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Essay / Big Brother Loves You: Forced Collectivism in 1984
In the wake of political upheaval and the struggle for power after World War II, George Orwell's novel 1984 warns of the dangers of oppression and illustrates the nightmare world that will result in the near future. The plot traces the struggles of the main character, Winston Smith, as he attempts to rebel against the tyrannically insatiable Party, ruler of the superstate Oceania. In this terrifying glimpse of the future, independent thought, along with all other human values and ideals, is eradicated and replaced only by fanatical loyalty to the Party and "unconscious orthodoxy." The Party, also known as Ingsoc, is able to achieve these goals through complex use of manipulative mechanisms, eliminating free thought through restrictive language, constant propaganda, degradation of human values, imposed social hierarchy and almost total control of reality. The novel 1984 embodies, even exaggerates, the horrors of totalitarian collectivism, in which a government can pretend that a contradiction, such as two and two makes five, is true, and the hive mind will believe it. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay The concept of language as a tool of containment is an exceptionally important message of the book, and it is used to its full potential in the official language of Oceania, Newspeak. Language, of course, is of paramount importance to the human thought process and can be used to expand an individual's expression or severely limit it. In 1984, Ingsoc mastered the theory of communication with Newspeak, “the only language in the world whose vocabulary is decreasing every year”. Basically, Newspeak is a way of restricting the range of thought until "heretical thought (is) literally unthinkable, at least insofar as thought depends on words." Thought crime, or unorthodox thoughts, would become obsolete, because without a way to express them, they could not exist. The Party constantly updates Newspeak and the Newspeak dictionary to express its greater intention that eventually no one will even be able to conceptualize the questioning of the absolute authority of the Party. Doublethink, the infamous Newspeak word for “reality control,” is itself an example of government oppression. , where reality exists as the Party says it does and nothing more. To be more precise, the definition of doublethink would be “the power of simultaneously holding two contradictory thoughts in one's mind and accepting them both.” This is integral to maintaining the idea that the Party is infallible and Big Brother is semi-divine. Doublethink is the neglect of all logic; if the Party says “two and two make five,” it is a crime to think otherwise; the Party "could reach (the stars) if (they) wanted...or (they) could erase them". Altering history is not impossible, and falsifying documents is appropriate, because “he who controls the past controls the present; he who controls the present controls the future.” Simply put, doublethink is controlled insanity. Huge amounts of propaganda perpetuate the madness, from the "robust and handsome" but stern features of Big Brother, blazing on posters plastered on every wall and street corner, to hate-themed celebrations that spark crazy emotions. of every citizen. Big Brother replaces God in an atheistic society, that is, "BB" is the source of all goodness and justice, and the target of all praise, whetherreal or not. All emotions repressed by the Party are only entitled to this means of expression; an immense and devoted love for the Party and Big Brother, and a deep-rooted hatred for Oceania's "mortal enemy", or more accurately, the scapegoat. Even Winston, who throughout the novel attempts to reject Ingsoc's brainwashing, is swept away by the raw emotional flood of Two Minute Hate; "It was impossible to avoid joining in... a hideous ecstasy of fear and vengeance, a desire to kill... transforming someone, even against their will, into a grimacing, screaming madman." In 1984 , propaganda is a constant flow of psychological information. stimuli, from an early age with the Junior Spies, through adolescence with the Junior Anti-Sex League, and continuing into adulthood under the constant surveillance of TV screens, barking orders and information twenty-four hours a day. Propaganda results in pent-up emotions being released when the Party, and no one else, sees fit. For the Party, the thirst for pure power, the means to its own ends, provokes a state of endless war with the other two. The purpose of war is twofold: first, war ensures that all surplus resources are wasted, and second, war creates a certain "war mentality" that keeps the people of Oceania obedient and, in turn, destroying the resources. This results in the class system, an important means of ensuring that the only group in power, the top group of the Party, remains in power. In this way, the upper layers reserve the best goods for themselves, the middle layers receive the leftovers of the upper layers and the lower layers struggle to survive. The Low, or proletarian, constantly concerned about survival, will always be apathetic towards politics, revolution or government, because nothing has more priority than living one more day with food in the stomach. The Party and the governments of the world's other superstates are aware of this and therefore unofficially agree to remain in constant war, in order to maintain their place in power. From one perspective, "in principle, it would be quite simple to waste the world's surplus labor...by producing large quantities of goods and then setting them on fire...but this does not would provide only economic and non-economic benefits. the emotional basis of a hierarchical society. The emotional basis is that of the war mentality; in war the natural tendency is to support the country and support the government that runs it, essentially handing the country over to be run as they see fit by the higher order who should know what they are doing. By maintaining a constant state of war, the Party is also able to prevent the lower classes from rebelling against them. Perhaps the most painful of all the methods of underhand manipulation employed by the Party is the condemnation of all emotional connections between people. From a young age, children are taught to betray their parents at the slightest sign of unorthodoxy, causing the family unit to separate. People are isolated from each other, which makes them powerless and prevents any joint action against the Party. As in Winston's family, relationships are divided by battles over food and shelter, these having been suppressed by the Party to make this event worse. People are forbidden to marry for love, and even sexual relations within marriage are forbidden unless they bring absolutely no pleasure. Sex, also called "duty to the Party", has only one goal: to produce children, fresh minds, ready to be brainwashed. The love between Julia and Winston,.