1984 10 Essay, Research Paper

1984

The novel 1984 is a futuristic portrayal of the world in the year 1984. The main characters Winston and Julia fall in love with each other but are caught and purified of all their wrong doings. In the end they betray each other because of the pressure of the party. The party is a group that controls society in these ways: Manipulation of Reality, Invasion of Privacy, and Desensitization.

In this novel the party manipulates reality in one way through the use of changing the past. They do this by rewriting the past to make everyone believe that everything they are taught really happened. When this is done people are lead to believe what they are told is the truth when in reality it is not. Another way the party takes control of existence is by bringing life and death to non-existent people. One such instance is the creation of Comrade Ogilvy. Winston creates this man with the intention of pure fantasy. He makes Comrade Olgilvy a war hero and a patriot that dies in battle but in all fact this man never existed. The final way the party controls the lives of the people is through a process called vaporization. Vaporization is the process by which every record of everything you have ever accomplished is wiped out and your one-time existence is forever forgotten.

The Invasion of Privacy is also used to control people. Devices called Telescreens are setup everywhere for the use of your entertainment and the party s. They are objects that not only allow you to watch them and hear them like a television but in return you yourself are watched and heard by the party. Other ways in which privacy is taken away is by the use of little sound devices called Bugs. In one scene Winston and Julia are talking and Julia says, I bet that picture s got bugs behind it (Orwell 122)1. When she says this she is implying that the party is listening to everything they say and do. The final way the party invades privacy is by The Thought Police. The Thought Police are members of the party that control life through the telescreens and bugs. When you are caught by them for a crime you must then go to prison for as long as it takes to purify or make you sane enough to work for the party once again.

The last way society is controlled is by Desensitization. Desensitization is an effect brought on to people by the party which causes the loss of senses to one s self. One such instance occurs in the novel when Winston is explaining a war film he had just seen. He explains that in this one particular movie, one scene involves a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Another scene occurs when a woman and a child are on a lifeboat with a helicopter flying above them. The helicopter drops a twenty-kilo bomb on them and then there is a shot of a child s arm flying across the screen. When this happens the audience in the theater begins laughing and applauding. This in itself is showing the effect of desensitization on the people. An act of desensitization brought onto Winston is in a scene in the novel where a steamer, rocket bomb, shoots down from the sky and blows up all over a piece of the city. After this happens Winston is walking down the street and he sees a hand so completely whitened it resembles a plaster cast. Without thinking he naturally by instinct kicks the hand into a gutter. This shows desensitization because in today s reality almost anyone that were to see a severed hand laying on the ground would be frightened but because of the effect the party has put on everybody Winston doesn t even think twice about moving it.

The novel 1984 helps to see what life could be like if we had a controlled society by which only one form of government were to hold all power. It helps to prove that sooner or later the people will hold no control over society. Orwell shows no sympathy for what we bring on to ourselves. However he does show that if the human race does not try to break free from all its controllers in the end we will all live and die for nothing.