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George Orwell Use Of Propaganda In 1984

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The novel 1984 begins on a cold April morning in the major city of Airstrip One, Oceania, where, despite the advances of technology, the weather is still lousy and residents walk under the control of a totalitarian figurehead. Winston Smith is different ; he is set to rebel against the government. The first few pages focus on the reality of politics of the future society: the Police Patrol watch residents through their windows, and the Thought Police, with greater insidious power, watch residents elsewhere. Big Brother, the totalitarian figurehead, stares out from posters which are found all over the city, and telescreens broadcast the Party’s platform of news. Unfortunately, today Winston Smith and Big Brother are a modern surveillance state. Comparisons between Orwell’s novel about a tightly totalitarian future and today’s state …show more content…

The novel displays all manner of propaganda such as, the Party taking it to totalizing limits by being politically in control. Propaganda is used loosely today, “it is the full range of communication genres” (Yeo 51). There’s communication between genres, from news to novels and from social marketing to social networking. Moreover, propaganda is divided between propaganda of fiction and fact in Orwell’s novel. Julia, Winston’s lover and the only other person who hates the Party as much as he does, represents propaganda of fiction. She works in the Fictional Department in a mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines. The Fictional Department's job is primarily to entertain and stories that do not pretend to be anything but fictional can also do the job. The propaganda of fact passes lies for facts, but additionally because it does so indirectly to propagate values. Technically, propaganda and surveillance could pass as the same function but propaganda works upon thought and belief. Differently, “propaganda instils belief, surveillance policies it” (Yeo

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