Understanding the message of 1984 The distortion of history and the creation of a new language
Xhensila Gaba
Course: CIS 1
Instructor: Tom Hashimoto Date: Friday, 30, 2010
The book 1984 of George Orwell is considered one of the classics of literature more for its warning message rather than for being a mystic book trying to predict and speculate on the future. The book was written in 1948 but it describes events in 1984. Orwell has written a book that was a warning about totalitarian regimes forming, which actually started to spring up after the WWII. So the question that arises after reading this book is whether Orwell was right or not? To what extend was the book accurate in predicting what was going to happen and to what extend is the imagination part. Well, now that we read the book in 2010 and thus many years have passed since 1984, we are in a privileged time to make such analysis with regard to the accuracy that the author noticed in advance what was going to happen later on. Indeed, after WWII, totalitarian regimes took place, the cold war began and in many parts of the world communist regimes arose. The book of Orwell is a good instrument for dealing with topics such as isolation, repression, loneliness and abuse of power. Also this book is good for analyzing the past and being careful with the future. Although it was written for a specific time (1984), the book has a greater extension in time and its message is involving even today’s society. This essay aims at interpreting some of the crucial points of the book and making an analogy with history and today’s events. First I will provide a brief contextual background, by summarizing the plot of the book. Second, I will move on and analyze what role played the erase of the past in such regimes. Why the past matters to them and why does Big Brother want to control it? Then I will focus on the Newspeak and its purpose. How was this new language created? Lastly I will 2
provide some evidences why this book resembles at a limited extend, of course, what is nowadays happening to the society. Why is this comparison important?
The main character of the book is Winston, a man at his forties that works in one of the four Ministries that the government was composed of, the Ministry of Truth which dealt with regulation of media, entertainment and arts. There were also the Ministry of Peace, which deals with the perpetual war going on, the Ministry of Plenty, responsible for economic problems and the Ministry of Love, which was kind of judicial system, where all the prisoners were brought there and suffered their punishment. Of course, during the communist regimes, such Ministries did not de juro existed, because de facto they were exercising their control in the exact way Orwell describes. Orwell uses the paradox and the irony when putting the names of the Ministries. The Ministry of Truth was concerned with everything but the truth. The media was totally controlled by Big brother, which was the dictator of Oceania, and the information provided was for the mere goal to brainwash people. The Ministry of Plenty is supposed to provide people plenty of things, but in reality the standard of living was very low, and often times even the essential things were missing. You don’t expect from the Ministry of Plenty making an announcement that a shortage will take place, but here is where the paradox is used. The Ministry of Peace was mainly dealing with the issue of war. Peace is war—that is the slogan used. The book states that there were altogether three superpowers: Eastasia, Euroasia and Oceania, and there was a perpetual war existing between those three. People were manipulated in such way to believe that peace and war are two concepts that can be exchanged with each other as far as war never ends.
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Then, the Ministry of Love was like the scariest one, and it represented some kind of judicial institution. The paradox lies under the word Love, because in reality people were not loved, but punished, tortured, manipulated in such a way, that they ended up worshipping Big Brother. The Ministry of Love was the institution that judged people, but in Oceania (representing a totalitarian regime) there was no such thing as legal or illegal, because no laws existed. You never know exactly if your actions or non-actions are right or wrong, because it depends on the judgment of Big brother and its established state apparatus. People were spied all the time; there was no privacy at all. Even within their houses, there was a telescreen watching and listening to everything you do or say. The author goes on with its imagination and mentions the presence of the Thought Police. What is implied here is that the fear was so deeply injected to people that they were not free even to think—because that was considered a thought crime. Can you imagine if a person is controlled in its thought—then he is going to turn into a machine that thinks only in the same way as Big Brother wants? People who committed the thought crime were vaporized--yes exactly vaporized within a night, and no one would ask anything to anyone. Moreover, face crime was another type of crime punished within the Ministry of Love. Face crime meant that you express what you think or feel using the mimic of your face. But controlling the expression in your mimic means to control your instincts and the instant emotions you get, and of course, the instincts are not fully controlled. Also, your private life was all the time under the observance of Spies. Having an affair was considered a crime, because you tended to hide it. The Party allowed the marriage, but love was discouraged. If people wanted to get married just because they loved each other, then the marriage was not approved. The only purpose of getting marriage should be the birth of new members of the Party. People had the responsibility and duty that by marrying could provide the Party new members, and therefore its
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continuation would not be put in danger. Love between people was one of those “wrong” things, because people should love only the Party, the system, and their loyalty and dedication should not be wasted and shifted away from the Party. Actually, that is what happened during communist regimes and their plans and effort for creating the New Man, the one loyal to the regime, the one that does not think, but just acts in the way the Party wants, the one who never revolts. Probably they should have best called it the New Machine. Now let’s focus on the role of the past in this book. What Ministry of Truth does is manipulating the history by rewriting it in its convenience and falsifying it. Moreover, it also invented new historical figures which never existed. The history was distorted. They wanted people not to have memories. There is a passage in the book, in which Winston tries to remember his childhood, but with no use, because he could not remember anything, like all was vaporized from his mind. Now, why was Big Brother so interested in erasing the past? The reasons should be found into the importance that the past has, which are: (1) you can compare the past with the present and choose the best option, (2) you have an incentive to up rise and rebel and demand for better, if you know that there existed a better option previously. If there is no past, then nothing challenges the actual regime, because they do not know what to rebel for, they don’t know what better means, as far as their past is nullified. People were bombarded only the news and information provided by the system. They were indoctrinated by the mass propaganda. They could not be selective or critical. The control of history is the decisive and intelligent step you have to take if you want to control the mass, and that’s what Big Brother did. Also, another important point in the book to be analyzed is the creation of the new language used in the Oceania, called the Newspeak. The purpose of this new language was to reduce and simplify the vocabulary in order to minimize the occurrence of thought crimes. Less 5
words mean less thoughts and low variety of words used in speeches. For example, according to Newspeak, we don’t need to use both “good” and “bad”, but we can keep only good and instead of bad, use “ungood”—thus the new language is not aiming at creating words, but rather reducing them. The language is important because through words we communicate and transmit to each other our feeling and thoughts. What if the word freedom does not exist, would still people communicate with each other for the importance of the freedom? Reducing words means to make impossible the communication, and less people communicate, less probability has for them to commit thought crime—so after all, isn’t Big Brother thinking for the best of its people?! In the book, Orwell mentions the word Doublethink, meaning that people should have the ability to believe two contradictory thinks at the same time. The same word could have different meanings when applied to different people. You could tell lies, and at the same time believe them. For example, duckspeak when used for an opponent, it is abuse, and when applied to someone you agreed with, it is praise. Or another example is the word blackwhite—when applied to an opponent, it means that he is claiming that black is white, thus he is denying the obvious facts, but when applied to a Party member it means having the willingness to admit that black is white for the sake of Party discipline. So the purpose of the doublethink is to play with the people’s mind, control the reality and change things in your favor when needed. This is what the new language is about—manipulation of minds, and of course the ones who would survive the doublethink were the insane people, because the more intelligent you are, the more you understand what is going on around, the more you get deluded and therefore the less sane you become. Another word, doublespeak, which is not obviously mentioned by the author but is created as a result of the combination of Newspeak and doublethink, means that you say one 6
thing and mean another. Such are the names of the ministries—the Ministry of Plenty provides starvation and the Ministry of Love deals with tortures. The whole system is raised upon the doublespeak—what you say, actually might mean the contrary, you never know, you can only guess. In conclusion, 1984 is a book that makes us think how people can be brainwashed, indoctrinated by the regime propaganda. People did not trust at anyone, even at their relatives. The history is controlled and the language is transformed by the hands of politics. Even today, politicians have created their own “Newspeak” during their campaigns. Many of the information that we get is politicized and the truth is distorted. So the message of this book does not only refer to totalitarian regimes, but it goes further in making people realize how they can be manipulated at any time, no matter who their Big Brother is.
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References
Orwell, G. (2005). 1984. New Delhi: Heritage Publishers.
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