The life Winston experienced in 1984 which has a parallel in contemporary American life - Essay Example

? Order 539742 Topic: Write a paper of ten or more pages discussing an aspect of the life Winston experienced in 1984 which has a parallel in contemporary American life. You are required to incorporate the ideas set forth by Bly or Sanford (shadow), Huxley, and Orwell into your When a comparison is made about the life in 1984(in the present context relating to Winston) with the parallel in contemporary American life, the first reflex of any reader is that it needs to be regarding the political aspects. Politics dominates the life of humankind in any part of the world, especially in the hot-bed of national/international politics of a country like America, but it is not the be-all and end-all of the present situation. Technological innovations have deeply impacted the life of the people all over the world, and it has proved to be the single important factor in “uniting” the world. Even though “the world is one family,” is the often-repeated slogan, technology and internet revolution have achieved that goal to a great extent in their areas of influence without ever pronouncing it, and without any supporting propaganda. Weaponry and strategies play a prominent role during wartime, and propaganda has even bigger influence. Misinformation to misguide the enemy contributes in a major way to confuse the enemy. A misinformed enemy is the greatest asset to gain advantage in war-situations. Being in Britain, George Orwell watches from close range how the operations in theaters of Second World War are conducted by the powers that have major stakes in the outcome of the war. The broadcasts of BBC are greatly influenced by the dictates of the Government for its overseas propaganda. Perverse double talk is the order of the time. Orwell’s model for the lying Ministry of Truth in his book 1984 is the British wartime Ministry of Information that censors BBC broadcasts. Politicians alone cannot be blamed for the grave societal ills that are always there. Democracy is not choosing one of the two evils (political parties) once in 4-5 years. It is about active participation of the people and their willingness to protest against the smallest deviations relating to the democratic norms in any area concerning the Republic. Life for an average citizen has mostly been the same under all systems at any given time during the course of history—that is, BAD! 1984 and the conditions prevailing in America at present corroborate this fact. The people have got to be ever vigilant and keep themselves in readiness to fight for their rights. 1984 The common man, an ordinary citizen, always receives the first blow and suffers and therefore, he has to remain ever vigilant and guard his individual freedom and other democratic rights. George Orwell is a revisionist. Officially sponsored atrocity and hate propaganda are not to his liking. History is not imagination; it needs to be subject to free and impartial enquiry and that is possible under the conditions of freedom of speech and writing. Every era has serious issues to deal with, or the issues are made serious by the rulers of the time. As for the political game, one important observation holds good for all the time, past present and future. The “Powerful Chairs” (politicians and bureaucrats) wish to maintain their hold on “Chair- less Powers” (the common citizens) for self-aggrandizement. In the present context, they extensively use the economic weapon called corruption. Take the issue of drug culture. Drugs in any form are illegal and they are confiscated and destroyed; besides the involved individuals are arrested and severe punishment follows, upon indictment. In this area, the Government is not willing to accept any new ideas and the drugs are banned outright. Banned in paper, and yet the industry thrives, due to corrupt practices at the implementation level. After the 9/11 incident, the life of the section of citizens and immigrants has been put under legal microscopic examination. The curbs are more or less similar to the ones in vogue as described in the book 1984, though for different reasons. Some of the laws, rules and regulations are: the federal government has assumed authority to detain non-immigrants without charge; no provision exists for release on bond; the detainees undergo long periods of confinement as the process of final deportation order is time-consuming; the Federal Call-in Special Registration program is biased towards Muslim countries—it can be interpreted as racial profiling the main target being Muslims, Arabs and South Asians. . Similar is the case in 1984, when the freedom of the Press is severely curbed and the books inconvenient to the party in power are banned, the liberty of the individual is curtailed, or done away with altogether. Orwell is against the totalitarianism of any genre. He is for democratic socialism, where human values are protected and dignity of the human being is respected. He is pained to see the irony of the revolution—those who are supposed to defend the revolution betray it, and the people are on the losing side again. Orwell has the good estimation of the social and political life of USA in the book 1984, as for the situation prevailing in 1948. Newspapers publish tutored stories of triumphs and wartime allies like USSR quickly turn peacetime enemies and the seed of Cold War has begun to sprout. In 1984, Winston Smith challenges the corrupted reality of his world. He is captured and tortured at the behest of the leaders of the ruling party. The ruling party has three main divisions within itself and the divisions are distinct. The inner party, the outer party and the rest, each segment always suspicious about the mutual maneuvers. The usual supporting structures like the Thought Police, propaganda machinery, and the youth league are all working in tandem and dance to the tune of the government policies. These are all segments of the evil force called totalitarian rule and to maintain that rule many negative practices are directed to be followed and implemented ruthlessly. Some of them are practice of memory hole, thought police, thought crime, control, manipulation, repression, physical control, psychological manipulation, technology and modernization, censorship, memory and the past, language as mind control, newspeak reality control, language and communication, surveillance, nationalism, the dangers of totalitarianism, futurology, power etc Some of the quotes in the book 1984(Orwell,1961) will reveal the implementation-mode of the above negative principles. "The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." (p.75) "The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the government of Oceania itself, 'just to keep the people frightened'." (p.153) "The key-word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts." (p.212) Winston Smith is the citizen of totalitarian super state Oceania. He lives during the most volatile era in Britain; the country is engulfed in II World War and civil war. With the disappearance of his parents, he is lodged into an orphanage and eventually gets a job in the Outer Party—the least trusted section of the party. He is disgusted with his poor lifestyle and maintains a dairy of his negative thoughts, obviously against the functioning of the state, and if found, the thought Police will torture him to death. The Thought Police have equipments placed to catch the potential defaulters. Children are brainwashed to spy on the parents, for any deviation in the party-line. Winston is employed in the Ministry of Truth, and his job is to falsify the historical records, and rewrite them as per the party line. He is fascinated with his work, because that provides him with the opportunity to know the authentic past. In this Ministry he happens to know Julia, and they fall in love. Their love affair continues in a hidden place supposedly free from telescreen and surveillance. But the Thought Police arrests them and Winston goes through the process of severe, unmentionable torture and is ultimately killed. Winston’s plight in 1884 depicts the overall societal conditions and how people suffer on day to day basis and how their life is full of uncertainties. In 1984 Orwell creates a world in which citizens have no right to a personal life or to personal thought. Leisure and other activities are controlled through a system of strict system. Sexual pleasure is discouraged; sex is retained only for the purpose of procreation, although artificial insemination (ARTSEM) is more encouraged and the party popularizes the following slogans: “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.” (p.16)Through their constant repetition, the terms become meaningless, and the slogans become axiomatic. This type of misuse of language, and the deliberate self-deception with which the citizens are encouraged to accept it, is called doublethink. One essential consequence of doublethink is that the Party can rewrite history with impunity, for "The Party is never wrong. Orwell writes, "We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." (p.263) What more is required to completely destroy the personality of an individual and bring him on par with the animal life or even worse? Contemporary American parallel Except for the politics of power and propaganda what George Orwell writes about the leaders of the society in 1984, everything else is kindergarten stuff, as to what is actually happening in the contemporary American life. The political morals of the American society have degenerated much more than what Orwell states in 1984. Technological advances and internet revolution have conferred the benign grace to those who achieve greatness and also to villains and fraudsters in the economic fronts. Smart think--tanks have taken their position in every corporation/ every segment of the society to outsmart the employees and customers and to maximize profits through unfair practices. Exploitation of the common citizen continues, overtly or covertly. Conditions are created thus; an average individual loses the fighting spirit and turns cynical. Democracy cannot succeed, rather it cannot be branded as the real democracy, unless the people are basically sound and industrious and basic conditions are created for the people to become basically sound and industrious. When something tangible is not done in this regard, countries in the past are led to disaster and they face revolutions. White-collar crimes are damaging the American system more than the types of crimes one understands in the normal parlance. Let us understand this phenomenon through some examples. America’s poor are fascinated with the concept of Dollar Stores. The managements of such stores have invented a new method of exploitation of the labor. Employees are categorized as salaried Managers to avoid overtime payment payable to the hourly workers as per Fair Labor standards Act Rules and regulations. In another case, “Mordechai Orian, president of Global Horizons, a Los Angeles-based labor recruiter, is indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for "engaging in a conspiracy to commit forced labor and document servitude" of some 400 Thai citizens who were brought to work on farms in the U.S.” (Chatterjee, 2010)Such frauds are committed by the educated class, the business and government professionals, often with the connivance of the enforcement authorities. The framers of the law may be sincere about their intentions; but if the implementing authorities are corrupt, the most ideal law will not provide the desired results, and it will provide the source of minting money for the staff. The recent Enron case is an example that has devastated the families by wiping out their life savings and rendering thousands jobless. Aldus Huxley, in his article "Propaganda in a Democratic Society” writes, “But in the immediate future there is some reason to believe that the punitive methods of 1984 will give place to the reinforcements and manipulations of Brave New World.”Failure of the democratic devises and law intended for the purpose, may lead to degeneration of the society and frustration for the people. He further observes “Democratic institutions are devices for reconciling social order with individual freedom and initiative, and for making the immediate power of a country's rulers subject to the ultimate power of the ruled.” Land dealings are the goldmine for corruption. The acquisition of land by the government provides ample scope for the bureaucrats and legislators to accept huge bribes or collaborate with land grabbers. Fraudulent exploitations continue on a grand scale. 1984 and the contemporary American parallel in corporations/business has a marked contrast with the rapid advancement of technology and the internet revolution that has engulfed the commercial world. The mode of “outsourcing” is a giant leap in the world of commerce and that has both benefited and adversely affected America. For outsourcing, America greatly depends on India and China. So, what happens in those countries affects the business interest of America as well. Aldous Huxley in his article "Propaganda under a Dictatorship" writes, “The Chinese and the Russians are not relying merely on the indirect effects of advancing technology; they are working directly on the psycho-physical organisms of their lower leaders, subjecting minds and bodies to a system of ruthless and, from all accounts, highly effective conditioning.” The role of propaganda and advertisements based on false promises is no less damaging in the contemporary American life. In his article “Propaganda in a Democratic Society”, Aldous Huxley writes, “Propaganda in favor of action dictated by the impulses that are below self-interest offers false, garbled or incomplete evidence, avoids logical argument and seeks to influence its victims by the mere repetition of catchwords, by the furious denunciation of foreign or domestic scape­goats, and by cunningly associating the lowest passions with the highest ideals, so that atrocities come to be perpetrated in the name of God and the most cynical kind of Realpolitik is treated as a matter of religious principle and patriotic duty.” Financial frauds that are taking place in America in regular intervals, may not advertise their products in the name of God, but they play tricks to extract money from the gullible investors. The products are initially advertised under the garb of ethical business principles promising high returns. The system is pre-planned and designed for dishonesty. Greed and easy money are the watchwords of such companies and they leave no room for the welfare of the public. Everything is planned behind the closed doors. The insiders and promoters make millions of dollars every day at the cost of the innocent but also greedy investors. All scams are planned in advance, and apparently no investment rules are flouted and everything is worked out within the legal framework. The men who plan investments, buying and selling activities of stocks for such companies are highly educated individuals and understand the tricks of the trade well. Conclusion: The pages of human history are daubed in bloodshed on account of conflicts related to differences in political ideology, race and religious beliefs and what not! All popular philosophies like capitalism, communism and religious preachers that work to create a mass following failed in their mission, for any philosophy that grows fast with propaganda as its fodder has to rot with even faster pace. History provides many such evidences. The real changes will occur when individuals change—the process is also known as Self-Realization. All fraudulent dealings, in politics or in the commercial world, are committed with motivated desires, whose internal world is filled with the darkness of negativities. In the relentless pursuit of self-interest and self-aggrandizement, the private lives and the life of the Nation, are being driven by hard compulsions one fails to appreciate and check well in time and ultimately pays the heavy price for such imprudence. Robert Bly (1988, p.42) writes, “Using language consciously seems to be the most fruitful method of retrieving shadow (meaning, negativities) substance scattered out of the world.” But such negativities need to be retrieved by the political leaders and the captains of the industry that are responsible to shape the destinies of humankind to avert the damage to the social fabric of the countries to which they belong and humankind as a whole. Contemporary parallels in the American Economy, do not speak well about the democratic traditions, as the combination of bureaucratic and political powers, seeped in corruption and mistrust will not be in a position to deliver good results for the welfare of the Nation. No objection, if America considers itself as the world leader on account of its economic and political clout. But that imposes on it a tremendous moral responsibility and it should not commit any acts that are harmful to the destiny of humankind and world peace. 1984 explains the failure of the totalitarian system and explains how any political or social mechanism that attempts to curb the freedom of human spirit will end up in disaster. But 1984 doesn’t award a clean certificate to the capitalist system either. The common man, an ordinary citizen, always receives the first blow and suffers and therefore, he has to remain ever vigilant and guard his individual freedom and other democratic rights. 1984 unravels the secretive functioning of the totalitarian systems that are demonic in character. The current functioning of the American Government, though democratic, has many serious lacunas, that can be only be plugged by an honest political leadership and dedicated bureaucracy. Is the common man demanding too much? Works Cited Bly, Robert; A Little Book on the Human Shadow; HarperOne, June 22, 1988. Chatterjee, Pratap: Global Horizons Indicted for Human Trafficking, September 15th, 2010, Date accessed-May 26, 2011 Huxley, Aldous. "Propaganda in a Democratic Society" Brave New World Revisited. BLTC Research, 2008. Web. Date accessed-May 26, 2011 Huxley, Aldous. "Propaganda Under a Dictatorship." Brave New World Revisited. BLTC Research, 2008. Web. Date accessed-May 26, 2011 Orwell, George (Author), Fromm, Erich (Afterword); 1984; Signet Classic, January 1, 1961. . Read More