This is an analysis of control, how it is implemented and what its purpose is, in George Orwell’s 1984.
In Oceania everything is controlled. The people have basically no freedom at all-no freedom to think there own thoughts, and no liberty to do what they yearn. Everything people do is controlled-from their thoughts, to their actions, everything they do, or even think, is constantly being recorded and monitored. “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.”
“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously”. In every household there was a camera-like screen which watched your “every movement” and “overheard” your
every sound, called a “telescreen”. Most importantly the telescreen “could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely”. The most disturbing thing of all was that it was unknown when you were being watch, and it was feasible that you were always being watched. People had to live with the “assumption” that they were being monitored 24/7! Although the telescreen cannot watch the entire household, every “peep” throughout the entire house could be heard. People cannot be themselves and cannot live freely with this sort of invasion of privacy, with this sort of control! The party essentially controls how you live and what you do in your house, because if one is constantly being watched, then what they do will be dissimilar to if they weren’t being watched. They will almost subconsciously altar their way of living because they are being watched. Knowing that you are being watched makes you almost “claustrophobic”.The telescreen could also glean any emotion in a persons face, whether they are facing the telescreen or not, because as Winston remarks “even a back can be revealing.” If one would like not to be “vaporized”(a euphemistic term meaning annihilated), as the party did to one who was caught thinking, it was best to keep their faces inscrutable and reveal as little emotion or thought as possible. The party realizes that it is what people don’t say that is often the most vital or revealing, that is why they try to control people’s thoughts as much as possible. The party loathes “thinkers”, especially people who have even diminutive feelings of opposition towards the party. Therefore the party tries to control people’s thoughts as much as possible by instating “Thought Police”(police responsible for “taking care of” people who have committed “thoughtcrime”). Mainly, people are most apprehensive about revealing emotion with their faces or body language, since “Thoughtcrime” as it is called, is considered to be one of the utmost crimes one can commit. Committing such a crime will absolutely ensure you the punishment or “justification” as the party might see it, of “annihilation”.
“In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people’s windows.” What you do and what you can do is very much so controlled, especially when you have helicopters spying on you. As if telescreens didn’t watch over you sufficiently, a helicopter must also scrutinize what you do, in what should be the “privacy of your own home”.
“The instructress raised her arms above her head and-bent over touched her toes.” At any given time a face could appear on the telescreen, and “bark” orders to the “comrades”. Even the exercises, which one took part in, and when one exercises was controlled and dictated. It seems as though no one really has a say in the matter. All one could really do whether they ostracized the “activity” with every fiber in their body or not, was to simply play along, and do as instructed.
Furthermore, the party controls the past, the present, and the future. Everything written in the past has been altered, or tampered with and people’s memories of the past are tainted and have been falsified by the brainwashing of the party. Books written before the 1960s, which was before the party came to be, have been destroyed. “Books, also, were recalled and re-written again and again, and were invariably re-issued without any admission that any alteration had been made.” There was absolutely no way of distinguishing between fact and fiction. The party had it made it merely impossible. And there “conveniently” exists “no external records that you can refer to, even the outline of your own life lost its sharpness. You remember huge events which had quite probably not happened, you remembered the detail of incidents without being able to recapture their atmosphere, and there were long blank periods to which you could assign nothing.” The fact
that everyone seems to have lost consciousness of their past as though they all suffer from “amnesia”, is rather deviant to say the least. “If the party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened-that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?” The thought that this was even a possibility is mind-boggling! Something that in modern days seems to us like something which would be utterly impossible and unthinkable.The party also controls people by brainwashing their children. The children are brainwashed from a tender age into spying on their parents and reporting any of them that are committing “thoughtcrime”. “Hardly a week passed in which some eavesdropping little sneak had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police.” Children, who don’t know better and have no understanding of what the ramifications of their actions are, and are naïve enough to do what they are told, are being taken advantage of! The party is deviously playing with the innocent children’s minds, just to suit their purpose of eradicating “thinkers”, in order to help perfect the so-called “ideal” society they live in.
One of the utmost things controlled by the party is not just thinking, but what emotions people can and are allowed to feel. Marriages are “loveless” and friendships are “deceitful”. People can put no trust in others and people cannot love for the party forbids it. People are supposed to have no attraction to the person they wish to marry, and if the party suspects any such attraction then they can choose not to wed the two. The party has also taken the sacrificial act of “sex” and portrayed it as this dirty and disgraceful thing, which is only acceptable for the purpose of making babies, and which is to be “joyless”.
Lastly, The party is creating this language “Newspeak” as it is called, with the sole purpose controlling the peoples thoughts, of narrowing down the range of peoples thinking, and there level of awareness, and consciousness. The less aware someone is, and the smaller their range of thinking, the harder it is for them to truly understand what the party is doing, and be able to establish their own thoughts, and opinions. Newspeak is the official language of Oceania and it is hoped to someday become the only language spoken by the citizens of Oceania. Newspeak is a language, which is greatly “refined” and has a much smaller vocabulary and compendium of words, then most languages. It is the only language, which gets progressively smaller each year. By creating this “language”, the party hopes to have ultimate control over the people and there “thinking” and to eliminate the chance of people being able to form their own opinions, and therefore be able to oppose the party. If a word like “hate” does not exist, then there’s no way for one to express hate, and therefore it will become a lost emotion. Either that, or few may still feel an abolished emotion such as “hate”, but they won’t understand what they are feeling and how to express it.
The party has established endless different ways of controlling people, which they have imposed. People have no freedom, no rights, and no emotion. They can feel nothing, are supposed to feel nothing, and are almost completely controlled by the party. They are constantly being monitored and watched, by the telescreens, the Thought Police, the helicopters, the children etc., to the point where it is simply “sick”! These people are experiencing the utmost invasion of privacy possible. Any way that the party can think of of controlling these people they entail.
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