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What Is The Purpose Of 1984 By George Orwell

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Following the end of WWII George Orwell published 1984, which he also coincidentally published 2 years after the tensions broke out between the Soviet Union and the US which caused the Cold War. Orwell, who has witnessed both of these events, envisioned a dystopian world in his novel 1984 led by totalitarian governments. This controversial book contributed to the ever so rising question that historians debated, ‘What if dictatorial and totalitarian nations won over the world?’ Yet, Orwell’s purpose in publishing this novel is not to answer this ‘what if’ question, but to shed light on the importance of an objective reality. To show that reality is easily moldable and can be manipulated to any party’s liking, which in 1984’s case is Big Brother. …show more content…

Big Brother corrupts knowledge through language, and Orwell attempts to portray this idea as a reference to his essay "Politics and the English Language" where he stated, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Orwell portrays that knowledge can be corrupted not only in 1984, but also through his essay, and this corrupted knowledge creates a subjective reality. Also, corrupting language in order to corrupt thought is one of the numerous methods used by Big Brother. For example, Syme is assigned to reduce language so that the only surviving language is newspeak, and reveals this when he says, “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it” (67). Syme explains that the purpose of newspeak is to narrow thought so that the existence of a need for an objective reality can be impossible. This is done to preserve this subjective reality created by Big Brother, and to further control the masses, which are the

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