Nineteen Eighty Four

A WARNING AGAINST TOTALITARIAN

GOVERNMENTS

VINAY YUVASHANKAR

2 + 2 = 5?
The 1984 Universe
 The Principals of Ingsoc

an Oligarchical collective party

Follows the omnipotent leader Big Brother
Control every aspect of the citizen’s lives
Personifies their ideologies through Big Brother

“ War is Peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is Strength”
- Ingsoc Slogan
 The underlying message...

Orwell’s dystopian universe is a warning to humanity

of the control inflicted by totalitarian governments.
Censorship
Control on reality
Human Emotions
 War is Peace

“The primary aim of modern warfare...is to use up the products of the

machine without raising the standard of living. “ (Orwell 196)
 A population in poverty cannot freely think
 Prevents the populous from committing thought crime.
SEX!
“The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from
forming loyalties, which it might not be able to control. It’s real undeclared
purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act.” (Orwell. 68)
 Reality

The Party is the only reality

Society forced to adopt “doublethink”
“freedom is freedom to say that two plus two makes
four. If that is granted, all else follows. (Orwell 84)
 Censorship

Censorship of history
 Through the Ministry of Truth
Censorship of Thought
 Defined as thought crime
 Enforced by Thought Police

“[if] We, the Party, control all records, and

we control all memories. Then we control
the past, do we not?' (Orwell 260)
 The Crime of Thought

The Party encourages orthodox thought

 Illegal thoughts are considered Thought crime
“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death.” (Orwell 30)
Newspeak, a language that abolishes thought crime
 Language removed of unorthodox words
“orthodoxy means not thinking – needing to think. Orthodoxy is
unconsciousness.”(Orwell 56)
 The Ministry of Truth

Deals with falsifying the truth

Edits any written record
 To make the Party always correct
“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls
the past” (Orwell 260)
 Stalin totally looks like...
“...the face of a man about fourty-  It was common to find posters of
five with a heavy black moustache Stalin in Soviet Union
and rugged handsom features.”
(Orwell 3)
 Atmosphere

Atmosphere hints towards communism stereotypes

Has reader connect it with the dreary setting
“-you were supposed to call everyone comrade-”
(Orwell 22)
 The “head fake”

Presented the control in totalitarian governments.

Control of:
 censorship “Under the spreading chesnut tree
 Reality I sold you and you sold me
There lie they, and here lie we
 Human emotion Under the spreading chesnut tree.”
- Voice from the Telescreen