In 1984, George Orwell shows his prediction for the future of society through the dystopia that is Oceania, where the corrupted Inner Party controls the Outer Party and the proles. The primary method the Party uses to maintain authority over the people is to prevent them from remembering previous history. The Inner Party also controls the population through the Newspeak language, in which they keep limiting the vocabulary that the people have to express their thoughts and emotions, thus slowly removing the thought process from human life altogether. Orwell uses Oceania to demonstrate what can happen to a socialist society. Orwell demonstrates his dread for the future because he fears the growing popularity of socialism where one group of people gains control and becomes corrupt, leading to a totalitarian government.
The Inner Party managed to remain in control of Oceania by changing history and not allowing people to recall past events. Orwell explained this when he wrote, And when memory failed and written records were falsified when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested. (79) This allows the Party to always appear to be right. The people take in all the propaganda from the Party and believe everything they say about the past, present, and future.
Therefore, the people can't even remember what happened in the past. They cannot compare life today to life yesterday or before the Party took control of Airstrip One and the rest of Oceania. They have no choice but to believe everything the Party tells them, whether it is the truth or not. As Orwell says, But by far the more important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the Party. (175) The Party gets its power from making the people believe that it is making life better for them.
The Inner Party also exercises control over the people through the creation of the Newspeak language. The Newspeak language is a Party-created language that is aimed at shortening words and getting rid of words that can already be represented by other words.
Orwell states, In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak, there is no word for Science.(149) However, by decreasing the number of words the people have to use, the fewer words they have to express their thoughts, ideas, and emotions. As the Party continues to throw out words, it becomes increasingly more difficult for the people to think, Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed with exactly one word, meanings rubbed out and forgotten.(46)
Therefore, by the time the language can no longer be shortened anymore, the people will not have the ability to think at all. This handicap gives the Party more control over the people. The less the people can think, the more power the Inner Party gains.
Orwell crafted the Inner Party as a perfect example of a socialist state that had become corrupt. It had become a totalitarian superpower. The Inner Party's main device of control over the people of Oceania is taking over their thoughts. The people have become dependent on the propaganda that the Inner Party delivers to them through the telescreens.
They believe everything that the Party feeds them, and the more they believe, the more power and authority the Party has. The Party has become particularly successful at controlling the humans in Oceania by limiting the words in their language, and what they know about the past. Likewise, Orwell was successful in showing the dark side of socialism and its vulnerability to lead the world into a dark era of thoughtlessness and ruthless totalitarianism.
