Literature Review – George Orwell's 1984

Nineteen Eighty-Four Depicts Totalitarian Oceania Under Big Brother

Nov 3, 2009

The book that brought us the Ministry of Truth, Big Brother, and the language of Newspeak is an intellectually stimulating dystopia.

The Party slogan in George Orwell's 1984 is “Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.” This statement embodies the very existence of protagonist Winston Smith, a records department worker within the greater Ministry of Truth – and whose job involves rewriting past newspaper articles in order to make them align with the current political “truth” and infallibility of Big Brother.

Reality Control, the Privation of History, Totalitarian Collectivism

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie that the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth … It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'.

This concept of doublethink, or reality control, speaks to the ability of individuals, subcultures, or even society at large to ignore the facts most inconvenient to the sustenance of their own beliefs – large or petty.

Even though Winston is fully aware of the truth within his own memory, he must suppress this truth in order to reconcile his current atmosphere and the ultimately necessary faith in Big Brother. This cognitive dissonance is exhibited on a daily basis in our own society amongst political partisans and conservative punditry.

History and fact are often taken synonymously, as if history is an incontrovertible record of past events, truisms that are often not up for debate – as the passage above attempts to illustrate. While academic philosophies and scientific theories may be contested or even rejected by the common clay as surely as academic and intellectual peers – there is an authenticity lent to the notion of human history that renders it ultimate in its factual appeal.

An appeal to history bears so much strength in rhetorical argument, a herculean prospect to overcome with any amount of counter-contextualization laid out at the feet of the initial thesis. Understood thus, history plays an absolutely crucial role in totalitarian collectivism as posited by Orwell in 1984.

Panoptic Pressures and Traditions of Surveillance

Hate Week is not the only tradition steeped in the speculative state of Oceania; constant surveillance – both panoptic and synoptic – threatens those who steer away from the Party. Surveillance is the major tradition of Oceania, and it is conducted in myriad fashions.

Children, particularly youth who belong to the Spies movement as advocated by the Party and Big Brother, are encouraged to keep watch on their parents, peers, and relatives for any sign of faithlessness in the Party or the doctrine.

The telescreen, present in every room of every home of the Outer and Inner Party (though, the Inner Party member may turn the telescreen “off” for a half-hour at certain times) acts as a silent watchman, the individual unaware if they are being watched or listened to at any given moment of any given day.

Adopting Michel Foucault's concept of the panopticon – of a persecution complex wherein the few surveil the many – we can understand the technology of the telescreen to be panoptic in nature inasmuch as it is used to control the actions – and to the degree it is employed, thought and behaviour. The thought police are constantly monitoring these telescreens, searching for even the most remote clue of thoughtcrime:

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard.

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to.

You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

This dark literature is ominous, warning man not to become complacent nor to surrender his individuality nor sovereignty – lest a yoke be placed upon his shoulders and his future be stripped from his own hands.

Failure to heed these warnings against submission of our rights and our history may yield these supposedly fictional futures; in Orwell's words – imagine a boot stamping on a human face, for ever.

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