Individuality In Brave New World

With the power hungry Party and the most acknowledged face of Big Brother watching and monitoring everybody, the story of “1984” by George Orwell expresses the utmost control over their people and have the absolute power with their country Oceania. The Party believes that Big Brother will live on forever, because of the constant removal of those who are unfaithful and the rewriting of history. However, with the example of the main character showing disobedience against the Party, there is a chance for this type of ruling to fail and be destroyed by the people. The main possible cause of the fall of Big Brother is most likely the underestimation of the power of the people.

Big Brother is the controlling dictator of Oceania, which is the totalitarian state that the Party bows total power to. Every citizen, is under persistent surveillance by the authorities, the Thought Police. The citizens are mainly being monitored by tele-screens. These screens operate both as televisions and security cameras. Tele-screens are located in every room that belongs to a Party member as well as public locations. People in Oceania are constantly reminded that “Big Brother is watching you.” Big Brother is described as a figure that will never die because he is the representation of the Party and is said to live as long as the Party lives.

The great, overlooking aura that is Big Brother is perfectly exemplified in a quote, “It is the hard and reflecting eye rather than the eye itself that seems hostile” (Lyons and Orwell 42). In this book, the people are not certain that Big Brother exists, yet he holds the most power in the entire nation. The threat of abuse in any form for disobeying the Party is what makes Oceania the perfect dystopia. The Party controls everything, even though the people may not accept it. They use force and intimidation to control. Telescreens watch over every move made by every person. There are helicopters full of thought police flying overhead looking for the slightest disobedience to be punished. The Party cheapens sexual pleasure by putting it into

Many people look at their government and how it affects them on a day to day basis but do not see what it does to everyone at once. The government’s total authority over a country can vary from place to place, but they all make laws and rules that constrict their citizens in some way. Sometimes those laws can either have positive or negative consequences, which is dependent on the government’s views on how to run the country. Those consequences lead the country into one of two categories – individual or collective. The government sets boundaries for individualism because of the laws they put in place for its citizens, which ties them to either side of the spectrum of individuality and conformity.

The Society of Oceania is ruled by a totalitarian power hunger all-knowing government that seeks power and control over its people and society by a figure known as Big Brother. The poster of Big Brother is a so called figure head of the government that installs fear

1984 by George Orwell is a novel set in a dystopian near-future London, the chief city of Airstrip One, Oceania. The people in Oceania are under the control of the Party. Big Brother, or BB, is the face of the Party and the leader of this great power that rules over Oceania. He is a dominant figure who acts as a trustworthy entity for the people he governs, but ironically is their worst enemy in many ways. His posters, captioned “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”, can be seen everywhere in the streets of London. These posters give the reader a physical description of what one can imagine Big Brother to look like. He is a man of about forty-five with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features that make him look scary but leader-like. Most people in this society are unaware of how they are brainwashed and controlled by the Party. Big Brother controls Oceania with various carefully designed techniques, some of which are: keeping the Outer Party in control with the 24-hour surveillance, Reality Control and by controlling the proles -- by keeping them ignorant and luring them through privileges.

As man has progressed through the ages, there has been, essentially, one purpose. That purpose is to arrive at a utopian society, where everyone is happy, disease is nonexistent, and strife, anger, or sadness is unheard of. Only happiness exists. But when confronted with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, we come to realize that this is not, in fact, what the human soul really craves. In fact, Utopian societies are much worse than those of today. In a utopian society, the individual, who among others composes the society, is lost in the melting pot of semblance and world of uninterest. The theme of Huxley's Brave New World is community, identity, and stability. Each of these three themes represents what a Brave New World society needs

The famous philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once stated that “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” The world is full of people who are conformists as well as people who stand for themselves and follow their own values. Emerson explains that by being yourself you are already part of something great. However, the question still lingers: Which is the real cause of genuine happiness? There have been many claims argued by various sources, such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Ursula Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and Sherry Turkle’s TED Talk titled “Connected, but alone?”. All have come to a consensus

Several conflicting frames of mind have played defining roles in shaping humanity throughout the twentieth century. Philosophical optimism of a bright future held by humanity in general was taken advantage of by the promise of a better life through sacrifice of individuality to the state. In the books Brave New World, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451 clear opposition to these subtle entrapments was voiced in similarly convincing ways. They first all established, to varying degrees of balance, the atmosphere and seductiveness of the “utopia” and the fear of the consequences of acting in the non-prescribed way through character development. A single character is alienated because of their inability to conform – often in protest to the forced

With detailed reference to the novel, how do you view this in relation to individual freedom?

The formative years of the 1900’s, suffered from communism, fascism, and capitalism. The author of the Brave New World, Mr. Aldous Huxley lived in a social order in which he had been exposed to all three of these systems. In the society of the Brave New World, which is set 600 years into the future, individuality is not condoned and the special motto “Community, Identity, Stability” frames the structure of the Totalitarian Government.

“BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” (p. 1). Headed by a sacrosanct leader identified as Big Brother, the Party’s solitary goal is to retain absolute power over Oceania. The citizens are subjected to constant supervision and incessant propaganda via telescreens that not only monitor the citizens’ actions and thoughts but also rectify them to suit the Party’s invidious desires. The Party is even developing a new language called Newspeak, which eliminates abundant verbiage from the dictionary, to narrow the citizens’ range of thought. Under the Party’s oppressive regime, Winston Smith lives a life marked by animosity, dissension, and malice for the Party. In his fervent attempt to decimate the Party’s members and desecrate its ideals, he circumspectly commences a covert love affair with a potent, nulliparous woman named Julia and begins a diary in which he inscribes maledictions and recapitulates his aggression for the Party. In his benevolent struggle to eradicate inequity and segregation, Winston realizes the true price of freedom as he sacrifices his life to attain it. In 1984 (New American Library, 1950), George Orwell, the author, proficiently integrates short, direct sentences and bleak, elementary vocabulary into his uniquely passive style of writing to thoroughly convey his appalling vision of a totalitarian regime to the reader.

Karen Ho, Robert Thurman, and Azar Nafisi all write different passages that are similar in that they touch upon topics of individuality, the self, and how one acts in certain societies. In Ho’s passage titled “Biographies of Hegemony”, she describes the society of Wall Street and how one must conform himself in order to fit in with the elite society. In the passage“Wisdom” written by Thurman, he writes about “the self” and how one must not result into only being one personality trait. But instead, change as the world and life changes. Lastly, in “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran” Nafisi writes about the city of Tehran and how the women handle the inequality. It is evident in all three passages that the individuals portrayed feel a certain way towards individuality. Whether they choose their place in their own society or if their place is predetermined or them is a question that each passage addresses differently. Ultimately, the society that one is in chooses their place based on how one displays their identity.

Individuality is when you are different from others around you. Many people forget to be themselves and try to be like everyone else. High school students and celebrities forget to be themselves. Everyone tries so hard to fit in with those who surround them that they forget that being original isn’t a bad thing.

Orwell and Ishiguro institute their dystopias through setting, writing style, and symbols as a prior foundation to demonstrate the extent of the oppressive societies associated with their creations. Orwell in presents a frightening, futuristic world of advanced technology set in the superstate known as Oceania, where everyone is constantly being watching by monitors known as “telescreens”. The author presents a society of hierarchical structure with Big Brother at the top of the apex, followed by the general public known as the 'Party’, with the ‘proles’ being at the bottom of the societal pyramid. Orwell highlights this structure through the capitialisation of the words ‘Big Brother’ and the ‘Party’, while lowercasing the term ‘proles’ to highlight there low social ranking. Big Brother is the ultimate figure of Oceania and a symbolic figure whom strikes both loyalty and fear in people, having never been seen, but respected and feared. He is represented by propaganda as a “black-moustachio’d face [gazing] down from