Key Spaces in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell - Essay Example

The party in the novel demonstrates that it has the capability of monitoring and controlling the lives of people in such a way that it can get into the inner space and destroy an individual’s inner being. However, its desire to exercise and play with power is found to be relentless because the inside is more crucial than the physical space.

The passage is a complete reflection of the theme of “power play,” which obtains the disturbing sense of the manner in which the party enjoys or plays around with power. The party pursues to a mad group gratification to be met through the control and exercise of knowledge ad power. On the other hand, disciplinary power is implemented through its invisibility. Similarly, it imposes on those individuals whom it subjects an idea of compulsory visibility. In reality, it is the subjects’ physical space that should be seen. Their visibility guarantees the hold of knowledge and power that controls them. What comes to be experienced is that it is the fact of being constantly seen physically that sustains the inner space of the person in his subjection. For example, Winston notes that it was not a hard task for one to keep his face expressionless, and the breathing could as well be controlled with much effort, but one could not afford to control his heartbeat (Orwell, 205).

In the key spaces of 1984, visibility produces a knowledgeable society. Nevertheless, the act of simply being watched over is not enough. The reason why simple visibility might prompt forceful effects of power is that the people being viewed anticipate negative impacts to follow the knowledge of inappropriate behavior. The negative impacts are seen in torture, punishment, or even death. In the novel, Winston’s torture is not meant for visibility to the public, but it is hugely concealed from sight (Orwell 34).

Orwell structures his narrative based on visibility, knowledge, and power. The control of information or knowledge is dominant for the exercise of power and how society is viewed. Power is closely associated with knowledge production (Orwell 210). In the novel, there is no power relation in exception of the correlative composition of a field of knowledge, therefore, the author imagines a totalitarian state where total inner discipline proceeds from the knowledge or power as manifested in one’s thought rather than the physical. The point emphasized in the above clause is thus in relation with the entire novel in that, power, as opposed to mere techniques of it can be individually possessed and converted by a marginal faction, but in such society, self-devoid of the state is lacking.