Essay

A society full of psychological, physical manipulation over its citizens; makes them conceive that 2+ 2=5, that WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY , IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, an antithetical model of a proper government. It’s all found in the dystopian novel of George Orwell, where  he narrates a story about a thirty- nine year old man called Winston. He lives in the nation of Oceania governed by Big brother, and his telescreens that catches every thought, and demeanor done by the citizens. Winston meets a girl named Julia, who has a love relationship with Winston, their hatred towards the party invigorate their relationship. Until, they start meeting intermittently  in a room above Mr. Charrington’s second-hand shop. Their desire to overthrow the party has been presented by a colleague called O’Brien, this man had only atrocious intentions, he was only planning a setup to catch them in Mr. Charrington's room and report them for their crimes. Julia and Winston fell for his set up and were taken to ministry of love for punishment. Here they are both brainwashed, betray each other, and parted their own ways. Now they only wait for the bullet behind their head to announce their death.

The party gets control over its citizens by influencing their social class, culture, technology, and jobs. In the hierarchical pyramid of 1984 we can find big brother as the top of the pyramid, the inner party, the outer party and the proles. The inner party represent a 2% of the population. We can compare them to the high class, or the oligarchical political class. Like in any century, even today in the 21st century  the upper class have more privileges due to their wealth;  this pattern also is discern in 1984. The inner party are allowed to turn off their telescreens for about 30 minutes, they have a variety of products to choose from such as  wine, real coffee, tea, sugar and cigarettes with good tobacco. Their lifestyle is comfortable since they have a  clean neighborhood, convenient transportation, and spacious homes. The party allows them to have all those commodities and chattels because they are skilled in rhetoric, doublethink and therefore loyal to Big brother.

The second class is the outer party, or the middle class which  represent 13% of the population, they work in ministries, their homes are not elegant, their neighborhood are filthy, they are not allowed to turn off telescreen, the products they can buy are not the best quality so, they have no choice than to consume Victory Gin, Victory Coffee and Victory Cigarettes. Although they can buy in the  black market and get sugar instead of saccharine tablets. They life is completely monitored and controlled like puppets. We can see how their social class does affect their lifestyle, equality is not used in this society. The last class and the most forlorn are the proles. The proles are the low class and they represent 85% of the population. There are more proles than outer or inner party members altogether, that statistics tell us that the party does not care about the well being of their citizens. In the novel there is a slogan that says, "Proles and animals are free." , they are compare to animals as if their existence did not matter. The proles had little education, work at manual labour, lived in poverty, their entertainment was playing the lottery which no one actually wins and pornography in their magazines. A we can see the party wants the proles to be more ignorant of what's actually happening in their society, they have what other party members don't have and its freedom, they can sing their silly songs, and they can do what they want since they are not monitored. For the party the proles are to keep away as far as possible, they keep control of the proles not by monitoring them but by letting them live in poor conditions, and keeping them ignorant, doing all manual labour work so, that way they will never realize that the world is upside down.

In the society of 1984 there four ministries. The ministry of love, the ministry of plenty, the ministry of peace, and the ministry of truth. In the ministry of love is a depressing building with no windows, light is always on;  perfect for touring, and brainwashing. The purpose of this ministry is to punish the people that hate big brother, they want to control the will of the person  and make them loyal and love Big brother through fear. O’brien works at this ministry. O'brien is a wise man, who ends up betraying Winston by getting his friendship.

At the ministry of plenty, their job is to control Oceania's economy. They are in charge of giving the best goods to the inner party, and the proles to maintain in their poor state. Their goal is to always have scarcity and financial shortage. They are also in charge of organizing the lotteries, and the consumers are mostly the proles who are been fooled because the big prizes are not awarded since,  the ministry of truth is in charge of publishing every week the names of non- existent winner.

In the ministry of peace they are in charge of the armed forces, and navy army. They make sure that Oceania is at war with either  Eurasia or Eastasia . The ministry of peace also verifies that Oceania is using just the right force to not win the war , but to keep the balance of forces and interests. This ministry consumes all the resources that the population could use for their benefit, because is the only way to keep “oceania at peace”.

The ministry of truth is in charge of changing the historical records into the party’s advantage and ideologies. Julia and Winston works at this ministry. They also belong to the outer party class, or the middle class. They change history record therefore, no one can know the truth what happened a day ago or ten years ago.

The job of the ministries is about supervising information the citizens get, control the economy in order to keep the proles poor and the rich richer, dominate people’s thought and change them to a proper thought about the party, and lastly always keeping oceania at war, so the citizens don't have the opportunity to haggle. Through out the book other type of jobs are not mentioned, and the people are obliged to do the job the party chooses for them.

The technology is another source that that the party uses for manipulating the citizens, the use of telescreens and hidden microphones. Especially, if there are restrictions such as writing in a diary, having relationships were peoples privacy does not exist. This situation psychologically affects them because they will be the person the party want them to be and not themselves. The culture is another factor that big brother’s teachings are influential, in other words, due to its influence big brother gets the mind of the citizens to live a lifestyle that people won't have spare time to analyze the society in which they are living in. The culture of 1984 is a busy society where people are constantly working, and if they go to a community center as to relax their mind is futile since even for playing chess there is a lesson how the party ideologies can be used. Therefore, culture is a key factor to make the citizens into a robots. For example, hate week is an event held by big brother with the purpose of increase hatred for the current enemy of the Party, which is either Eastasia or Eurasia. Since they accumulate so much love towards big brother, there is no respect between parents and children. The children will betray their parents by denouncing them to the thought police if he or she has done an unorthodox behaviour. For example, Mrs. Parson’s children denounce Mr. Parson for saying in his sleep that he hated big brother. Big brother is cultivating hatred and violence, the kids of this novel like to watch people been hung. History is also part of culture, the citizens of Oceania will never know about the past because big brother’s idea was to keep 1984 forever no matter how many years have passed, this way the only reality that exists is the the present, therefore there is no future or past. That is the extreme manipulation big brother does for people to lose the sense of time, and believe to only be true whatever the party says because they don't know where they are standing anymore. In the novel of 1984 we see that Syme , a  friend of Winston is working on the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary were Newspeak is the new language. Here big brother tries to minimize and eliminate vocabulary for less communication between party members and to prevent vocabulary to be in the wrong use such as for going against the party. The importance of manipulating language is because language helps shape the human thought. The less words we know the less we can think, write, and communicate. This way the party only teaches words that are needed in work and to speak about how great the party and big brother is that way there are no contradictory thoughts against their ideologies.

This fictional novel has shown us a glimpse of reality of past governments that have existed in history, such as the Soviet Union. Controlling the citizens like puppets is their goal to stay in power through  culture, technology, jobs, and social class. The influence of each of those factors lead to a powerful government, almost invincible like the one seen in 1984.