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Examples Of Dystopian Control In 1984

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Dystopian Control Over Society in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four In most dystopian novels, a control over society is clearly represented, whether it be the controlling of citizen activities, or the watching over of citizens and their actions. Dystopian literature also includes one interesting aspect in their reads. They include a protagonist that wants to break free of their ties to the controlled society and find out if there is a world or society that is beyond the one that they are living in, even if it means death. Winston Smith, the protagonist in the novel, is constantly exposed to these dystopian controls. Whether it be the use of telescreens, the altering of historical events, or the changing of the society's language in George …show more content…

In the novel, telescreens are recognized as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, the leader of Oceania. They watch the protagonist’s every move and pick up any sound made by the main character, even if it is just the scratching of the back. These telescreens can also broadcast people live as they give commands to their viewers. It is an ingenious way to control society since everyone is required to have a telescreen in their living space, including the protagonist Winston. One day Winston is ‘hectored’ by a gymnastics mistress to do the full stretch in his Daily Jerks, a daily exercise program broadcasted on the telescreen, “The gymnastics mistress who hectors Winston from the telescreen during the Physical Jerks…” (Hunt 5-6). The use of the word ‘Hector’, by Hunt, depicts that she is talking to him in a controlling way, bullying him to stretch the full length during the Physical Jerks. When Winston is out of view of these telescreens, he likes to write in a diary about what he is thinking at the current moment. Winston’s first diary entry is about war-flicks he had seen the previous day on the telescreen, “Winston’s first diary entry is an account of the ‘‘war-flicks’’ seen the previous day. He recalls the spectacle of refugees being machine-gunned at sea, and a man desperately trying to swim to safety before being riddled with bullets” (Hunt 8-9). War-flicks are a common practise of propaganda, …show more content…

In Winston´s state Oceania, there is a building called the ministry of truth, where the altering of history occurs. One day as Winston is doing his Daily Jerks, his mind starts to drift into the past where he remembers that Oceania had been in an alliance with Eurasia, but at the current time, The Party’s ministry of truth claims that they had never had an alliance with Eurasia, and have always been enemies of the state, “The party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness” (Orwell 37). In the quote, the narrator admits that the knowledge of Oceania being in alliance with Eurasia is now only in Winston’s consciousness, meaning that that information was either not true to begin with, or was changed by the ministry of truth. If Winston can not prove that this exists, then it does not, which is why it is so easy for The Party to control the population by just saying it never happened, and with no proof to support that it did, a dystopian loop of lies from the past is created to rival what the protagonist and population really believe about the past, and what really happened. A few days later, Winston is at work as the narrator explains three openings in the walls of his cubicle, one of them being called the “memory hole”, where any scrap paper is

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