Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored
in a literary work.
The Dangers of Totalitarianism
1984 is a political novel written with the purpose of warning
readers in the West of the dangers of totalitarian government. Having witnessed
firsthand the horrific lengths to which totalitarian governments in Spain and
Russia would go in order to sustain and increase their power, Orwell designed
1984 to sound the alarm in Western nations still unsure about how to approach
the rise of communism. In 1949, the Cold War had not yet escalated, many
American intellectuals supported communism, and the state of diplomacy between
democratic and communist nations was highly ambiguous. In the American press,
the Soviet Union was often portrayed as a great moral experiment. Orwell,
however, was deeply disturbed by the widespread cruelties and oppressions he
observed in communist countries, and seems to have been particularly concerned
by the role of technology in enabling oppressive governments to monitor and
control their citizens.
In 1984, Orwell portrays the perfect totalitarian society,
the most extreme realization imaginable of a modern-day government with
absolute power. The title of the novel was meant to indicate to its readers in
1949 that the story represented a real possibility for the near future: if
totalitarianism were not opposed, the title suggested, some variation of the
world described in the novel could become a reality in only thirty-five years.
Orwell portrays a state in which government monitors and controls every aspect
of human life to the extent that even having a disloyal thought is against the
law. As the novel progresses, the timidly rebellious Winston Smith sets out to
challenge the limits of the Party’s power, only to discover that its ability to
control and enslave its subjects dwarfs even his most paranoid conceptions of
its reach. As the reader comes to understand through Winston’s eyes, The Party
uses a number of techniques to control its citizens, each of which is an
important theme of its own in the novel. These include:
Psychological
Manipulation
The Party barrages its subjects with psychological stimuli
designed to overwhelm the mind’s capacity for independent thought. The giant
telescreen in every citizen’s room blasts a constant stream of propaganda
designed to make the failures and shortcomings of the Party appear to be
triumphant successes. The telescreens also monitor behavior—everywhere they go,
citizens are continuously reminded, especially by means of the omnipresent
signs reading “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU,” that the authorities are
scrutinizing them. The Party undermines family structure by inducting children
into an organization called the Junior Spies, which brainwashes and encourages
them to spy on their parents and report any instance of disloyalty to the
Party. The Party also forces individuals to suppress their sexual desires,
treating sex as merely a procreative duty whose end is the creation of new
Party members. The Party then channels people’s pent-up frustration and emotion
into intense, ferocious displays of hatred against the Party’s political
enemies. Many of these enemies have been invented by the Party expressly for
this purpose.
Physical
Control
In addition to manipulating their minds, the Party also
controls the bodies of its subjects. The Party constantly watches for any sign
of disloyalty, to the point that, as Winston observes, even a tiny facial
twitch could lead to an arrest. A person’s own nervous system becomes his
greatest enemy. The Party forces its members to undergo mass morning exercises
called the Physical Jerks, and then to work long, grueling days at government
agencies, keeping people in a general state of exhaustion. Anyone who does
manage to defy the Party is punished and “reeducated” through systematic and
brutal torture. After being subjected to weeks of this intense treatment,
Winston himself comes to the conclusion that nothing is more powerful than
physical pain—no emotional loyalty or moral conviction can overcome it. By
conditioning the minds of their victims with physical torture, the Party is
able to control reality, convincing its subjects that 2 + 2 = 5.
Control of
Information and History
The Party controls every source of information, managing and
rewriting the content of all newspapers and histories for its own ends. The
Party does not allow individuals to keep records of their past, such as
photographs or documents. As a result, memories become fuzzy and unreliable,
and citizens become perfectly willing to believe whatever the Party tells them.
By controlling the present, the Party is able to manipulate the past. And in
controlling the past, the Party can justify all of its actions in the present.
Technology
By means of telescreens and hidden microphones across the
city, the Party is able to monitor its members almost all of the time.
Additionally, the Party employs complicated mechanisms (1984 was written in the
era before computers) to exert large-scale control on economic production and
sources of information, and fearsome machinery to inflict torture upon those it
deems enemies. 1984 reveals that technology, which is generally perceived as
working toward moral good, can also facilitate the most diabolical evil.
Language as
Mind Control
One of Orwell’s most important messages in 1984 is that
language is of central importance to human thought because it structures and
limits the ideas that individuals are capable of formulating and expressing. If
control of language were centralized in a political agency, Orwell proposes,
such an agency could possibly alter the very structure of language to make it
impossible to even conceive of disobedient or rebellious thoughts, because
there would be no words with which to think them. This idea manifests itself in
the language of Newspeak, which the Party has introduced to replace English.
The Party is constantly refining and perfecting Newspeak, with the ultimate
goal that no one will be capable of conceptualizing anything that might
question the Party’s absolute power.
Interestingly, many of Orwell’s ideas about language as a
controlling force have been modified by writers and critics seeking to deal
with the legacy of colonialism. During colonial times, foreign powers took
political and military control of distant regions and, as a part of their
occupation, instituted their own language as the language of government and
business. Postcolonial writers often analyze or redress the damage done to
local populations by the loss of language and the attendant loss of culture and
historical connection.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Doublethink
The idea of “doublethink” emerges as an important consequence
of the Party’s massive campaign of large-scale psychological manipulation.
Simply put, doublethink is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s
mind at the same time. As the Party’s mind-control techniques break down an
individual’s capacity for independent thought, it becomes possible for that
individual to believe anything that the Party tells them, even while possessing
information that runs counter to what they are being told. At the Hate Week
rally, for instance, the Party shifts its diplomatic allegiance, so the nation
it has been at war with suddenly becomes its ally, and its former ally becomes
its new enemy. When the Party speaker suddenly changes the nation he refers to
as an enemy in the middle of his speech, the crowd accepts his words
immediately, and is ashamed to find that it has made the wrong signs for the
event. In the same way, people are able to accept the Party ministries’ names,
though they contradict their functions: the Ministry of Plenty oversees
economic shortages, the Ministry of Peace wages war, the Ministry of Truth
conducts propaganda and historical revisionism, and the Ministry of Love is the
center of the Party’s operations of torture and punishment.
Urban Decay
Urban decay proves a pervasive motif in 1984. The London that
Winston Smith calls home is a dilapidated, rundown city in which buildings are
crumbling, conveniences such as elevators never work, and necessities such as
electricity and plumbing are extremely unreliable. Though Orwell never
discusses the theme openly, it is clear that the shoddy disintegration of
London, just like the widespread hunger and poverty of its inhabitants, is due
to the Party’s mismanagement and incompetence. One of the themes of 1984,
inspired by the history of twentieth-century communism, is that totalitarian
regimes are viciously effective at enhancing their own power and miserably
incompetent at providing for their citizens. The grimy urban decay in London is
an important visual reminder of this idea, and offers insight into the Party’s
priorities through its contrast to the immense technology the Party develops to
spy on its citizens.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to
represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Big Brother
Throughout London, Winston sees posters showing a man gazing
down over the words “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” everywhere he goes. Big
Brother is the face of the Party. The citizens are told that he is the leader
of the nation and the head of the Party, but Winston can never determine
whether or not he actually exists. In any case, the face of Big Brother
symbolizes the Party in its public manifestation; he is a reassurance to most
people (the warmth of his name suggests his ability to protect), but he is also
an open threat (one cannot escape his gaze). Big Brother also symbolizes the
vagueness with which the higher ranks of the Party present themselves—it is
impossible to know who really rules Oceania, what life is like for the rulers,
or why they act as they do. Winston thinks he remembers that Big Brother
emerged around 1960, but the Party’s official records date Big Brother’s
existence back to 1930, before Winston was even born.
The Glass
Paperweight and St. Clement’s Church
By deliberately weakening people’s memories and flooding
their minds with propaganda, the Party is able to replace individuals’ memories
with its own version of the truth. It becomes nearly impossible for people to
question the Party’s power in the present when they accept what the Party tells
them about the past—that the Party arose to protect them from bloated,
oppressive capitalists, and that the world was far uglier and harsher before
the Party came to power. Winston vaguely understands this principle. He
struggles to recover his own memories and formulate a larger picture of what
has happened to the world. Winston buys a paperweight in an antique store in
the prole district that comes to symbolize his attempt to reconnect with the
past. Symbolically, when the Thought Police arrest Winston at last, the
paperweight shatters on the floor.
The old picture of St. Clement’s Church in the room that
Winston rents above Mr. Charrington’s shop is another representation of the
lost past. Winston associates a song with the picture that ends with the words
“Here comes the chopper to chop off your head!” This is an important
foreshadow, as it is the telescreen hidden behind the picture that ultimately
leads the Thought Police to Winston, symbolizing the Party’s corrupt control of
the past.
The Place
Where There Is No Darkness
Throughout the novel Winston imagines meeting O’Brien in “the
place where there is no darkness.” The words first come to him in a dream, and
he ponders them for the rest of the novel. Eventually, Winston does meet
O’Brien in the place where there is no darkness; instead of being the paradise
Winston imagined, it is merely a prison cell in which the light is never turned
off. The idea of “the place where there is no darkness” symbolizes Winston’s approach
to the future: possibly because of his intense fatalism (he believes that he is
doomed no matter what he does), he unwisely allows himself to trust O’Brien,
even though inwardly he senses that O’Brien might be a Party operative.
The
Telescreens
The omnipresent telescreens are the book’s most visible
symbol of the Party’s constant monitoring of its subjects. In their dual
capability to blare constant propaganda and observe citizens, the telescreens
also symbolize how totalitarian government abuses technology for its own ends
instead of exploiting its knowledge to improve civilization.
The
Red-Armed Prole Woman
The red-armed prole woman whom Winston hears singing through
the window represents Winston’s one legitimate hope for the long-term future:
the possibility that the proles will eventually come to recognize their plight
and rebel against the Party. Winston sees the prole woman as a prime example of
reproductive virility; he often imagines her giving birth to the future
generations that will finally challenge the Party’s authority.
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