The Theme of Abuse of Power:
George Orwell’s The Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic American novel that delves into human psychology when it comes to controlling, corruption, power, and the final utopian society. Orwell indirectly suggests that authority delegated to the government will finally become compromised, and they will try to compel all to subscribe to their one set values. Moreover, he will bring forth the notion that the tainted government will try to damage any physical and psychological opposition to their values, therefore removing any chance of accomplishing a perfect world.
The book demonstrates how the government attempts to regulate the bodies and minds of its population, for instance, Winston Smith, who does not embrace their values, through many approaches. The first typical illustration emerges with the massive advertisement with the slogan “Big Brother is Watching You”[1]. These are the first confirmation that the regime is watching over its population. Immediately, we are introduced to the “Thought Police,” who “sneak in on discourses, often watching your every step, regulating their thoughts and minds of the population”[2]. To the corrupted regime, environmental regulation is not sufficient enough, but. The only means to completely do away with the physical disobedience is first to remove any psychological disagreement. The regime is trying to manipulate and regulate our minds, as it states, “thought crime does not involve death; believed crime is death[3]. Later in the text, the regime attempts even more stringent measures of control. Big Brother’s forecasts in the Times are shifted. The government is deceptive about production numbers[4]. Even somewhere in the text, Syme’s identity was not captured on the Chess Committee list. He then basically disappears as if he had not lived. Although the approaches and actions of the government appear somehow extreme in Orwell’s text, they may not be whole too deceptive.
In line with Awan, Abdul Ghafoor, and Syed Ahmad Raza (2016), Nineteen Eighty-Four is to the illnesses of the twentieth century to what Leviathan was believed to be in the seventieth century. In the book, Winston Smith discusses people of not being human. He observes that “the only thing that makes you human is to permit the administration to get into you.[5]” The corruption is not the only concern that Orwell brings forth, both directly and indirectly. He cautions that complete power in the control of any regime can result in the denial of fundamental rights and freedoms for the people. Although he uses the Soviet Union as a ground of the book’s illustration, he chose England as the setting of the story to demonstrate that any total power, whether in a Democratic state or a Communist one, can lead to a brutal and oppressive rule. When government propaganda turns to be a reality, and no one will oppose, anything can just become a truth. Through the manipulation and control of the body and thought the government tries, any anticipations of accomplishing a utopian world are ruined. The people’s minds are no longer theirs. The government conditions them how to make a decision. Conformity and this independent thinking all over the whole populace can have catastrophic outcomes. Moreover, Orwell informs us that it became the world of outrageous machines and frightening armaments. “Soldiers fighting, overcoming, oppressing…three million individuals all with a similar face,”[6].
Although Orwell was born in India, he was raised by the British aristocratic principles of power over the lower class and overall class pride. A subject common in his texts, Nineteen Eighty-Four perhaps no difference, is this gap in classes. The Party ignores the majority. This is a theme that is “basic to the text, however not depicted fully as the destruction of language and the removal of the past. Bryfonski observes that: “Orwell believed that the problem of power by caste or class, or political race wields more brutal than ever. It needs a solution. Since he was from the upper-middle class and understood from his discrimination just how imaginary the lower classes could be too aristocratic extremists, a key theme in all his text is the separation and loneliness of the aristocratic observer, as his favorite Swift among the oppressed Irish.”
It demands a solution. Because he was from the upper-middle class and knew from his prejudices just how unreal the lower classes can be to upper-class radicals, a central theme in all his work is the separateness and loneliness of the upper-class observer, like his beloved Swift among the oppressed Irish.
The feeling of dominance somehow irritates and results in the corruption above of the total power. As the common saying, “total power corrupts completely.” It is not the leaders who want to become corrupt, but they cannot understand the concept of total rule. They, just as Bryfonski observed, cannot understand the difference with the system, and therefore become corrupt. This finally stops realizing a utopian society where the aristocratic people want to tyrannize, and the lower class wants to resist.
Orwell had powerful-anti-dictatorship perception and highly ridicules Socialism, although he still emphasizes that he was a Socialist in its complete form, in this book. There is a sense in which the Nineteen Eighty-Four is connected to the Animal Farm. In Animal Farm, Orwell left out one component which happens in all his other pieces of literature, the individual dissident engrossed in the machinery of the class system. The primary relationship between the two texts is through the use of the authoritarian society and the dissident, as observed, some think Nineteen Eighty-Four just to be a continuation of the Animal Farm. However, Nineteen Eighty-Four exposes everything to the extreme, but even terrifying is the fact that it is more accurate, for instance, in a Nazi Germany setting. Nineteen Eighty-Four is believed to have great negative suggestions, Orwell’s prediction if you like. Moreover, it is not understood whether it was planned as a “final words,” although it was his last piece, as he collapsed and was hospitalized for two years before he passed on. He did marry some months to his death, stating that the experience in marriage gave him a new sense to live. Orwell’s development of Winston Smith demonstrates a character who conflicts with the system, mostly against himself, but infrequently against other people. One contemplates of Orwell’s having cast his protagonists into a rounded machine and then watching their fight against the machine, their trials to free it, or compromise themselves with it.
Orwell focuses more on the struggle as some kind of advice than any concept. This text was highly regarded as prophetic, a warning of what could confront us if we did not be cautious. Orwell’s approach was to establish the questions, but not suggest solutions. Most probably, he did not have the answers; however, it was his suggestion to help bring about the consciousness of the prevailing concern. The corrupt regime is trying to manipulate and control the thinking of their subjects, which sequentially interprets to controlling their body. Orwell cautions that total power in the control of any regime can deny people of all fundamental rights.
In 1984, Orwell depicted a typical authoritarian society. The most extreme recognition conceivable of a contemporary government with total power. The title of the text was designed to demonstrate to its readers in 1949 that the narration portrayed a real likelihood for the imminent future. If dictatorship were not challenged, the title proposed, some difference of the world defined in the book could come to pass in only thirty-five years. Orwell depicts a country in which government controls and supervises every part of human life to the level that even having a disobedient thought is contrary to the law. As the novel advances, the nervousness disobedient Winston Smith makes a bold step of questioning the restrictions of the Party’s power, only to realize that its capacity to dominate and subjugate its citizens dwarfs even his most auspicious beginnings of its reach. As the reader comes to comprehend through Winston’s eyes. The Party exploits various strategies to control its subjects, each of which is an essential of its own in the text. These includes:
The Party attacks its members with psychological stimuli meant to overpower their mind’s ability for an independent decision. The large telescreen in each person’s room discharges a progressive wave of propaganda meant to make the flaws and challenges of the Party seem to be a victorious success. Moreover, the telescreens monitor character in every point they go, and the citizens are constantly reminded, particularly byways of the pervasive slogans labeled “Big Brother is Watching You.” That the authorities are monitoring and assessing them. The Party weakens family unit by enrolling children into an institution known as the Junior Spies, which manipulates and motivates them to spy on their parents and record any case of betrayal to the Party. Besides, the Party compels people to conquer their sexual desires, taking sex as just a procreative responsibility, whose conclusion is the development of new Party members. The Party then conveys people’s repressed disappointment and emotion into the strong, fierce demonstration of aversion against the Party’s political rivals. The Party has created most of these rivals specifically for this mission.
Besides brainwashing their minds, the Party as well regulates the bodies of its members. The Party progressively monitors for any indication of betrayal to the extent that, as Winston states, even a slight facial convulsion could result in an arrest. An individual’s nervous system becomes his fiercest rival. The Party compels its supporters to go through a mass morning workout known as the Physical Jerks, and afterward to work for an extended time, exhausting days at government institutions, keeping citizens in an overall state of tiredness. Anyone who does contrary to the Party’s directive is disciplined and reskilled through methodical and ruthless torture. After being exposed to many days of this vigorous treatment, Winston himself concluded that nothing is as strong as this bodily pain, no emotional betrayal or moral belief can overwhelm it. By controlling the minds of their members with the physical torment, the Party can exercise dominance over reality, persuading its members that 2+2=5.
The Party also regulates every source of information, supervising and rewriting the information of all histories and newspapers for its interests. The Party does not permit people to store records of their past, for instance, documents or photographs. Consequently, memories become uncertain and untrustworthy, and people become readily willing to consume and take in whatever the Party informs them. By regulating the present, the Party can alter the past. The Party can validate all of its activities in the present.
Through telescreens and secret microphones all over the city, the Party is capable of observing its followers nearly all the time. Besides, the Party uses complex means, (bearing in mind that the novel was authored in the period before computers), to amount extensive management on economic production and information sources, and fearsome tools to cause torment upon those members perceived to be enemies. The novel documents that technology at this period, which is usually seen working toward ethical good, can as well enable the most demonic evil.
Eventually, this demonstrates how strong the Party’s techniques of manipulation and control are. The Party and its philosophy are sanctioned, by appearance freely, by the detestable and boring collective of Outer Party followers. Gleason documents that the “association between philosophy and the insentient are created at the time in which philosophy is condemned, at the time of its denunciation, when philosophy becomes not a seriously taken experience but the reality itself”[7]. By incorporating this to the paper’s discourse on the Party’s necessity to de-regularize democratic concepts, we can interpret why it is so critical that the Party, in its publicity, highlights freedom of speech and thought so emphatically. By letting Goldstein deny the Party, and by enabling his advertisement of democratic ideals, the audience consequently readily denounce his truth in support of protecting the Party’s philosophy and truth. The Party is the shield of the citizens, and the safety of the population is at risk, which consequently develops the necessity for the sustained rule of the Party and Big Brother. The philosophy of hatred endures, and the Party regulations without any actual opposition.
Makovi observes that “each of the Nineteen Eighty-Four’s innovations of mind manipulation and control strives at either overpowering or undermining of some individual qualities key to the human spirit. The Party capitalizes on various systems of secret spies to instill fear, circulating fear and suspicion. With the establishment of Newspeak, they render it impractical to express any counter-argument of their needs. The Party separates every person, damaging all social ties, to stimulate fear and hatred. These treacherous and subtle approaches of harassment and control persistently corrupt character and independent thinking, which consequently promotes pro-war and horrible emotions. These reactions are produced and used during the Two Minute Hate, where they are perfectly exploited.
Looking at the full, persistent strength of the audience’s response during the Two Minute Hate, certainly hate provides a twisted kind of happiness, too addictive not to take part in. In her paper, “The origins of dystopia: Wells, Huxley, and Orwell,” Claeys Gregory states that the Two Minute Hate has its meaning to deprive a gratifying physical life to its supporters and that the Party increases the significance and efficiency of Party developed experiences, for instance, the group state of the Two Minute’s Hate. The only affection permitted, that for Big Brother, is as well the only desire permissible, besides the aggressive desires of hatred[8].
This support the concept that The Two Minutes Hate is advertently meant to satisfy the physical desires of the crowd, which would describe why when the mass participates in this aggressive, orgiastic hatred, even Winston should serve as the distasteful thing regarding the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was indebted to act as a portion, but that it was impractical to avoid coming in. Moreover, The Two Minutes Hate provides Party followers one of their limited means of behaving at all, because, most of the time, Party subscribers must not endanger the focus of the Thought Police. Therefore, even desire is commissioned by the Party, and perverse to marge its demands, expressively brainwashing the audience on various levels. No other desire is permissible to them, psychological or physical, then the affection for Big Brother, and hatred for the opponent.
The Two Minutes Hate is an essential element of the Party’s hold on power. It also demonstrates how dreadful their exercising of hate. They control the whole population on a sociological and psychological level: turning people into hive minds, inept of demonstrating independent thinking, reinforces the Party. If the Party nearly removes personality, and only a group of hive minds occurs, then groupthink should supposedly keep the character from existence. The creation of personal feelings and thoughts is impractical. Hatred unifies everyone’s ideas, and the anxiety of the Party, of the Thought Police, of the opponent, keeps people united.
Together with hate, fear, and affection of Big Brother are core emotions that the Party inspires. This is demonstrated by one of O’Brien’s presentations during Winston’s questioning when he states that “the medieval cultures claimed that they were based on justice and love. Ours is based on hate. In our world, there would be no feelings apart from anger, fear, victory, and humiliation. There would be no affection except the affection of Big Brother”. O’ Brien is completely devoted to the belief of the Party, to the extent that he behaves like the physical personification of the Party. He provides Winston, in plain, the formal rule of the Party, and it demonstrates how critical hatred is in the novel. Not one personal thought or feeling is to be permissible, and personality itself is to be eliminated if the Big Brother and the Party are to be memorable. Character provides opposition to the Party’s philosophy of hate since it creates no space for rebellious thoughts and emotions. If Julia and Winston were genuinely in love in the novel, certainly their love would serve as some kind of opposition as well. Any such resistance is unacceptable to the Party, as it demonstrates there is something beyond the Party, and also, beyond Oceania is hate and anxiety.
Although the Party’s central machinery for brainwashing the population is the regulation of history, they as well regulate individuality and autonomy. For instance, the fundamental qualities of developing one’s identity are inaccessible to Winston and the other people of Oceania. Winston does not understand his age. He does not even know if he is married or not. Rather than being extraordinary characters with particular, identifying information, each person of the Outer Party is alike. All Party subscribers wear the same outfit, smoke the same type of cigarettes, drink the same brand of wine, among others. By itself, creating an element of personality identity is not only mentally tricky but also logistically complicated.
Most of Winston’s essential decisions can be understood as endeavors to develop a sense of individuality. His decision to buy a dairy and start documenting his mind is an endeavor to build history and memory. His decision to buy the paperweight is inspired by a feeling to have something of his own that signifies a period before the Party. Winston’s sexual association with Julia and their choice to rent a house where they can spend time together means heinous acts in the world of 1984. In deciding to pursue an affection with Julia, Winston declares his autonomy and further develops his individuality as a person who counterattacks the Party’s manipulation and control. Finally, although Winston tries to keep his independence and develop a particular individuality are not in congruence with the Party. Winston’s practices in the Ministry of Love signifies the complete disassembly and ruining all elements of personality. When he went back to society, he lost all autonomy and individuality and has become one of the Party’s anonymous collective.
Bibliography
Awan, Abdul Ghafoor, and Syed Ahmad Raza. “The Effects of Totalitarianism & Marxism towards dystopian society in George Orwell’s selected Fictions.” Global Journal of Management and Social Sciences 2, no. 4 (2016): 21-37.
Bryfonski, Dedria. The Abuse of Power in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Greenhaven Press, 2010.
Claeys, Gregory. “The origins of dystopia: Wells, Huxley and Orwell.” The Cambridge companion to utopian literature (2010): 107-134.
Gleason, Abbott, Jack Goldsmith, and Martha C. Nussbaum, eds. On Nineteen eighty-four: Orwell and our future. Princeton University Press, 2010.
Makovi, Michael. “George Orwell as a Public Choice Economist.” The American Economist 60, no. 2 (2015): 183-208.
Orwell, George. Nineteen eighty-four. Everyman’s Library, 2009.
[1] Orwell, George. Nineteen eighty-four. Everyman’s Library, 2009.
[2] Ibid., 6.
[3] Ibid., 27.
[4] Ibid., 35.
[5] Awan, Abdul Ghafoor, and Syed Ahmad Raza. “The Effects of Totalitarianism & Marxism towards dystopian society in George Orwell’s selected Fictions.” Global Journal of Management and Social Sciences 2, no. 4 (2016): 21-37.
[6] Ibid., 37.
[7] Gleason, Abbott, Jack Goldsmith, and Martha C. Nussbaum, eds. On Nineteen eighty-four: Orwell and our future. Princeton University Press, 2010.
[8] Claeys, Gregory. “The origins of dystopia: Wells, Huxley, and Orwell.” The Cambridge companion to utopian literature (2010): 107-134.