Dangers Of Torture In 1984

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

In the story the country of Oceania is controlled by the government the thought police can see what is going on everywhere, people have no privacy, and for the most part people have to conform to Big Brother. The story may seem far fetched, but with the increase of technology and size of the government, tofay this civilization could be a realistic portrayal of America in a few decades. The story tracks Winston through his inter party work, to his rebellion against the oarty, to his capture. Winston worked for the inter party and got rid of past information. Winston realized that the party was ruining the life of citizens and he choose to join a rebellion against the inter party.

Initially, the imagery of this section is the memory that connects with the reader. This precisely articulated expressions and emotions of the characters brings life to the argument that itself it could not create. The preface to this interrogation, the period of torture Winston suffers, creates the mindset of helplessness and pain before Winston ever even discusses with O’Brien. “Always there were five or six men in black uniforms at him simultaneously. Sometimes it was firsts, sometimes it was truncheons, sometimes it was steel rods, sometimes it was boots. There were times he rolled about on the floor, as shameless as an animal…” (Orwell 263). All of this inhumane torture degraded our protagonist to a decrepit state. 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.”

Each of the ministries under the party are titled the opposite of what should be expected. This tactic is used by the party to make the people of Oceania obey Big Brother in a sort of twisted way. Each of the ministries holds a contradictory motive behind it. For example the Ministry of Peace deals with war. However, it is the Ministry of Love that really was “the really frightening one”(4). Winston, who would later find out, ascertained that inside the Ministry of Love was “delicate instruments that” would gradually wear someone down “by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning” (167). When one typically thinks of love, you never paint a picture in your mind of torture or cruelty. It’s obvious that the Ministry of Love uses cruelty to fulfill the wishes of Big Brother and for that reason it’s a place of torture. Winston Smith is unfortunately not careful enough with who he’s surrounded himself with during his daily life. This just goes to prove that no one is safe under Big Brother and so Winston’s so called “friend”,O’Brien, takes Winston as a hostage to the Ministry of Love. At the Ministry of Love Winston faces multiple hardships. Once Winston Smith is captured he is tortured by his biggest nightmare and he eventually surrenders to Big Brother’s

Nevertheless, the reader finds himself rooting for Winston because he is the “right” in a “wrong” society. The intended audience of this book does not see Oceania as a free society because, in Western culture, people need individualism to be free. This book depicts a society in which individualism is in every way prohibited. Therefore, Winston seems to stand out as a hero

Torture: The Tool of Mind Control “By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as a paradise” (Adolf Hitler Quotes). Being the leader of one of the greatest superpowers in the world, this gave Adolf Hitler the upper hand in creating his own utopia where the average civilian would live under his rule, and anyone that did not fit the category of his preference or rebelled the government would be murdered or tortured until they shared the same mindset as their leader. Hitler persuaded many German’s to hate the Jewish population because - in his opinion - they didn’t qualify as “the perfect race”.

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

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

Imagine a world where you are never safe. Your every move is monitored, and there is no one whom you can truly trust. A world where one group of all-powerful people can control the past through manipulation of facts and minds. This is the definition of Oceania, the home of Winston Smith in 1984. The book 1984 by George Orwell is a classic piece of literature read in schools around the world, and accidentally read by me over the summer. 1984 is a dystopian mix of science and realistic fiction, in which the year is, wait for it, 1984, and our main character Winston has to deal with both internal and external conflicts in the form of the Party, the ruling class of Oceania, and deciding whom he can love and trust, and who is spying for the Thought

Winston’s life is replete with misery and pain, but has been give brief moments of happiness and love by Orwell to create a sense of hope for Winston, and subsequently, hope for a future free of the imprisonment of totalitarianism, although Orwell makes clear throughout the novel that there is no happy ending. Totalitarianism does not allow the possibility of such an ending to thrive in the minds of people; If Winston were to escape this fate, Orwell’s definition of totalitarianism and everything that encompasses it would have been lost. Orwell has written the book in a way that the readers become so attached with Winstons character that he gains a form of individuality that can only be given by the reader. Winston is a symbol of the values democracy, love, peace, freedom, and decency which are found within a civilized society. When the character of Winston is destroyed, these values and connection to the reader are also destroyed with him as Winston Smith is a representation of the struggle faced between bad and good in every aspect of

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.

Bleak, blanched city. Grey buildings, colourless people. Perpetual solemnity. A world where the mere utterance of a word—or the thinking of a single thought—can result in death. London, Oceania. 1984. In the eponymous novel by George Orwell, Winston Smith, a citizen of this dystopia, struggles to find a way out of the mental prison imposed upon the country by the Party. From being directly under its thumb to an anti-government revolutionary, he explores the nature of the Party’s control and what makes it so effective—and how he can escape it. Aware that the very words he speaks could give away his intentions, he explores the idea that language, and how the Party controls it, is what gives them their power. Fighting to expand his understanding of the Party’s reasons, Winston entangles himself in its deepest secrets and as a result, is discovered and subsequently tortured and “corrected”. Monitoring and scrutinizing every thought in the minds of Oceanians, trying to reduce the possibility of thought-crime by changing the language they speak, and ultimately attempting to change the course of history, the Party gives a warning to anyone who may meddle where they don’t belong—“Ignorance is Strength”—but Winston did poor to heed their advice.

only a supporting role to the Police and Metropolitan Guards in the counterinsurgency, was ordered into action. They relied on mass arrests, torture to allegedly gain info on Tupamaros, and large cordon-and-search operations, where warrants weren’t needed. This was done to those allegedly accused of politically motivated crimes. The tortures consisted of: deprivation of water and food, prohibition to take care of psychological needs in the usual places, wrenching of limbs, use of handcuff and even having their heads submerged under water until they began to suffocate. The use of electrical needles, burning genital organs and anus, with cigarettes, were other accounts of torture. These brutalities had been practiced on innocent people who had yet to be tried in court.

Throughout the course of history torture has been practiced; Romans, Jews, Egyptians and several addition civilizations in history incorporated torture as a part of their justice system. Romans had crucifixion, Jews had stoning and Egyptians had desert sun death. All these acts of torture were thought as being necessary, or just. The first signs of torture can be found in 530AD, when the great Roman jurists adopted the virtues of torture as ‘the highest form of truth’. A Greek legal orator named, Demosthenes believed that “no statements made as a result of torture have ever been proved untrue” (Green). Centuries later, Italian and French officials rekindled Roman Law, to be solidated as a source of jurisdiction in civil law systems. During