Dangers Of Torture In 1984

The subsequent case study, prepared by James P. Pfiffner, Torture and Public Policy, (2010) analyzes the torture and abuse of war prisoners by United States military personnel in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following photographs of the abuse spread around the world in the fall of 2003. Pfiffner points out that the United States Military, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfield, and President George W. Bush assumed a role in the events leading up to the exploitation, even though it has never been corroborated that President Bush or Secretary of State Rumsfield directly condoned the abuse.

In the novel 1984, Orwell produced a social critique on totalitarianism and a future dystopia that made the world pause and think about our past, present and future. When reading this novel we all must take the time to think of the possibility that Orwell's world could come to pass. Orwell presents the concepts of power, marginalization, and resistance through physical, psychological, sexual and political control of the people of Oceania. The reader experiences the emotional ride through the eyes of Winston Smith, who was born into the oppressive life under the rule of Ingsoc. Readers are encouraged through Winston to adopt a negative opinion on the idea of communist rule and the inherent dangers of totalitarianism. The psychological

The pursuit of freedom and the longing for a better life and “knowledge give people power, and truth will set people free” are the common understanding of the human nature. In novel, the Oceania’s Party controlled life in a constant state of propaganda-induced fear through the four ministries of Peace, Love, Plenty, and Truth. Winston’s job at the Ministry of Truth involves revisions of historical documents and rewrites of news stories to reflect the Party’s infallibility. Because the Party was afraid of historical knowledge will form power that justify or encourage the present and the future. If history was idyllic, then people will act to re-create it; if the present was nightmarish, then people will be to subvert the present in order to create a good future. The fact of the matter, the Party, which carries out government policies in Oceania, rations food, issues clothing, and selects social activities. Both chocolate and tobacco are in short supply during this latest war. Public facilities were in shreds and patches, and most of people live in poverty. The

As human beings, there are distinct characteristics that separate us from feral animals: the ability to create, to appreciate art, to question the world and most importantly to sympathize for our kind. However, when that nature is stripped from us, we tend to become mindless, restricted, cold, and degraded as an entire race. This image is the setting of George Orwell’s last book, 1984. It is a world where human thought is limited, war and poverty lie on every street corner, and one cannot trust nobody or nothing. This system is all due to the one reigning political entity, the Ingsoc Party, which exercises complete power over all aspects of life for all citizens. There is no creative or intellectual thought, no art, culture or history, and no compassion or love for one another. The citizens of the 1984 world, Oceania, are trapped in an imaginary dome revolving around the Party with only one correct ideology, no accurate records of pre-Party time and only one godly figure that they may love, Big Brother. The protagonist of the story, however, is Winston Smith, a worker for the Outer party and a victim under the Party’s regime. Although quite unremarkable, he is one of the few left who dares to think against the Party’s dictatorship. Along with all other rebels — or “thought criminals” — Winston goes through a cycle of rebelling, getting caught, getting “cured” and then extinguished from

In George Orwell’s 1984, Winston embarks on a journey to gain knowledge on the interworking and purpose of his oppressors, The Party. The journey follows Campbell’s Hero’s Journey model rather closely and elements of this journey are often key to the progression of 1984’s plot as a whole. Winston knows that he is different from the “mindless drones” he calls his fellow Oceania citizens. He knows that he feels bound by some external force and he has a confident feeling that he knows this is the party. What he does not quite understand is how and why this external force controls him and his way of thinking the way that it does. He becomes obsessed with this question of truth and he involuntarily begins to devote his entire thinking to his metal dilemma. This is the psychological journey that Winston thrusts

The war-torn world George Orwell creates for 1984 is a bleak, heartless place, full of grey shaded and apocalyptic descriptions. The citizens that live in Oceania do not live, they are slaves whose sole purpose is to better the party, a harsh totalitarian government, full of ever watchful leaders who monitor the citizens at all time, watching their every move and seeing their every thought. Our protagonist, is Winston Smith who lives in this dystopia. Winston lives a life that like most of Oceania lacks basic rights and involves little freedom serving the purpose as our main protagonist developing the theme of the novel. These problems however, are exasperated by the society government that constantly worsens in the course of his life.

Syme, a co-worker of the protagonist Winston Smith, displays his adoration of the ongoing establishment of the language of Newspeak. Syme subtly reveals to the readers how this implementation of a new and different language can lead to the Party’s absolute control over the citizens of Oceania. Through the deterioration of language, the thoughts of people become limited, and their individual opinions restrained. This occurs because the thoughts and judgments of individuals rely on language to communicate the distinctive ideas that they hold. The reduced vocabulary in Newspeak allows the Party to easily control the minds of the members of the state. Moreover, the theme of manipulation is also present in the merciless torture of the citizens of Oceania, in the Ministry of Love. O’Brien clearly manipulates Winston by using his deepest fear to bend him into the quintessential Party member: “For you, [rats] are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand, even if you wished to. You will do what is required of you” (339). Winston’s fear of rats being used for torture grants O’Brien the ability to manipulate Winston into doing whatever he pleases. The use of fear and torture is a clear form of dominance in the novel, as it is used to twist the person’s thoughts and actions into something that would satisfy the Party’s principles. As stated by O’Brien, “courage and cowardice are not involved” (339) in Winston’s case, because, as he is

Life in Oceania is dull, lifeless and described as ‘swimming against the current’. Orwell creates a dire feeling of hopelessness through his destruction of friendship, family, love and individual thoughts. Love and sex are no longer accepted under the totalitarian regime and Winston is therein forced to suppress all his sexual desires treating sex as merely a procreative duty. His marriage to Katherine was purely ‘[their] duty to the Party’ whose end was the creation of new party members. This shows that in a totalitarian world it is wholly necessary to adhere to the constraints enforced by a government not only for personal salvation but also for the survival of the entirety of the human race.

A politically weak Winston doesn’t understand the full effects of rewriting one paragraph so that it shows Big Brother – the leader of the Party – as correct on a speech concerning an issue involving a war that Oceania was involved in. By rewriting this speech Winston makes Big Brother look more credible and allows him an easy opportunity to gain more political power, creating more class distinction and greater oppression from the Party. Being both financially and politically powerless, the average people of Oceania are clearly in a lower social class than those at the top of the Party and are forced to lead strictly controlled lives.

First of all, the Party in Oceania strives to control every aspect of its subject’s lives and thoughts. It is very apparent by the use of doublethink and the perpetual forced viewpoints and ideology of the Party into its members. The Party has absolute control over the people for they “... control matter because we control the mind” (Orwell, 265). This gives way to causing Winston a great deal of problems for he believes he can rise against the Party, but in fact it only

In a world where manipulation is required, thought is crime, and love is forbidden, it is questioned how much of a person is left once his or her life is stripped of such basic freedoms. This is the question a reader asks as he or she is immersed into the world George Orwell created in his classic novel, 1984. As Winston Smith, the main character in Orwell’s novel, navigates through the cruel and oppressive society of Oceania, readers are allowed to see how the oppressiveness of the world in which he lives affects the lives of not only Winston but also the society as a whole. However, as time passes, Winston becomes a character that starts to inwardly question the world around him while being forced to outwardly conform for his own safety. Throughout the novel, a reader can begin to compare the feelings and thoughts of Winston to the mass majority of the population that continues to blindly conform to the government of Oceania. In this contrast, one can begin to understand how the relationship between outward conformity and inward inquisition contributes to the theme of oppression and the meaning of the work as a whole by showing the oppression that Winston feels through his inner thoughts.

Gaul Rahman, a suspected Afghan radical, was arrested and brought to a CIA-run prison within six weeks of the 9/11 attacks. Rahman was detained for the purposes of providing inside information on the bombings, as well as to shed light on possible future terrorist attacks to be committed on United States soil. A month after his arrival at the prison, guards entered his cell to discover a gruesome sight. As quoted by the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture, “In November 2002, Gaul Rahman was shackled to his cell wall and made to rest unclothed on the bare concrete floor. The next day, the guards found Gaul Rahman’s dead body.” The junior officer that insisted on such treatment of Rahman was recommended by the CIA to receive a cash award of $2,500 for his superior work. Though the CIA praised the officer, many American citizens were appalled at Rahman’s treatment as detailed in the report, and the public became divided over whether Rahman’s treatment was humane. The concept of torture as a just means of security has become a significant source of dispute among the American public. With such divisiveness having the potential to create further discord in regards to the justice system and additional situations in which the use of torture is considered, a re-evaluation of interrogation policies is crucial to gain a position of solidarity on the issue. Despite the belief that torture is an effective means of combating terrorism against domestic interests, the need for

We must also consider the fact that Winston does not believe it to be possible for the Party to be “overthrown from within.” This is due to several reasons as well. Just as The Ministry of Truth has its hands in media, romanticizing the persecution of those who have committed thoughtcrimes, they also manipulate education; raising Oceania’s children as perfect party members. At an early age they are indoctrinated into an organization called “The Spies” in which they are taught to keep an eye out on not only their neighbors, but their parents as well. That, in addition to the presence of telescreens and Thoughtpolice make it extremely difficult for dissidents to pass their revolutionary ideas to the future generation, “[the Party’s] enemies had no way of coming together or even identifying one another.”

Throughout Orwell's novel, he conveys many different themes and motives to get his ultimate point across. From the dangers of Totalitarianism, to the powerful effects of psychological manipulation, he seems to cover them all. But the theme I do not agree with would be Orwell's argument that physical abuse and torture controls all other functions of the body. I do not agree that physical torture is the strongest method of manipulation. The strongest method has to be on a psychological level, because that is what controls our whole life.

Because the conservatives thought the vets lost the war, they treated them without respect. That is why the police believed they could torture a vet who received torture at the hands of the enemy.