Orwell's 1984
There are many similarities between Orwell's 1984 and our world today. One could draw parallels between Emmanuel Goldstein as the Party's personification of evil and the West's depiction of Bin Laden. The "War is Peace" slogan is certainly visible in so many words in today's Congress (which consists of numerous warmongers, supporters of "security" and "peace" through promotion of the military-industrial complex). "Freedom is Slavery" is true enough for proponents of the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and other post-9/11 bills that violate civil liberties in the name of "security," turning free citizens into slaves of a totalitarian State. Citizen's "ignorance" is the State's "strength," and the people's willingness to be docile students to the "two-minute hate" broadcasts on any of the major news networks or (Newsweek magazine covers) makes them the perfect companions to Orwell's Party members. In short, Orwell's 1984 is the picture of our world today; this paper will discuss the numerous ways in which this is so.
As Orwell describes in his essay "Politics and the English Language," one of the problems of our world is the intentional and unintentional correlation between careless and imprecise phrases and careless/imprecise thoughts. In 1984, the Party takes care of everything. Winston, for one, is not applauded by O'Brien for questioning the reality of life, events, history according to the Party. On the contrary, Winston is beaten into submission and back into line, so to speak. The ominous threat...
295) is mirrored by today's threat of indefinite detainment (without charges or trial) at some off-shore facility like the one at Guantanamo Bay (our world's "ministry of love"). If today's law-abiding citizens accept with painful sheepishness the passing of new laws that look more and more totalitarian, it is perhaps that they fear imprisonment in the same way that the starved, skull-faced man who momentarily shares a
cell with Winston fears Room 101. There can be nothing pleasant about standing up to a brutal, powerful regime. Winston learns to
love Big Brother for the same reason we today learn to love/accept our despair, our oppression, and our subservience to governmental waste,
bureaucracy, cruelty and hypocrisy: there is nothing else to take its
place.
Indeed, just as Big Brother is everywhere in 1984, so too is
surveillance in our world. Our lives are monitored on the
Internet, on the roads (with hidden cameras installed throughout major cities now), from the skies (with satellites), through our purchases, our
communications, our affiliations. The line between a private life and a public life is difficult to discern and as far as some people are concerned (those who read, watch and work for…
