Winston Smith is a man with an illusion of a life, a life created by the government that decides what to think. He is forced to devote his life to Big Brother, the great dictator of the Outer party. Winston leads a seedy existence in the year of 1984, in Oceania. The party is casting sexual frustration upon him along with psychologically stressing him. He takes out this frustration by journaling his obstinate thoughts of the Outer Party, which serves as a place for him to “escape” from the stress. The journal also sparks his rebellious spirit and initially encourages him to be independent.
Winston then meets a woman, Julia, who starts love affair with him. They meet secretly, falling deeper in love with each other and with the desire to rebel against the Outer party. O’Brien, a colleague of Winston who is considered a friend, opens up to the two lovers and claims to be working in the Brotherhood (freedom fighters who rebel against the party). When they vow their loyalty, O’Brien gives them the lawbook of the Brotherhood to study. Julia and Winston are caught by the Thought Police and taken to prisons for reading this forbidden book.
O’Brien is then uncovered as a spy for the Thought Police and tortures Winston until his loyalty lies completely with Big Brother. Any form of defiant thinking is punishable by death, to protect the ignorance of the enslaved nation. Citizens are taught from birth to despise their freedom and to harness the emotions that may lead them to believe in another power aside from Big Brother. Thought Police catch citizens who show this defiant thinking or show any slight trace of it. On page 224, Winston meets the Thought Police for the first time in his life, and unfortunately, he was their target.
The Thought Police were less of a police force, and more of a council of spies. They hide in crowds and at workplaces searching for people who are uestioning the loyalty of Big Brother. Often, as said on page 19, the Thought Police will hunt people who are suspected thought criminals in the night, and the next morning they will be gone. Although thoughtcrime is easily suspected, these Though Police have a system of children that keep an eye on society for them as well. These children are called Spies, and their whole purpose is to watch and sense any thoughtcrime that might emerge from their parents or other adults around them.
Another component of 1984 as imagined by George Orwell are the odd practices meant to keep the peace within the nation. One of these ncanny practices was the Two Minutes Hate. In the Two Minutes Hate, a propaganda film showing the enemies of Big Brother stirred up feelings of hate within the citizens. “A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. page 14.
As you can tell, incredible emotions of hate rise up from these simple-minded people who seem too oblivious of the world to show such strong feelings. One other strange act is the ack of encouragement for reproduction. 1984 made it sound like the nation wanted to fight their enemies with strong armies, although they want to “kill the sex instinct” as stated on page 66. How can they discourage sex, but still advertise for a strong army? The Outer party is full of these loose ends that nobody cares to question out of either dullness or fear.
These components evidently affect the outcome of the plot. On page 238, Winston discovers that O’Brien (the man he trusted) actually worked for the Thought Police. He had been watching Winston for suspected thoughtcrime for 7 years and had finally aught him. This impacted the plot greatly because all of the sudden Winston is insecure about the relationships he has and I think it made it easier for him to be brainwashed. He lost that reassurance that someone out there is fighting for freedom now that the man he trusted to be a freedom fighter turned out to be a spy.
Now he has questions that lower his confidence and strength, making him weak and easily swayed. If you plainly perceive both the Outer Party from George Orwell’s 1984 and the Democratic/Republican parties we have today, they are very different. We have freedom of speech, thought, and religion that can be debated based on current events). People today have opinions that are shown through social media and the actions they take. In the Outer Party, opinions other than “Big Brother is the best” and “Big Brother is my hero” : by death along with the desire of freedom in general.
On the contrary, if you judge the meanings of our parties and George Orwell’s party, they are quite similar. Today, expressing your opinion can be dangerous, especially on social media. People you don’t even know will send hate comments, they will ignore you, they will block you. In current events, having a different opinion can get you in serious danger. The shooting at the gay nightclub in Orlando happened because a man didn’t agree with LBGTQ rights. Honestly, if our world was like it was imagined by George Orwell, it would be our reality to the extreme.
Both worlds have dangers in the expression of thought, both worlds have citizens often blind to the crucial reality we live in, and both worlds don’t want you to question the leader’s true intentions. George Orwell’s extreme world of ignorance and slavery is the world many of us dislike and will do anything to stop, which is likely why so many people today are protesting against a certain leader of our country. They feel like the country is making decisions against the morals of the majority of the population, and citizens don’t want to feel like they are being controlled or ignored.
If George Orwell’s 1984 existed as our future, it would be horrendous and terrifying. Hardship would fall across the country for those who still value independence and have it within them. All in all, I am quite glad we live with a future almost guaranteeing freedom of religion and speech, the world punishable without the horrors of 1984. 1984 was a book that set the world in a new light for me. Can we trust the people who lead us? Are we really free? These were the questions that startled me the most.
In 1984, we have a world of dullness, unknowingness, and slavery. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull. ” says Winston on page 27. He lived a life where not even his entire brain belonged to him. Not even his own private thoughts! Today in 2017, none of this is evident in society. We can express freely without worry, but how far can we go? 1984 taught me that the key to freedom is to educate yourself, to learn as much as you can about the opportunities you can have so that one day you will have the ability to truly speak for yourself.
