Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell - Essay Example

?Consider one of the three texts discussed so far (1984) by taking into account how they respond to their cultural and historical circumstances. The novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by British writer George Orwell was written in the years immediately after the Second World War and was first published in 1949. The time of writing was a very significant one for the world as a whole because the details of all of the atrocities of the war, including the imprisonment, torture and killing of millions of people in NAZI concentration camps, and the dropping of nuclear bombs on Japan were being revealed. For the first time, the world was seeing the after-effects of a mechanised total war which killed people in unimagined numbers, and a systematic government-led extermination of Jewish people, political opponents and those who resisted the state. The legacy of totalitarian leaders like Stalin in the early part of the century and now Hitler of the middle of the century caused Orwell to reflect upon the directions in which modern Western societies were going. As the world began to drift into a cold war, the example of war-like totalitarian regimes in the past and signs of a possible nuclear holocaust in the future prompted the vision of a cruel and oppressive totalitarian state in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. This paper explores how this novel responds to the post war situation in three specific areas: gender, class and governmental power, showing how Orwell’s fictional text forewarns the reader about future trends in Western societies. The country that is described in Nineteen Eighty-Four is an imagined future version of Britain. It is called “Air Force One” in the region of “Oceania” and these names recall the role that Britain played in the air and on the sea during the real World Wars. There are now three major regions competing for control of the world. The main character in the book, Winston Smith bears a name that recalls Winston Churchill, and the date of 1984 suggests the date of the time of writing, since the last two numbers are a reversal of 1948. Winston is a man who understands what is going on around him, and sees the faults in the regime that he works for. One of the factors which gives him courage to resist the regime is his growing love for Julia. The function of gender relations in this society appears to be purely for the production of children and the support of the Party, since people sleep with each other regardless of family status but do not develop strong emotional ties with each other. Winston dislikes the coldness of this approach and he develops a love in his affair with Julia that is more like traditional human relationships where affection and desire also play a big part. The problem is, that such a love is forbidden in this new society and both he and Julia pursue it, even though they know that they are likely to be discovered and punished: “Both of them knew that it was lunacy. It was as though they were intentionally stepping nearer to their graves.” (Orwell: 1949, p. 114) Because the love with Julia is forbidden, and his meetings with her in private are a crime, this relationship represents Winston’s rebellion against the state: “Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party” (Orwell: 1949, p. 104) Relationships between men and women in this society are seriously disrupted by the state, and instead of a traditional system where men have more power than women, there is a system where both men and women are oppressed by the state: “But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred.” (Orwell: 1949, p. 104) This shows how human nature can be fundamentally changed through totalitarian power and is presents a shocking picture of human sexuality when there is no real freedom to make loving relationships. People betray each other all the time, and lose the ability to tell right from wrong, or to follow the desires of their own hearts. The description of the new society in the book makes it clear that there are three different classes, with the inner Party at the top, the Outer Party in the middle and the “Proles” at the bottom. This structure recalls the vocabulary of Stalinist Russia, in which there were very few powerful people in the core Communist Party structure, a larger number of obedient Party followers in the middle, and the vast majority of the people in the bottom level which in Russia was called the Proletariat. The Russian structure is mirrored in Nineteen Eighty-Four, but this does not necessarily mean that the book is an allegory of a communist state, or a protest book against communism. It is not so much the ideology that the Party teaches which causes the harm to human society. It is the abuse of power which causes the harm. The hierarchy is established by the powerful and sustained by secret police and informers, just like the Russian regime in the mid twentieth century. Punishment is swift and brutal if people are found to be breaking any of the laws, and crimes which are deemed to be political are dealt with extremely harshly. Orwell’s vision is pessimistic, because it shows how eagerly the majority of the people adapt to this destructive regime. His observations about the media, the “Big Brother” surveillance system, and the way that peoples’ minds are manipulated by the state are eerily prophetic of the twenty first century world that we now live in. These forces were just beginning to assert themselves in post-war Britain and Orwell reacts to the state’s rising dependence on communications technology by taking it to a logical and extreme conclusion in his novel. The role of the government in Nineteen Eighty-Four is quite openly one of systematic surveillance and control. The ministries which this state sets up are all designed to control the way that people behave, and even the way that they think. Winston is employed, for example, to rewrite history, and this means literally removing problematic characters from the past, and changing the details to enhance the position of the Party and eliminate any signs of opposition. This may sound like a crazy invention, and something that could never happen, but at the end of the second World War, people were already beginning to deny that the Nazi holocaust ever happened, and the historians were beginning to write the history of the war in a way that favoured the victors. The point that Winston realizes is that history is always a fiction, and regimes always invent a vocabulary which makes their actions look good, even when they are destructive and evil. In Nineteen Eighty-Four a whole new language called “Newspeak” emerges, as a means to change the way that people think. Even use of a word like “unperson” (Orwell: 1949, p. 39) creates a new concept, which suggests that a person’s identity can, and at times should, be wiped out by a state authority. Constant reference to slogans creates the impression that the old world is being turned into an entirely different place. “WAR IS PEACE”, for example, is on one level ridiculous, but on another level, a truthful representation of the philosophy of the Cold war, where nuclear weapons are believed to help maintain peace. In all three areas of gender, class and governmental power, Orwell observes trends emerging in the late 1940’s in Britain and projects them into a terrifying future which illustrates what their likely effects will be. Reference Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty Four. London: Penguin, 1972 [first printed 1949]. Read More