In George Orwell's 1984, the Party, the government of
Oceania, has many slogans. One of the
sayings is "Big Brother Is Watching You". Despite the fact that the slogan is only
mentioned a few times throughout the novel, it embodies the government that
Orwell has created.
We first
learn of the slogan when the setting is described on the first page of the
book. Orwell depicts, in explicit
detail, the sights, sounds, and smells of Oceania. When illustrating the hallways of Victory
Mansions, Winston Smith's and other members of the Party's apartment complex,
Orwell writes:
On
each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from
the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes
follow you about when you move. Big Brother Is Watching You, the caption
beneath it ran (5).
This poster shows Big Brother as having a face. Big Brother was not an individual person so
he did not have a "face". The
face, however, gives Big Brother a human quality. By doing so, the government puts itself on
the same level of humanity as the citizens that it governs. The people are supposed to feel more
comfortable with a ruling party that is just like them. The billboard is also found on every landing
and every streetcorner. The overbearing
number of posters is a way for the Party to continuously remind its citizens of
its presence and ingrain the message into the people's conscience and
subconscience minds.
"Big
Brother" is another name for the Party.
It's an ironic choice of words for the Party's second name. First, the notion of a "big
brother" connotes a child's big brother.
One thinks of comfort and protection, fun and trouble, and love and
other feelings when thinking of a brother.
One of the Party's goals is to rid Oceania of these emotions. Second, the brother is part of the family
unit. The Party is trying to destroy the
family and the feelings associated with it (Kalechofsky 114).
The phrase
"Big Brother Is Watching You" is the Party's way of showing its
control over the citizens of Oceania.
The Party displays its power over both the history of the world and over
the citizens of Oceania's everyday life in many different ways.
"Who
controls the past," Orwell writes, "controls the future: who controls
the present controls the past'" (23).
The Party shows its authority over humanity by changing the past,
present, and future. It changes all
documents in order to fit their needs.
For instance, if the Party says that something never happened, then it
never happened. All evidence of the
event is destroyed. Oceania is
continuously at war with either Eurasia or Eastasia. When the Party decides to start fighting with
Eastasia and be allies with Eurasia, after years of fighting with Eurasia, all
signs of a war with Eurasia are wiped out within a week. The documents are all falsified in the
Records department. This is where
Winston works. It's ironic that all of
the nation's records are changed in the Records department and that this
department is in the Ministry of Truth.
In this department, facts are rearranged, erased, added, and rewritten
in order to revise and "correct" history. There are, however, reminders of the
past. Some of these reminders are the
smell of real coffee, the thought of good beer, real sugar, a children's
history textbook, and various objects in Mr.
Charrington's "ordinary" shop and room. Winston buys a diary with paper that hasn't
been manufactured in nearly forty years and an "archaic" pen. In the secret room, there is a painting of a
church. Churches and religion are a
thing of the past. There is also an old
armchair and a big bed in the room.
Their softness prompts Winston to think of the past. Winston is the only person who remembers the
past and that there was a different kind of life in the antiquity. He tries to save it for himself and for the
future by writing a diary. It helps
clarify and put his thoughts in order.
He knows that he will be caught and that future generations will never
see the diary. Nevertheless, he still
feels the need to write it for that small possibility that they will read
it. The Party uses their power so much
that the changes that they're making are getting out of hand. As Orwell writes, "The past was dead,
the future unimaginable" (25).
Oceania's
government controls where everyone lives.
The division of the people into three classes, the members of the Inner
Party, the members of the Party, and the Proles, is on account of a definite
hierarchy in the economic standard of living (Freedman 100). Membership in the Party and in the Inner
Party is not hereditary. Members of the
Inner Party live in large, luxurious mansions.
They have everything that they want and need, including the freedom to
turn off their telescreens when and if they want to. Other members of the Party live in the
Victory Mansions. They are not taken
care of and smell of boiled cabbage and sweat. The Proles live in a run down ghetto type of
area. By dictating where everyone lives,
the Party also determines what class the person is a member of.
The Party
governs everyone's daily schedule.
Members of the Party are all woken up at the same time by a voice from
the telescreen. An exercise instructor
on the screen leads the people in stretches and exercises, called the Physical
Jerks. After dressing, etc., the adults
go to work while the children go to school.
Lunch is in the middle of the day.
There are periodic two minute hates to arouse the people's anger and
excitement. After work, there are social
gatherings at the community centers and then everyone returns home and goes to
sleep. Any change in a person's regular
routine is viewed as suspicious. For
this reason, Winston is nervous about skipping going to the center one evening
and meeting Julia instead.
The Party
regulates the languages used in Oceania. There are two common dialects used,
Oldspeak and Newspeak. Oldspeak is the
vernacular that we know and use in the United States today. Newspeak is the language that the Party
creates. It is the only idiom with a
vocabulary that decreases in size as time goes on. The Party wants to have a language that is so
small that it'll be impossible to think poorly of the Party. (This is known as thoughtcrime in
Newspeak.) Furthermore, all poetry and
songs originate from the Party. There
are two significant songs that are repeated throughout the novel. One of them is:
They
sye that time 'eals all things,
They
sye you can always forget:
But
the smiles an' the tears across the years
They
twist my 'eartstrings yet! (117, 180)
It is sung by a "red-armed woman" while
"marching to and for between the washtub and the line". The woman is a Prole. The second song is:
Under
the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me:
There
lie they, and here lie we
Under
the spreading chestnut tree. (66, 241)
This tune is played over the telescreen. First of all, songs are produced, mainly for
the Proles, by a versificator. This is
an ironic choice of a word to name this machine. A versificator is a machine. It has no feelings. The name, versificator, comes from the word
versicle. A versicle is a verse that is
chanted by a priest and responded to by his congregation. This is a prayer with a lot of emotion. Second, the songs, despite being mechanically
produced, have an emotional feminine undertone (Weatherly 82). This side is related to the mother figure of
the family unit that the Party is trying to destroy.
The
government exerts its sovereignty over marriage. All marriages are arranged by either the
state or by the parents of those involved.
The purpose for marriage is to legalize the union of a man and a woman
in order to produce children to serve the state. From the time that these offspring are very
young, they are trained as spies. Many
children, such as Parsons' kids, turn their parents in to the Thought
Police. Neither the parents nor the
children are supposed to have any love for one another. There is no love in the world. "Love" is only used for
propaganda. Adultery is forbidden to the
people. However, they have never been
exposed to its existence. Therefore,
they don't even know what it is. As a
result, forbidding it is an unnecessary extreme.
The Party has
ways of controlling the thoughts of the people.
Winston believes that the Party can control everything except for your
thoughts. He says that "nothing was
your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull". In the end of the novel, however, Winston
learns that he is wrong. He realizes
that the government has the ability to even penetrate your mind. One of the ways it they controls your
thoughts is with the two minute hate.
Even if at first you know what you're doing, you get caught up in all of
the commotion and get excited and angered too.
The Thought Police enforce the desired train of thought. Nobody knows who or where they are, what they
look like, or when they'll arrest someone.
Even children, like Parsons' kids, can be part of the Thought Police
without their own parents knowing. The
Thought Police use methods such as torture and force to comprehend one's
thoughts. They use these same methods to
compel one to accept the things that the Party says and writes even if you do
not believe in them. No matter how
little you give credence to what the Party says in the beginning, you
eventually come to accept everything.
Winston comes to believe that two plus two equals five. He also learns to consider the following
statements as true: WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM
IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE
IS STRENGTH (7,17, 26, 87, 152, 166)
Everyone is under constant surveillance. There are telescreens in the houses and other
buildings of every Party and Inner Party member. The following exert displays some of the
telescreens' power:
Any
sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked
up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the
field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be
seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing
whether you were being watched at any given moment...... You had to live- did live, from habit that became instinct- in the
assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in
darkness, every movement scrutinized (6-7).
The Proles didn't have telescreens in their houses or
edifice
No comments:
Post a Comment