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George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four 1984 Essay

Decent Essays

Nineteen Eighty Four, the classic dystopian text of George Orwell, serves as a political warning to future generations about the dangers of totalitarian societies. Orwell urgently relays this warning through the use of various powerful symbols such as doublethink and the telescreen, which reinforce the idea of psychological and physical control. Orwell also uses symbols such as Winston’s journal and the glass paperweight to reinforce the idea of intellectual rebellion and the desire to diverge against a higher authority. Orwell’s use of reoccurring symbols in the text allows the developed ideas to be clearer to the audience. One of the party’s main goals is to control its people thoughts; they are able to accomplish this by deliberately weakening one’s recollection of the past. The party is able to replace individual’s memories with its own version of the truth by …show more content…

The Party floods residents of Oceania with psychological motivation designed to overwhelm the mind’s capacity for independent thought. It also uses advanced methods of technology to control one’s every move. Yet Winston, who although is more or less controlled by Big Brother, manages to somewhat diverge. Moreover, Orwell reinforces the idea of intellectual rebellion and ultimate control through the use of many unique symbols. The paperweight, the proles and the dust all show Winston’s desire to connect with the past, something completely forbidden by the party. Winston’s journal acts as a symbol to illustrate his desire to rebel. Whereas doublethink symbolises the psychological control Big Brother has on the people of Oceania and the telescreens symbolises the physical control he has over his subjects. Orwell’s main goal in writing Nineteen Eighty Four was to warn future generations about the dangers of totalitarian governments; he effectively does so by reinforcing ideas, which correspondingly embrace

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