preview

The Importance Of Totalitarian Government In George Orwell's 1984

Satisfactory Essays

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength” (Orwell). This may seem like a list of paradoxes, useless and arbitrary in the context of any government. But, these three statements help establish the foundation of the world in the novel 1984 by George Orwell. The novel is set in an alternate version of the year 1984, imagined by Orwell in the 1940s. The world had split into three superstates: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. The main character, Winston Smith, lives in Oceania where the entire superstate is run by an all powerful government, lead by the divine and immortal Big Brother. This is a government in which all love and individual thought is outlawed. This is reinforced by constant surveillance either by telescreen or the …show more content…

He explains that their intentions are the same as that of the Party, but they were unable to reach the same result. When torturing Winston during the second stage of reintegration called “understanding”, O’Brien answers Winston questions regarding the Party’s motives that he had written in his diary. He first explains that the Nazis and the Communists were unable to achieve what the Party had because they were too cowardly to admit their own motives. They believed they were only holding power until they turned the nonexistent corner into “paradise where humans beings would be free and equal” (Orwell 263). The novel is admitting its replications of the unsaid motives of totalitarian leaders. Orwell’s revelation, in this sense, establishes the last reasons of why such systematic and oppressive governments exist. Afterward, Orwell highlights the motives specifically of the Party in his novel through O’Brien. He writes, “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end” (263). This urge for never ending power is a replication of what Orwell thought the true motives of past totalitarian governments were. With these political objectives to create an everlasting government, Orwell is left with the task of imagining effective methods of manipulating a mass amount of human minds.
Human companionship, whether it be in the form of a mother, father, sibling or

Get Access