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Kade Soderstrom

Stanford

AP English

04 September 2018

Analysis Of ​1984

George Orwell’s book ​1984 ​was written when Soviet Union became a superpower and

the fear of communism was relevant. Orwell was conveying the message that communism is

terrible and will lead to a life of total control. He tells his story through a man name Winston

Smith, whose life is controlled by the government. Personally I like the story but the message

seems to be a little too extreme and paranoid to me. Orwell explains through his writing the

dangers of communism to the American people in order to stop them from supporting it.

George Orwell is very against communism. In the book he talks about how life will be

monitored all the time. With “telescreens” and if you have any sort of rebellious thoughts against

the government they will eventually torture and kill you. He also says in the book that they are

creating a new language called “Newspeak” and this new language does not contain any words

that will express rebellon so that it is virtually impossible to communicate words against the

government. They also change history in the story so that it appears to everybody that the

present times are better than the past. In ​1984​ it says “Until they become conscious they will

never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious”(Orwell). In this

quote Orwell is trying to convey the message that rebellion is impossible if people do not see
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past the life the government has fabricated for them. But the only way for them to rebel is to is

be conscious to the fact that their quality of life can in fact improve if the government is

overthrown. He also says that to become conscious is to rebell so it’s a catch twenty-two.

Rebellion is practically impossible in this book because of what the government has done to

control its people. That is the message Orwell is trying to get across is that if we do not destroy

communism now in his time period this is the situation the world could be in, in forty years.

The claims Orwell makes is that the government has the possibility to suppress people's

feelings. “Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove remove all pleasures from the sexual act.

Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriages as well as outside it”(Orwell). In

the book it talks a lot about how the government had the power to control weather or not two

people could love each other. They make sex seem like a “duty to the party”, for a child. But

Winston soon finds and girl named Julia, somebody that loves him and he gets to experience true

love. He has to hid it from the public and any sort of technology the Party uses to spy on them.

Orwell also claims that the government can have eyes on you all the time. He talks about how

they indoctrinate the children to tell the thought police if their parents make any sort of thought

crime. Also the technology they use can sense any sort of rebellious thought that a person may

have.

Some of these claims did come true when communism started to develop in the soviet

union. He was correct on the fact that there was manipulation and people thought that their way

of life was great when in fact it was full of desperation. Soviet Union controlled the media and
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also the economy. The only difference is that the soviet Union never got to the point where they

could control a person's feelings for another person. On the other hand another China has

implemented an app into their society to control people to make them a better person. It rates

them on how good of a person they are which is based on people's criminal history and ratings

for different people. The idea is that the higher the score is the more freedoms you have. Orwell

was correct on the statement that technology advances can manipulate a group of people to make

them more obedient.

Personally I think what Orwell is claiming is close to impossible. I think that there is no

possible way that a government can take away a person's way to communicate things they feel

and ideas they have. People are too complex of creatures to have their entire thought processed

changed. I do not like the way Orwell expresses his ideas and opinions in this book. It just

seems to be an awkward in between for symbolism and literalism. The ideas he conveys in ​1984

are an extreme version of totalitarianism. There is no possible way that people can be deprived of

their own natural feelings. It seems kind of ridiculous to me.

Orwell wrote a book to tell everybody how bad communism was. It seemed like it was

effective but I personally did not like his approach. Orwell also talks about how communism will

turn into a beast that will take total control over your life. He claims there will be tons of

technology to help with that as well. He wants to scare people into not supporting communism.

Works cited
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Orwell, George. ​1984.​ Susan Brawley, 2014.