June 8th, 2018 Comparing Societal Marxism in the Text 1984 and Play Pygmalion Through Character Karl Marx believed that every society had different economic classes, that the people are divided into, depending on their economic status; the individuals with the most economic power are usually the ones in control. This hierarchy leads to the creation of the religious ideology which in turn arises false consciousness. Those who control the power in any society are known as the bourgeoisie, and they obtain that social hierarchy by oppressing the lower-class individuals, who, in the Marxist Lens, are known as the proletariats. The two texts being compared are, the novel 1984 by George Orwell and the play, by George Bernard Shaw, known as Pygmalion. …show more content…
Near the end of the novel, 1984, Winston’s, and the way he acts, transforms due to false consciousness. The false consciousness in Winston was generated by his persecutor, using painful methods. Winston was forced to believe whatever O’Brian, the torturer, said, “And if the Party says that is not four but five then how many?” “Four” (Orwell 255) After that point, Winston eventually began to accept that ‘four plus four is five’, due to the pain and torture he was put through. Winston constantly thought and wrote the statement ‘four plus four equals five’. This could be considered as, what is called, memory amplification. “This process tends to involve the subject remembering more trauma than they actually experienced.” (strange/Takarangi 2016). Winston’s traumatized state, caused by O’Brian, led his mind falsely recreate the traumatic events, different from how it actually occurred. This rethinking of the traumatic event, cause Winston to bring about its own sense of false consciousness. The event is in his memory forever, and therefore he begins to believe the statement, even though it’s false. Winston inevitably changes; his mind and what he believes in, all because of his newly reformed state of mind, creating false
No one knew if what they remembered was true or not because of all the false stories put into their heads. In Orwell’s novel, the rebels were beaten and the soul they once had floated away to never come back. “We have beaten you, Winston. We have broken you up. You have seen what your body is like. Your mind is in the same state. I do not think… You have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed everybody and everything. Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?” (Orwell, 273). This is clear proof that Winston was tortured and beaten into believing what the government wanted him to. He hated Big Brother his whole life and now the person that he was once was had been taken away from him. A new and government improved version appeared. No flaws, no doubts, no anger, just confidence that everything Big Brother said was true.
Nineteen Eighty-Four written by George Orwell and Gattaca directed by Andrew Niccol are prophetic social commentaries which explore the broad social wrong of a totalitarian government. Both texts depict a futuristic, dystopian society in which individuality is destroyed in favour of faceless conformity. Niccol and Orwell through the experiences of their protagonists reflect the impact isolation from society has on individuals. The authors of both texts also use their protagonists Winston, who cannot understand the rhetoric of the government party and Vincent, who is trapped, unable to achieve his dreams because of his imperfect genome, to demonstrate individual rebellion against society and explore the significant social injustices of a
In the dystopian worlds created by the film director Andrew Niccol and renowned author George Orwell, notions of control and freedom are explored. Both worlds contain an overarching power that governs the rest of the population and restricts freedom of individuals, these powers also aid in the progression of technology, which further act to control individuals. The characterisations of the protagonists of each text portray the lack of freedom from the perspective of those that are affected. Both authors use a variety of techniques to portray themes of control and freedom in their texts.
1984 and Divergent have many similarities which include determining their faction/parties, drug usage, and uniforms, which tell the differences between each differing level member. There are also differences in each of these books, too.
Imagine, there is a country where the government is corrupt. They watch people every minute, every millisecond. That’s not what the worst part either, they will put people to death for having opinions. That would be terrible, right? That is exactly how the government is in the novel 1984,written by George Orwell. Winston Smith, the main character of the novel, had many decisions to make. He decided to rebel against the nasty government, which he knew no one got away with. He knew it would be hard due to the fact he was under surveillance twenty-four seven. Nonetheless, Winston’s fate is foreshadowed from the reckless decisions and gullible actions he has throughout the novel.
Orwell successfully manipulates Winston physiologically through his use of technology and advancements in telescreens, control of history, and control of language. Within the society, Winston is among few who have memories of the past world. While Winston feels
Winston goes through emotional change throughout 1984 that changes his perspective and personality. At the beginning of the book, Winston is filled with hatred towards the Party. “They’ll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother-” (Orwell, 19). Winston’s fury towards the Party and Big Brother is evident. Through his diary entries, you can definitely tell that he harbors an intense anger towards them. So, it may seem that this trait will never change and make him always fight for it. The reader may at first think that he will never change views. But then, Winston completely changes perspective at the end of the book when he states, “He loved Big Brother.” (Orwell, 298). This keeps Winston from becoming another boring character who refuses to change his opinion which makes for an interesting book and a more complex character.
In 1984, the ultimate form of betrayal is introduced when The Party causes Winston to betray his own mind and accept their views, and love Big Brother. It the beginning, Winston stresses the importance of keeping your own thoughts, in a world where other opinions and alternate accounts of past events are being forced upon the population. Winston points out that “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.” and thoughts like this become important to the reader, who, as Winston does, believes that they are safe in his head as a facet of his character (Orwell 29). However, the torture in the Ministry of Love gets to Winston, and he begins to lose his individual opinions. O’Brien systematically removes all rebellious thoughts in Winston’s mind, replacing them with the ideology of The Party. In doing so, it is as if they are killing a character. When Winston is released he behaves like a new character altogether, he loses the battle with himself and betrays his original opinions against The Party. In using self-betrayal to show
“And when memory failed and written records were falsified... the claims of the party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, and standard against which can be tested.” Ch 8 Winston is having a conversation with an old man. the man says of thing the party has done to mess with the memory of others. Winston realizes all the lies the party has fed to him and others to weaken the memory of others in order for this not to recall any past events.
This continues until winston finally answers five.” In this quote winston’s brain is being manipulated into thinking that two plus two equals five. Propaganda is one of the ways he controls his “citizens”.
Throughout the novel, Orwell portrays Winston as having a unique ability and desire to have individual thoughts in order to highlight the irony in that the regime, intending to prevent all rebellion by suppressing individual thought, makes
In George Orwell's "1984" society is manipulated and guided by an organization called the Party and an anonymous figure named Big Brother, who is used as God. One of the main aspects the Party controls is truth or tries to control is truths in the society and the truth in the minds of the individual themselves. The Party creates what they want to be true to make the individuals ignorant so they can manipulate them easier. This twist of the truth by the Party makes it seem like truth doesn't actually exist, but for Winston it does exist or it once did. Truth does exist if the individual is rebellious to the extent to where it will not get them vaporized and Winston is one of those rebels. He and others are able to experience
Vladimir Lenin, a communist revolutionary displays the Marxist ideology by believing that “any cook should be able to run the country.” This quote reflects the view of evenly distributed power. According to the Marxist theory, it is best to eliminate social classes, for they spark class conflict and promote inequality between the upper class bourgeois and the lower class proletariats. The Marxist Lens mainly looks at economic power when providing arguments about the inconsistent treatment of people based on their social status. In Hamlet, Shakespeare demonstrates class differences by establishing characters that abuse their power and take advantage of others to get ahead, subtlety criticizing the bourgeoisie, and using what is occurring in society at the time to base the society within the play.
Once caught, Orwell writes that Winston must undergo a form of drastic mental “treatment.” “You are mentally deranged. You suffer form a defective memory…fortunately it’s curable”(Part 3, Chapter 2). O’Brien describes Winston’s mind as the same way Freud would diagnose a patient with a disorder. Winston in fact goes under a similar process that closely relates to the psychoanalytic treatment. “We gather in detail what the peculiarities of the Unconscious are, and we may hope to learn still more about them by a profounder instigation of the processes…”(Freud 324). According to O’Brien, Winston seems to have developed a mental disease that causes him to have delusions. Winston’s dreams, which Freud considers “a highly valuable aid into psycho-analysis technique” and an “insight into the unconscious,” are put under inspection and further investigated by O’Brien to study and gain knowledge of how to “cure” Winston’s mind. It is then when Winston’s nightmares of rats gives O’Brien the key component to understand how he will strengthen Winston’s ego and superego according to the views of the Party.
Marxism are set of views acknowledged by many individuals and a lot of views presented in works of other authors are often compared to the ideas that of Karl Marx. Here, the idea presented by George Bernard Shaw in his play is compared to Marx’s ideas on Marxism and social hierarchy relationship. There exists a relationship between the viewpoints of Karl Marx and George Bernard Shaw in the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The interpretation of the social hierarchy by each author disagrees with one another. With these circumstances, Marxist theorists will admonish the idea portrayed in the play because of contradicting interpretation that