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George Orwell's 1984: Methods of Suppression in 1984. A study of ways people were oppressed in the book.

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Methods of Suppression in 1984 George Orwell's anti-utopian novel 1984 paints a picture of a society in which the individual has no freedom, hope, or feeling. Three super states called Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia, divide and ravage the earth with perpetual war between them. The story takes place in Oceania, which consists of the Americas as well as Great Brittan. Nineteen-eighty Four chronicles Winston Smith's struggle to fight against the forever-reining, oppressive social system called the Party. Throughout 1984 several central themes through which the Party controls its members unfold - the first theme is dehumanization, the second theme is encroachment of privacy, and third theme is subtle erosions of freedom. Dehumanization, …show more content…

They keep a close eye on everyone with a device called a telescreen. The telescreen simultaneously broadcasts propaganda and records all of the activities within its vision. It can never be turned off, only turned down, and it can be found in all the homes of party members as well as all public areas. It says in Goldstein's book that "With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end," (Orwell 206). The telescreen keeps Big Brother in control. Without constant surveillance, the people would feel no outside pressure to act in an orthodox manner. In "Bye-bye, Big Brother" Peter Huber writes, "Without the telescreen there can be no Big Brother, or at least none quite so totalitarian as Orwell imagined" (2). For remote areas such as forests and mountains, the party places sound recording devices to make sure no place goes unmonitored. The party also puts a social stigma on privacy. In Newspeak, the official language of Oceania, the word for privacy is "ownlife" (Orwell 84). The Party establishes social programs for all of the members so that they will never have any free time: "In principle a Party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in bed" (Orwell 84). The Party even trains children to spy on their parents for symptoms of unorthodoxy. "Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst

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