Perpetual Superintendency The provided excerpt of the first chapter of George Orwell’s 1984 follows Winston Smith, a smaller, weaker man, as he works his way into Victory Mansions, for a reason not stated. Orwell describes the setting of a future nation, a world surrounded by authority over your shoulder and posters of propaganda everywhere, seeming to yell, “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” As Winston progresses through the building, he makes actions to increase is his privacy in any way he can, such as turning down the telescreen, something that cannot be turned off completely. The single word Winston consistently demonstrates is “aware.” Orwell may omit the purpose of Winston moving around this building, but he includes enough information to interpret that Winson knows how to operate. He demonstrates being aware immediately after entering the building. Winston decides, “It …show more content…
Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at the present the electric current was shut off… in preparation for Hate Week,” (Orwell 1). This decision exhibits that Winston knows about the upcoming event and the preparations the government is taking for it. This, combined with assumption Winston makes about how “...every sound you made was overheard… every movement scrutinized,” (Orwell 1), adds up to be a potentially dangerous man. At least, dangerous for the invasive government Winston lives under. It only takes a small group of people with a good reason to start an effective rebellion. Orwell foreshadows a change in the future, and Winston would be the perfect candidate. He has demonstrated the quality of being aware, something that can snowball quickly into traits of leadership, then
The culture surrounding Winston is very confined. With the telescreens watching everyone and everything, it's hard for anyone to have free thought. An example of how Big Brother can tell if a person is not thinking the way they should be, is that they can tell by facial expressions. Orwell writes "To wear an improper expression... was... a punishable offense" (54) With restrictions like this, it is hard for characters to do what they please. This effects Winston by making him act a certain way so that he can avoid being caught. However, Winston does not seem to mind being caught for some time. When Winston is writing in his journal, he writes "theyll shoot me i dont care" (20). This is just a fragment of what Winston wrote in this entry. The fact that Orwell gave Winston the trait to write with improper grammar signifies how delirious Winston is when he writes this. (make sure you put a conclusion sentence)
He panics on what to do thinking big brother found out he even puts a little trap as small as a hair just to to find out if someone is spying at him. Something winston wrote in his journal is” to the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free. When men are different from one another and do not live alone- to a time when truth exist and what is done cannot be undone from the ages of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of big brother from the age of doublethink greetings”. He is writing of how things used to be before it all changed with big
As readers, we observe the development of Winston throughout the novel. Winston is a confused and odd character. He sees life differently from his peers and surroundings. Unlike any other character, Winston questions the ideas and factors that play into his society, especially constant surveillance. “For some reason the telescreen in the living room was in an unusual position. Instead of being placed, as was normal, in the end wall, where it could command the whole room, it was in the longer wall, opposite the window… By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so far as sight went” (Orwell 9). Winston’s thought was the Party could not see him from the alcove. He began participating in deviance actions. He made up many different conspiracies of the past, including wars and stories. Even though he had seen things from history, he did not have an explanation for them. Winston was aware of what was being hidden from citizens. The knowledge encouraged him to act inappropriately towards the Party, even in surveillance sight.
Winston makes it known that Big Brother is freighting him. He wouldn’t think it’s imaginably possible to brainwash the people of his country and erase what had happened.
the government, but ultimately he succumbs to the pressures he has been fighting his entire life.
Winston is a prime example of how the party uses fear to control people. Even when Winston rebels, it’s ever so little that eventually it results in nothing. While Winstons acts do mean something, they could never amount to free will. The party has spent years fuelling people with fear and manipulating their thoughts. Had an act been done to rebel much earlier, I believe it would be a world with more humanity.
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 1934, the greatest purge in history started in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the Soviet Union, upon the orders of its dictator Joseph Stalin. At first, the purge, later known as the Great Terror, targeted the upper echelons of the Communist party. Some of the greatest revolutionaries in history, including Leon Trotsky, were erased from all records. Either killed or exiled, these enemies of the state would be forgotten within years as books and photographs were ‘fixed’ by the state. Yet, this was not enough for Stalin. By the end of 1939, an estimated twenty million ordinary citizens were killed or sent to gulags, where they would eventually die. Many never committed any real crimes. It is easy to draw parallels between George
The book, 1984 by George Orwell, is about the external and internal conflicts that take place between the two main characters, Winston and Big Brother and how the two government ideas of Democracy and totalitarianism take place within the novel. Orwell wrote the novel around the idea of communism/totalitarianism and how society would be like if it were to take place. In Orwell’s mind democracy and communism created two main characters, Winston and Big Brother. Big Brother represents the idea of the totalitarian party. In comparison to Big Brother, Winston gives and represents the main thought of freedom, in the novel Winston has to worry about the control of the thought police because he knows that the government with kill anyone who
George Orwell’s key objective throughout his novel, 1984, was to convey to his readers the imminent threat of the severe danger that totalitarianism could mean for the world. Orwell takes great measures to display the horrifying effects that come along with complete and dominant control that actually comes along with totalitarian government. In Orwell’s novel, personal liberties and individual freedoms that are protected and granted to many Americans today, are taken away and ripped from the citizen’s lives. The government takes away freedom and rights from the people so that the ruling class (which makes up the government), while reign with complete supremacy and possess all power.
In a community in which every move is watched and every thought is dictated by the government, hope is hard to find. Winston, however, finds hope in small forms of rebellion and takes solace in the idea that there must be others who think the way he does. This brings us to our first piece of evidence. For the duration of Book One of the novel, Winston appears to be the only person who longs for a revolt against the Party, he feels as if he’s the only one “awake”. The longer he goes standing by himself, alone with his ideals, the longer we see him doubt whether he is right to think the way he does.
As human beings, there are distinct characteristics that separate us from feral animals; the ability to create, to appreciate art, to curiously question the world and most importantly to sympathize for our kind. However, when that exact nature is stripped from us, we tend to become mindless, restricted, cold, and degraded as an entire race. This is the setting of George Orwell’s last book, 1984. A world where human thought is limited, war and poverty lie on every street corner, and one cannot trust nobody or nothing. It is all due to the one reigning political entity, the Ingsoc Party, who imposes complete power over all aspects of life for all citizens. There is no creative or intellectual thought, no art, culture or history, and no
Before the cruelties of Adolph Hitler’s third Reich was shown off to the public of the world he had total control over Germany and its smaller surrounding countries the same thing was seen in a second super power country which was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which is now modern day Russia, that was ruled by Joseph Stalin and though both societies ruled completely over their citizens it was short lived.
In George Orwell’s 1984 Power is gained most effectively through control, fear and violence. Compared to a government like that of America’s, 1984 creates a more threatening structure of government where the public is limited from freedom and happiness. 1984 shows a world of a society where only the upper class has power and freedom from the harsh treatment that the general population receives. The idea of Big Bother makes the population of Oceania believe they are being watched over by a powerful force and oppresses them so they feel powerless and unable to do anything against a “great” force like Big Brother. The well-being of others depends on their willingness to agree with Big Brother and abide by their laws, if you think otherwise then you will be an accuser of thought-crime will be vaporized and removed from society or harshly punished through rigorous treatment and torture methods as was Winston and Julia. Power creates problems for others in which they do not deserve.
Hopelessness, deep and gaping ever lasting hopelessness. If the course of humanity fails to change, to this everyone will succumb. That is the message that George Orwell has left for the future, and it would be in humanity's best interest to heed. Winston Smith of 1984 lived in a world that had been consumed by the everlasting abyss of injustice. Eventually this world became too much for our hopeful protagonist and thus, like the future that is bound to a horrific fate, he succumbed. “It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it” (Orwell 248). No one in this world is any different than Winston, they will follow his path like all of those before them, following the five stages of Kübler-Ross. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance make up the cycle that every feeble life will follow and that Winston grew to know all too well.