Orwell's Novel 1984 - Book Report/Review Example

04 March 2008 Orwell's novel 1984 The novel 1984 by George Orwell depicts a totalitarian society and posotive impact of a strong control on life of citizens. The Party which rules the dystopian Oceania of Orwell 1984 has no illusions about the nature of its mission. Unlike many totalitarian regimes, it makes no claims to attempt to save humanity or to improve the quality of human life. A strong central government control has a positive impact on lives of citizens determining their way of life, protecting them from crime, violence, social disobedience typical for modern state. In contrast, the government maintains order and peace for all citizens of Oceania. Thesis In George Orwell's novel 1984, Orwell portrays governmental control over daily life as undesirable; however, governmental control over the citizens' lives makes a better society for the mass of Oceania's citizens. A strict control maintained by the government establishes a positive and peaceful atmosphere within the society. All of material needs are guaranteed by the state, for all classes, self-restraint is a central virtue, though in the lower classes control and moderation of one's own desires are explicitly linked to the virtue of obedience. The Party is consciously seeking to create the ultimate totalitarian society, a world that "is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined" (Orwell 220). A strict control of the state ensures a maximum happiness for all of its citizens, a goal that would remain central to subsequent thought. However, his suggestion that individual freedom should be sacrificed in order to assure this happiness would become a central concern of fiction (Patai 149). The society goes to great extremes to negate any differences in material circumstances that might lead to rivalries, jealousies, or competition for material gain. Moreover, to ensure that there can be no question of one family's house being preferable to another (and that the citizens do not become too attached. The governmental control over the citizens lives make a better society because the Party also furthers loyalty among its members through the use of numerous techniques borrowed from religion. As with many conventional religions, Party solidarity is furthered by communal rituals, but in a reversal of the Christian emphasis on love the central Party ritual is a phenomenon called the "Two Minutes Hate." In this rite of hatred, Party members gather before a telescreen as programming focusing on the heinous treachery of official Party enemy Emmanuel Goldstein gradually whips the crowd into a frenzy the intensity of which might be envied by any Bible-thumping Southern preacher (Patai 247). The viewers jump up and down, screaming at the screen, and even those who are initially less than enthusiastic find themselves caught up in the mass hysteria: "The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in" (Orwell 16). Orwell emphasizes equality above all else, even to the point of suppression of individual liberty and imposition of a potentially oppressive conformity, enforced by a constant surveillance in which all citizens watch all others, with those who deviate from accepted behavior subject to harsh punishments. Thus, this strict control helps the society to avoid civil disobedience acts and violence. The state itself is fundamentally informed by a privileging of the community over the individual. Mass society live a communistic existence, with property held in common. Individualism is thoroughly subjugated to the interests of the state, to the extent that many of the practices clearly foreshadow the intrusion of the state into the private lives of citizens in modern fictions. For example, marriage is considered a service to the state rather than an expression of individual love, and it is accordingly administered by a Ministry of Love. In Oceania sex is to be regarded primarily as a means of reproduction, not of pleasure. Strict rules specify the ages at which women and men are officially authorized to participate in sexual activity for purposes of procreation, presumably to ensure the strength of the offspring. The governmental control over the citizens lives make a better society as the Party assure that strong emotional attachments between family members do not develop in Oceania (Frodsham 142). Family members are effectively turned against one another, as children are encouraged to inform on their parents and spouses encouraged to spy on one another. In Oceania, "the family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police" (Orwell 111). The Party of Oceania accepts a sublimation, feeling that when you make love you're using up energy" that might be employed in the service of the Party. As a result, sexual pleasure is a waste of emotional energy, since "sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship" (Orwell 110). the positive effect of control is that the Party thus seeks strictly to control and limit the fulfillment of sexual desire. Echoing their predecessors in the Christian tradition, the Party sees sex as existing primarily for the purpose of manufacturing human beings. Their official view is that sexual intercourse should be a vaguely unpleasant activity engaged in only for purposes of procreation (Patai 95). As a result of this policy of official repression, enemies of the Party identify sexuality as a potentially powerful locus for transgression against the Party's rule. The would-be rebel Smith concludes that "the sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion" (Orwell 59). For instance, Smith later enacts his subversive tendencies through an unauthorized sexual relationship with Julia, a young woman who shares his view of intercourse as rebellion. On the other hand, Smith later becomes concerned about Julia's lack of theoretical awareness, accusing her of being "only a rebel from the waist downwards" (Orwell 129). Indeed, the sexual rebellion of Smith and Julia turns out to be entirely ineffectual. Both are arrested by the authorities, then tortured and brainwashed and forced to turn against each other. In the conclusion, the official appropriation of Smith's passion for Julia becomes complete; he sublimates his desire for the woman in a socially acceptable direction, realizing that his only love is now directed toward "Big Brother," the book's Stalinesque personification of official power. Thus, the governmental control ensures social protection of citizens and social obedience (Frodsham 142). In general, critics admit that authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are bad for society limited its freedoms and liberty. According to Patai (207-208), extending the distortion of facts and manipulation of statistics that characterized the Soviet press under Stalin, Orwell's Ministry not only controls the content of all newspapers in the present, but also continually modifies the filed back issues of those newspapers according to the latest Party line, leaving no official record of anything that might run counter to current Party policy. Following Patai: This weakness may be viewed as part of Orwell's strategy in depicting a totalitarian society, for it is unlikely that he intended Winston Smith to be viewed simply as a hero, a man not compromised by the society in which he lives. At the same time, as always happens in fiction, Orwell's text reveals his own implicit values (238). The Party constantly appeals to history to legitimate its claims to authority, but in point of fact this continual editing of the past represents a radical effacement of history. Smith suggests that in Oceania "history has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right" (Orwell 218). The Party's belief in the social construction of reality is so radical that their project of reconstructing the past is quite literal. In their eyes they are not creating false histories that do not conform to a "true past": they are literally recreating the past, which exists only in "texts" of which they are fully in control. Following Patai, in an obvious reference to the continual revisions of history under Stalinism, but also in a general reference to the fact that the official history of the past is always written by those who hold power in the present, the key element of the ideology of the Party involves what they call the "mutability of the past." "Who controls the present," runs a related slogan, "controls the past." The Ministry of Truth thus proclaims that history is not recorded in texts, but that it is the texts in which it is recorded. The Ministry's Records Department, where Smith is employed, thus continually "updates" history by editing official records, effacing all indication of the existence of problematic persons or events and creating fictional records of nonexistent persons or events that help to support the Party line (Patai 175). The structure and functioning of the state in 1984 proves that strict control over lives and destinies of citizens are better for the mass of Oceania citizens. on the one hand, the strict control helps the government to protect the mass of Oceania's citizens from such problems of corruption and crimes, social disobedience and racial or national envy. Orwell writes: You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery". Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible Slavery is freedom. Alone--free--the human being is always defeated. It must be so,because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he IS the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal (Orwell 345). For instance, the Newspeak project is part of the Party's attempts to manipulate reality (and thus to gain complete control of the minds of its members) by manipulating language. The central value of Oceania is a sort of universal communal bond among all of the inhabitants. "Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issuedirectly from his leadership and inspiration" (Orwell 1999). Orwell attempts to address the positive implications of his central index simply by pointing out that in his modern utopia the government would have entirely good intentions and would therefore use the information in its data banks only for the public good. Orwell's Party still conducts some research, but only in support of the development of weaponry, and even that is relatively primitive (Patai 209). The forbidden book of the Party enemy Emmanuel Goldstein notes that "as a whole the world is more primitive today than it was fifty years ago" (Orwell 156). Science as we know it has virtually ceased to exist in Oceania, being replaced by a purely instrumental technology. Perhaps the most striking instance of this technology involves the ever-present telescreens through which the Party of Oceania keeps track of its members (Patai 43). The homes of all Party members feature these video screens, as do all public places that Party members might frequent. The two-way screens allow the Party both to keep its members under surveillance and to bombard them with a constant barrage of video propaganda; these screens are on at all times, and can be turned off only in the homes of members of the elite "Inner Party" (Patai 82). The Party ideology is good for citizens because it establishes certain values and morale followed by all members of the populace. The ideology of Orwell's Party is much more in line with the conventional religion than with modern science. O'Brien describes himself and his peers as "the priests of power" (Orwell 217), and many of the Party's objections to science echo those of the medieval Church. For example, O'Brien denies the theory of evolution and argues that the earth is no older than the human race. And he declares that the Party can, if it so chooses, proclaim that "the earth is the center of the universe. The sun and the stars go around it" (Orwell 219). Responding to the obvious objection that for certain practical purposes a heliocentric model of the universe seems necessary, O'Brien simply declares that the Party can produce a dual system of astronomy if it so wishes. "That the party was the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of others" (Orwell 256). It is clear that the ban on religion comes about not because organized religion is so radically different from the Party, but because the two are all-too-similar and would therefore be competing for similar energies (Frodsham 139). The Party protects citizens from false religious teachings and diverse ideas typical for modern world. In sum, the narrator identifies a willingness to throw out old habits and to rethink all aspects of human society as the cardinal principle underlying utopian thought in general. To achieve an ideal society, Oceania must be willing to change everything that is within our power to change. Finally, the policies of the all-powerful, all-admirable leader, Big Brother, always dictated the definition of what us acceptable and what us not. In spite of the fact that totalitarian regime is undesirable it helps the government to control and manipulate social consciousness and establish social order which is simple to control and direct. In order to conquer the Earth, the Party had to dominate history totally and eradicate any expression of independent thought. The society depicted by Orwell is free from prejudices and hatred, violence and crimes, civil disobedience and protests typical for liberal societies. in this case, the strict government control is undesirable because it limits freedom of choice but it is better for the mass of citizens because it establishes positive and healthy atmosphere and happiness for all citizens. Works Cited 1. Frodsham, J. D. The New Barbarians: Totalitarianism, Terror and the Left Intelligentsia in Orwell's 1984. World Affairs, 147, 1984, pp. 139-151. 2. Orwell George. 1984. New York: New American Library, 1961. 3. Patai, D. The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male Ideology. University of Massachusetts Press, 1984. Read More