1984

Coralie Casimir
English 10 Honor
Mr. George
03-15-09
Essay
1984
Since the beginning of time men have been trying to figure out the way we came to existence. From a religious perspective God is our creator. God created the earth in seven days, he is everywhere even in our hearts, he is always right and knows just from unjust. In the novel 1984 George Orwell describes a totalitarian regime, whose ultimate goal was to create a dystopian world and to gain control of all the power. To achieve this goal they used different tactics to make sure that the people would not revolt. The most important tactics is knowing what the citizens are thinking at all times and controlling them through fear. The party is like a God to the people because they seem to control their whole lives, they seemed to be always right and everywhere, and lastly try to gain control of the people’s heart.
The party become equivalent to a god because they control every aspect of the people’s lives and also enables the people of Oceania to become self-sufficient. The best way the party controls the people is through the telescreen and through the Though Police. The telescreen is basically a television that watches the people carefully and sees everything that they are doing: “The instrument (The telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely” (Orwell, 2). If someone was a party member there was no way for you to escape the Party. The people also had to listen to the party’s slogans, chants, and fabricate news over and over again on the telescreen. The telescreen is also a mechanism to reinforce the party’s laws and belief. The party does not want anyone going against Big Brother, the party’s leader and essentially the one everyone should worship and obey.
Winston always thought he had everything in control. He would think unorthodoxly and thought that the party would never catch him. He felt empowered by his rebellious acts against the party, but never did he know they had been watching him for years. He also believes that his skull was the only place he had to himself: “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull” (27). He felt he had gained some type of control over his life. Especially with Julia, he believed that the only way he could hold on to his humanity was to hold to the love he had for Julia. But the party was everywhere and there were no ways of escaping them. Winston quickly found out that every single thing he ever did was being watched by the party. All the precaution he took was useless. The telescreen had been observing his every move and when the Thought Police arrested him they already knew everything he had done. The gods were slowly taking control of his life.
One of the things the party has successfully accomplished was having total control over the citizens. They know what the residents are doing at all time. The party did not believe the people should have time of their own. The people were always occupied, from hard labor, long hours at work, or spending time at the community center: “To do anything that suggested a taste for solitude…was always slightly dangerous” (82). The party is a whole unit made out of people, and they do not believe that others have a right to have a life outside of that unit. If a party member is wandering around the streets he can be suspected of illegal activities. Knowing the party members whereabouts was not the only thing the party used to regulate the people. One thing they did to control most citizens was to scare them.
Everyone feared the party. The fear they felt was one of the things keeping the people from revolting particularly the proles. The proles were the majority of the population. They still believed in the personal bond between people: “If they were hope it must lie in the proles” (69). The only reason hope lay in their hands because it they are the ones who most likely unify as one to defeat the party. They are the only ones who could really form the brotherhood but the proles are so oppressed that they do not even know it. They would not know what to revolt so they would not rebel; as a result they become useless.
The majority of the population would not dare challenge the party’s authority, because the people feared the Though Police and what happened in The Ministry of Love. Winston says that people would try to kill themselves before the Though Police could get to them: “the proper thing was to kill yourself before they got you. Undoubtedly some people did so” (102). Most are scared of the Ministry of Love so much that they would not even approach it. They feared the interrogation method and condition of living. The people would do what the party said, so that would not go to the one in the Ministry of Love. In the long run not much was done to stop it because the people were overwhelmed by fear. Due to this mentality the party had won more control over the people; they gain control of their people’s action and thoughts.
The most important way that the party feels like a god to people is that they had created a better world for the citizens. They got rid of capitalism which was an economic system that only benefited only the rich. The use of propaganda was how the party gained much of its support, for example the misrepresentation of the life in the past: “In the old days [it ran]; before the glorious Revolution, London was not the beautiful city that we know today. It was dark and dirty, misleading place where anybody had enough to eat” (72). These statements were what convinced the people that the Party was the better system of government and that they are working for the good of the people. The argument was easily bought by the people, especially the younger generation. They were born during the reign of the party and they do not know differently. From the beginning they are taught that the party is always right and never once made a mistake. It was easy for the party to make them believe this because they had the Ministry of the Truth alter the past.
The workers in the Ministry of truth were to altercate the past to make it so that the party’s infallibility was not questioned. They were like journalists whose only job was to rewrite the past so the authority of the party was never at risk because the controlled everything: “‘who controls the past… controls the future: who controls the present control the past’” (34). In Oceania’s history was changed from all the time and no one had any proof to disprove what the party tells them. Also doublethink goes hand and hand with the Ministry of Truth. It would be easy for someone to figure out that the party was lying, but with doublethink they just believe what the party says and forgets everything else. It was so easy to some people that would not even notice it that they would doublethink.
One of Winston’s major problems was that he was part of the transitioning generation and he worked in the Ministry of Truth. His job in the Ministry of Truth was to mutilate the past but could not bring himself to doublethink. He felt like he was suppressing all common knowledge and basic instant to believe what the party wants you to. If the party made an announced and said: “That two and two made five and you will believe it” (80). There was nothing an individual can do, it seems like the party had a divine power and it gave them the right to do whatever they pleased and it was automatically right. Winston believed that they are wrong, and also that maybe he is just the lunatic, wondering in a world by himself. He still believes that two plus two equals four but not for long. The party will eradicate all that made him Winston Smith and he will become an obedient party member. Nonetheless, he will learn to love and respect is greatest nemesis Big Brother.
The party seems to be like a god to the people because they controlled just about everything. They were all powerful and no body could stop them. They were organized and noticed all the small details. Big Brother the god the oligarchy created, he seemed to be omnipotent, infallible, and omniscient in the eyes of the people. They were always right due to the fact that they had the Ministry of Truth. They control just about everything, even people’s thoughts in feeling. In Winston’s case, the party was able to make him trade his love for Julia and his humanity so he could only love Big Brother.