‘Discuss how the citizens of Oceania are controlled and manipulated by the Party in Nineteen Eighty-Four’
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian story set in Oceania (London). It depicts a society, with an oppressive controlling government, which manipulates past events and puts the people under constant surveillance. The citizens of Oceania are driven to fully submit to the authority of the omniscient, Big Brother. The Party puts the population under constant surveillance and brainwashes them by sending messages and propaganda blaring through the ubiquitous Telescreens. These Telescreens cause people to live in fear and use propaganda to manipulate their thoughts, so that they believe whatever they are told.
Firstly, at the…
The surveillance surrounding the citizens results in huge effects on the citizens, including a lack of conversational skills and also results in the citizens scared to be honest and true. The Party has convinced the community that the Telescreens are normal, as The Party has the ability to change any piece of history or knowledge and then have population believe it. With technology you can acquire knowledge and use it for good reasons, but in 1984 you can argue that the surveillance is too extreme. Orwell depicts this extremity of surveillance through the fact that even Winston knew that, “even a back could be revealing” and also the point “you could not control the beating of your heart, and the telescreen was quite delicate enough to pick up”. This use of second person pronoun, “you” engages the reader and makes us more sympathetic to Winston’s situation. Winston has a dream, where he is in the Golden Country, a place he is unsure whether he has seen in reality before, or not. Inside this dream he sees a girl who rips off her clothes and Winston is overwhelmed by the way she just easily destroyed the culture and system of The Party and Big Brother with a simple action as he feels, “the gesture belonged to an ancient time.” Because of the privacy restrictions on the people, a simple action can feel so rebellious, and because of this they have to live controlling themselves, down to their own heartbeat, otherwise the consequences can mean imprisonment, torture and even…
