In George Orwell's 1984, the Party, the
government of Oceania, has many slogans.
One of the sayings is "Big Brother Is Watching You". Despite the fact that the slogan is only
mentioned a few times throughout the novel, it embodies the government that
Orwell has created.
We first learn of the slogan when the setting
is described on the first page of the book.
Orwell depicts, in explicit detail, the sights, sounds, and smells of
Oceania. When illustrating the hallways
of Victory Mansions, Winston Smith's and other members of the Party's apartment
complex, Orwell writes:
On each landing, opposite the lift
shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from
the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes
follow you about when you move. Big Brother Is Watching You, the caption
beneath it ran (5).
This poster shows
Big Brother as having a face. Big Brother
was not an individual person so he did not have a "face". The face, however, gives Big Brother a human
quality. By doing so, the government
puts itself on the same level of humanity as the citizens that it governs. The people are supposed to feel more
comfortable with a ruling party that is just like them. The billboard is also found on every landing
and every streetcorner. The overbearing
number of posters is a way for the Party to continuously remind its citizens of
its presence and ingrain the message into the people's conscience and
subconscience minds.
"Big Brother" is another name for the
Party. It's an ironic choice of words
for the Party's second name. First, the
notion of a "big brother" connotes a child's big brother. One thinks of comfort and protection, fun and
trouble, and love and other feelings when thinking of a brother. One of the Party's goals is to rid Oceania of
these emotions. Second, the brother is
part of the family unit. The Party is
trying to destroy the family and the feelings associated with it (Kalechofsky
114).
The phrase "Big Brother Is Watching
You" is the Party's way of showing its control over the citizens of
Oceania. The Party displays its power
over both the history of the world and over the citizens of Oceania's everyday
life in many different ways.
"Who controls the past," Orwell
writes, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the
past'" (23). The Party shows its
authority over humanity by changing the past, present, and future. It changes all documents in order to fit
their needs. For instance, if the Party
says that something never happened, then it never happened. All evidence of the event is destroyed. Oceania is continuously at war with either
Eurasia or Eastasia. When the Party
decides to start fighting with Eastasia and be allies with Eurasia, after years
of fighting with Eurasia, all signs of a war with Eurasia are wiped out within
a week. The documents are all falsified
in the Records department. This is where
Winston works. It's ironic that all of
the nation's records are changed in the Records department and that this
department is in the Ministry of Truth.
In this department, facts are rearranged, erased, added, and rewritten
in order to revise and "correct" history. There are, however, reminders of the
past. Some of these reminders are the
smell of real coffee, the thought of good beer, real sugar, a children's
history textbook, and various objects in Mr.
Charrington's "ordinary" shop and room. Winston buys a diary with paper that hasn't
been manufactured in nearly forty years and an "archaic" pen. In the secret room, there is a painting of a
church. Churches and religion are a
thing of the past. There is also an old
armchair and a big bed in the room.
Their softness prompts Winston to think of the past. Winston is the only person who remembers the
past and that there was a different kind of life in the antiquity. He tries to save it for himself and for the
future by writing a diary. It helps
clarify and put his thoughts in order.
He knows that he will be caught and that future generations will never
see the diary. Nevertheless, he still
feels the need to write it for that small possibility that they will read
it. The Party uses their power so much
that the changes that they're making are getting out of hand. As Orwell writes, "The past was dead,
the future unimaginable" (25).
Oceania's government controls where everyone
lives. The division of the people into
three classes, the members of the Inner Party, the members of the Party, and
the Proles, is on account of a definite hierarchy in the economic standard of
living (Freedman 100). Membership in the
Party and in the Inner Party is not hereditary.
Members of the Inner Party live in large, luxurious mansions. They have everything that they want and need,
including the freedom to turn off their telescreens when and if they want
to. Other members of the Party live in
the Victory Mansions. They are not taken
care of and smell of boiled cabbage and sweat. The Proles live in a run down ghetto type of
area. By dictating where everyone lives,
the Party also determines what class the person is a member of.
The Party governs everyone's daily
schedule. Members of the Party are all
woken up at the same time by a voice from the telescreen. An exercise instructor on the screen leads
the people in stretches and exercises, called the Physical Jerks. After dressing, etc., the adults go to work
while the children go to school. Lunch
is in the middle of the day. There are
periodic two minute hates to arouse the people's anger and excitement. After work, there are social gatherings at
the community centers and then everyone returns home and goes to sleep. Any change in a person's regular routine is
viewed as suspicious. For this reason,
Winston is nervous about skipping going to the center one evening and meeting
Julia instead.
The Party regulates the languages used in
Oceania. There are two common dialects used, Oldspeak and Newspeak. Oldspeak is the vernacular that we know and
use in the United States today. Newspeak
is the language that the Party creates.
It is the only idiom with a vocabulary that decreases in size as time
goes on. The Party wants to have a
language that is so small that it'll be impossible to think poorly of the
Party. (This is known as thoughtcrime in
Newspeak.) Furthermore, all poetry and
songs originate from the Party. There
are two significant songs that are repeated throughout the novel. One of them is:
They sye that time 'eals all
things,
They sye you can always forget:
But the smiles an' the tears across
the years
They twist my 'eartstrings yet!
(117, 180)
It is sung by a
"red-armed woman" while "marching to and for between the washtub
and the line". The woman is a
Prole. The second song is:
Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me:
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree.
(66, 241)
This tune is
played over the telescreen. First of
all, songs are produced, mainly for the Proles, by a versificator. This is an ironic choice of a word to name
this machine. A versificator is a
machine. It has no feelings. The name, versificator, comes from the word
versicle. A versicle is a verse that is
chanted by a priest and responded to by his congregation. This is a prayer with a lot of emotion. Second, the songs, despite being mechanically
produced, have an emotional feminine undertone (Weatherly 82). This side is related to the mother figure of
the family unit that the Party is trying to destroy.
The government exerts its sovereignty over
marriage. All marriages are arranged by
either the state or by the parents of those involved. The purpose for marriage is to legalize the
union of a man and a woman in order to produce children to serve the
state. From the time that these
offspring are very young, they are trained as spies. Many children, such as Parsons' kids, turn their
parents in to the Thought Police.
Neither the parents nor the children are supposed to have any love for
one another. There is no love in the
world. "Love" is only used for
propaganda. Adultery is forbidden to the
people. However, they have never been
exposed to its existence. Therefore,
they don't even know what it is. As a
result, forbidding it is an unnecessary extreme.
The Party has ways of controlling the thoughts
of the people. Winston believes that the
Party can control everything except for your thoughts. He says that "nothing was your own
except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull". In the end of the novel, however, Winston
learns that he is wrong. He realizes
that the government has the ability to even penetrate your mind. One of the ways it they controls your
thoughts is with the two minute hate.
Even if at first you know what you're doing, you get caught up in all of
the commotion and get excited and angered too.
The Thought Police enforce the desired train of thought. Nobody knows who or where they are, what they
look like, or when they'll arrest someone.
Even children, like Parsons' kids, can be part of the Thought Police
without their own parents knowing. The
Thought Police use methods such as torture and force to comprehend one's
thoughts. They use these same methods to
compel one to accept the things that the Party says and writes even if you do
not believe in them. No matter how
little you give credence to what the Party says in the beginning, you
eventually come to accept everything.
Winston comes to believe that two plus two equals five. He also learns to consider the following
statements as true: WAR
IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH (7,17, 26,
87, 152, 166)
Everyone is under
constant surveillance. There are
telescreens in the houses and other buildings of every Party and Inner Party
member. The following exert displays
some of the telescreens' power:
Any sound that Winston made, above
the level of a very low whisper, would be picked
up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the
field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be
seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing
whether you were being watched at any given moment...... You had to live- did live, from habit that became instinct- in the
assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in
darkness, every movement scrutinized (6-7).
The Proles didn't
have telescreens in their houses or edifice
No comments:
Post a Comment