FREE ESSAY ON 1984

1984

1984 is about life in a world where no personal freedoms exist. Winston the main character
is a man of 39 whom is not extraordinary in either intelligence or character, but is
disgusted with the world he lives in. He works in the Ministry of Truth, a place where
history and the truth is rewritten to fit the party's beliefs. Winston is aware of the
untruths, because he makes them true. This makes him very upset with the government of
Oceania, where Big Brother, a larger than life figure, controls the people.
His dissatisfaction increases to a point where he rebels against the government in small
ways. Winston's first act of rebellion is buying and writing in a diary. This act is
known as a thought crime and is punishable by death. A thought crime is any bad thought
against the government of Oceania. Winston commits many thought crimes and becomes
paranoid about being caught, which he knows is inevitable (Greenblast 113). He becomes
paranoid because a young woman who is actively involved in many community groups follows
him. Winston is obsessed with the past, a time before Oceania was under strict
dictatorship. He goes into an antique shop and buys a shell covered in glass, which is
another crime punishable by death. He sees the same woman following him. Many thoughts
race through his mind I wanted to rape you and then murder you afterwards. Two weeks ago
I thought seriously of smashing your head in with a cobblestone. If you really want to
know, I imagined that you had something to do with the Thought Police (Orwell 101). The
girl who was following him slipped him a note while at work. The note said, I love
you(Orwell 90). They make plans to meet each other and carry on an illegal love affair.
This love affair is another rebellion against the government. It goes on for some time.
Winston rents a room where he and Julia can be secluded from the outside world. They meet
a man named O'Brien who indicates that he is another revolutionary. Winston and Julia go
to his house to meet with him. O'Brien gives than a seditious book to read. Soon after
that, they are caught by the Thought Police and never see each other again.
O'Brien, becomes Winston's rehabilitator and torturer for the next 9 months. O'Brien
tortures Winston in stages. The first two stages are to force the party's beliefs on him
then learn and understand what is expected of him. In the third stage, Winston is made to
face what he secretly fears most, rats eating his face. After being completely
rehabilitated by O'Brien, Winston now loves the establishment and the government. He is
set free.
Big Brother is the figurehead of a government that has total control. The Big Brother
regime uses propaganda and puts fear in its citizens to keep the general population in
line. Big Brother is watching you(Orwell 5) is just one example of many party slogans
that puts fear in its citizens. Big Brother uses various ways to catch people guilty of
bad thoughts In the world of 1984 the tyrant Big Brother does employ a vast army of
informers called thought police, who watch every citizen at all times for the least signs
of criminal deviation which may consist simply of unorthodox thoughts(Daley 112).
Winston Smith represents Orwell's view on totalitarianism. Winston rebels against the
government of Oceania by starting a diary and constantly having bad thoughts against the
government. Winston knows that he is doomed from the moment he has his first heretical
thought. The tensions of the novel concerns how long he can stay alive and whether it is
possible for Winston to die without mentally betraying his rebellion (Greenblast 115).
Winston starts writing in a diary for two reasons. The first is that he wants to be able
to remember the daily occurrences in the world. In 1984, the memory of individuals, is
effectively manipulated, programmed, and controlled from the outside by the party
(Kolakowski 127). People don't know what they are consciously remembering and what is
told to them. The party had invented airplanes (Orwell 127) is just one example of the
party's propaganda and false statements that change every day. The other reason for the
diary is so that people in the future will be able to read what went on during Winston's
time and to tell them about his daily reflections on his feelings about the party. These
are the same reasons why Orwell wrote 1984. He wanted to expose a communist country (the
Soviet Union).
The specific political purpose that had used Orwell's sense of urgency was his desire to
explode the myth of the Soviet Union as the paradigm of the socialist state. He also
wanted to expose the dangers of totalitarianism, which the devaluation of objective
truth, and the systematic manipulation of the common people through propaganda (Stansky
102).
O'Brien is an informant to Big Brother. He is not who he seems to be. He appears to
Winston as a fellow conspirator, but actually becomes Winston's torturer and
rehabilitator. O'Brien and the party can't tolerate Winston's betrayal of the government.
O'Brien tells his victim: You are a flaw in the pattern, Winston. You are a stain that
must be wiped out...It is intolerable that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in
the world, however secret and powerless it may be. (Daley 117)
In fact, the party can't comprehend his disbelief and must change his thoughts through
torture and brainwash. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall
fill you with ourselves (Orwell 200). O'Brien represents the core of communist or
totalitarian rule, making the victims suffer by using brainwashing to control them.
O'Brien also tells Winston what he should feel about Big Brother when Winston is at his
lowest point mentally and physically. O'Brien's speeches to the broken Winston Smith in
the Thought Polices' torture chamber represents for Orwell the core of our century's
political hideousness. Although O'Brien says that power seeks power and needs no
ideological excuse. He does in fact explain to his victim what this power is (Stansky
107).
Julia is considered a sexual deviant in the oppressed world of 1984. In a normal world
sex is free, in 1984 it's a forbidden act only allowed for reproduction purposes to keep
the party's numbers constant. Julia has been sexually active since her teenage years. She
had had her first love affair when she was sixteen, with a party member of sixty (Orwell
109). Love and sex is not allowed in this totalitarian state so Julia has to look as pure
as possible so that she does not show any guilt. You thought I was a good party member,
pure in word and deed. Banners, processions, slogans, games, and community hikes all that
stuff. And you [Winston] thought that if I had a quarter of a chance I'd denounce you as
a thought criminal and get you killed off  (Orwell 101).
The owner of the antique shop is another example of someone appearing to be what he is
not. Orwell uses the shop owner to illustrate a point. Orwell shows that no one can be
trusted in a totalitarian country. Someone who appears to be your friend will actually
turn you in and have you killed. The shop owner appears to be an old widower who enjoys
having conversations with Winston Smith. Throughout the book it can be seen that looks
can be deceiving. He is actually a member of the Thought Police and gets a good laugh
when Winston and Julia getting caught. Now all he can do is wait for his next victim to
enter his store. 
The Ministry of Truth is a place where history and facts--significant and insignificant
are rewritten to reflect the party's utopian beliefs. They thoroughly destroy the records
of the past; they print up new, up to-date editions of old newspapers and books; and they
know corrected versions will be replaced by another, re-corrected one. Their goal is to
make people forget everything- facts, words, dead people, and the names of places. How
far they succeed in obliterating the past is not fully established in Orwell's
description; clearly they try hard and they score impressive results. The ideal of
complete oblivion may not have been reached, yet further progress is to be expressed
(Kolakowski 126).
Winston and Julia are workers at the Ministry of Truth. Winston gets more mentally
involved in his work than Julia. Winston Smith and his fellows at the Ministry of Truth
spend their days rewriting the past: Most of the material you were dealing with had no
connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is
contained in a direct lie' (Daley 118). Winston is not as strong mentally as Julia is.
His work affects him more. The Ministry of Truth is like a totalitarian country, because
it has ways to scare its citizens. People guilty of crimes are erased from having ever
existed. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of your existence was
denied and then forgotten (Orwell 19). Again people were taken away without any rights.
...There was no trial no report of arrest (Orwell 19). 
The actual purpose of the Ministry of Truth is to spread lies and to have control over
its citizens using memory-erasing techniques. ...The distinction between true and false
in their usual meaning has disappeared. This is the great cognitive triumph of
totalitarianism: it cannot be accused of lying any longer since it has succeeded in
abrogating the very idea of truth (Kolakowski 127).
These same control techniques are used by totalitarian nations that seek control over
there citizens. The Ministry of Truth is a complete contradiction of itself. A Ministry
of Truth should not change past occurrences or say people never existed. It should
exemplify the truth and not erase records of the existence of people. The Ministry of
Love is where all criminals are tortured, rehabilitated, then set free or killed. As soon
as Winston is captured he knows he is going to the Ministry of Love. The Ministry of Love
was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never
been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometer of it. It was a place
impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a
maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the
streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black
uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons (Orwell 8).
In a totalitarian state something resembling a Ministry of Love is common place. It's a
place where the government can inflict pain on its subjects for crimes big and small.
That is how totalitarian nations keep, power over their citizens-- by fear of pain. The
name Ministry of Love is a contradiction of itself. Its name shows a feeling of love and
warmth, but in actuality it's the complete opposite. It's a place of hate and pain and is
cold and dark. A better name for it would be the Ministry of Hate. George Orwell lived
during a time when Europe was in a period of rebuilding after World War II. During that
time Soviets gained six nations as satellites. England was helpless and had to worry
about their own problems and had to watch the Soviet Union take control of half of
Germany. The leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin, closely resembles Big Brother. They were
both larger than life figures in their respective countries. In the Soviet Union you
could easily have found large posters with Stalin's face on them. The same holds true in
1984; Big Brother's face is everywhere. A famous quote from 1984 is Big Brother is
watching you (Orwell 5). Meaning if his Thought Police don't catch you, his telescreens
and hidden microphones would. In the Soviet Union, Stalin's KGB sought criminals who
plotted against the government. In Stalin's regime over 10 million people were killed. In
1984 hundreds of criminals were killed daily. Another aspect of the 1940's was the new
broadcast TVs and mainframe computers. The new technologies could be used for means of
control. Orwell saw communist countries using these technologies for control (Kolakowski
125). This is where Orwell's idea of telescreens and hidden microphones came from. Before
World War II, Orwell had his worst encounter with communists. While Orwell was in the
Spanish Civil War, he was running away from Soviet communists who were trying to kill
him. After that experience he got out of the army and became a writer full time. Another
shock to Orwell was when the Nazi-Soviet pact signaled the breakdown and the beginning of
the mental and emotional state out of which grew Animal Farm and 1984(Greenblast 105).
Orwell may of have extracted what he saw in his world while writing but it was done to
get people's attention of problems in the existing world. Orwell's primary purpose is to
distort disturbing conditions tendencies and habits of thought that he saw existing in
the world(Stansky 105). Orwell saw, the whole world steadily moving toward a vast
ruthless tyranny. He felt nothing could stop its monstrous progress. 1984, in spite of
its setting in the future, is not primarily a utopian fantasy prophesying what the world
will be like in thirty or forty years but a novel about what the world is like now
(Greenblast 112). Orwell always relates characters in his books to points of view and
real people. In Animal Farm every farm animal represents a person in the Soviet Union. In
1984, Orwell represents his point of view in Winston. He shows a totalitarian leader, in
O'Brien and Big Brother, while Julia is the desire and lust in every human being. 
George Orwell had deep resentment against totalitarianism and what it stood for. He saw
the problem of totalitarianism in his existing world. He also understood how the problem
could fester and become larger due to instability in Europe's economy after World War II.
He purposely makes the story, 1984, unrealistic and blown out of proportion to capture
people's attention and make them think maybe it wouldn't be unrealistic in the near
future. With his deep resentment toward totalitarianism it became the focal point of his
novels. George Orwell's, novels were directed toward against totalitarianism and for
Socialism and what it stood for. 
Bibliography
Reference Page
Orwell, George. 1984. New York: The New American Library Inc., 1983.
Daley, Alan L. George Orwell, Writer and Critic of Modern Society. Charlottesville:
Samhar Press, 1974.
Greenblast, Stephen J. Orwell as Satirist. George Orwell, A Collection of Critical
Essays. Ed. Raymond Williams. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1974. 103-118.
Kolakowski, Leszek. Totalitarianism and the virtue of the Lie. 1984 Revisited,
Totalitarianism In Our Century. Ed. Irving Howe. New York: Harper and Row, 1983.
122-136.
Stansky, Peter and William Abrahams. Orwell: The Transformation. London: Gramala
Publishing Limited, 1981.