communism. Overall the people of the state do not have a good life and the Thought Police are always on standby to break down rebellions little by little and take out rebels one at a time. The Thought Police function in this manner so that there isn’t a possibility of there ever being enough people to start a rebellion. By doing so, Big Brother is able to instill a fear amongst the people of the state, a fear of the unknown. The people, particularly the proletarians, are kept in line by being placed into a constant state of apprehension, fearful of not knowing what may happen to them. The party slogans and the actions of the Thought Police are used as governmental props to provide a false sense of security to the people of the state. The security provided leaves people in a position of confusion, where they don’t know if they are threatened by the Thought Police or comforted by their actions. This leaves them unsure of what course of action to take, forcing them into a docile and submissive position. Rebels within the 1984 society stand out

Things you wrote about in 1948 for your book 1984 still apply in today’s society. “Big Brother” could still represent today’s government with them always watching what we do. The totalitarian government is most oppressive than government but, they are both stern about the rules they want us to live. People don’t always like what the government or in your case “Big Brother” does and people want the government to go down such as Winston Smith when he writes in his diary “down with Big Brother” several times in all capital letters half way down the page. He doesn’t agree with Big Brother but, knows that he cannot speak out against his government because they do not have the freedom of speech that we do. As Goldstein was an advocate for freedom

The manipulation of information in 1984 is a significant factor of its continual submission of its citizens to the Great Power. Changing information may also lead to the power of changing the past. This is obvious and an intention of Big Brother, his continual success is bleakly based upon his power to lie. There are scenarios we see today that perfectly incorporate to 1984.

”Nobody has ever seen Big Brother. He is a face on the hoardings, a voice on the telescreen. We may be reasonably sure that he will never die, and there is already considerable uncertainty as to when he was born.” The plot of 1984 is created around the myth of Big Brother. He watches you and everything you do, and those who think or act in a way that is not wanted by the leading

The description of Big Brother himself bears a physical resemblance to Stalin and his cult of personality. Orwell's Big Brother is an all-seeing, all-knowing figure with ultimate authority. Soviet Russia was Orwellian in the sense that individual thought was

The novel 1984 was written in the midst of the Cold War, occurring from 1947 until 1991. The Cold War was an indirect battle between the US and the USSR involving clashing beliefs. Neither side was ever in real battle with the other but they fought for their own beliefs, The USSR fought for Communism and the US fought for Capitalism ("The Cuban Missile Crisis). One of the prominent rulers during the Cold War was Joseph Stalin. Stalin was born a serf, a laborer who worked underneath a lords estate, but became the Supreme Leader of the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953.A question is often, how do these rulers gain so much power? Stalin’s rise to power began in 1905 when he attended a conference in Finland as a delegate. Joseph Stalin is then appointed to the Party’s Central Committee by Vladimir Lenin in 1912, and in 1922, he was chosen as General Secretary of the Communist Party. Stalin took the path of slowly working his way up the hierarchy to gain his own power (Joseph Stalin Timeline).