1984 Psychological Manipulation Essay

Today’s society is predicted as living in a world George Orwell envisioned in 1984. The system Orwell invented is compared to what the United States government is capable of doing. Government control of society is an essential subject due to the current mind set of the world today. In 1984, George Orwell represents how Big Brother is compared to today’s government, showing the consequences and dangers of a government with unlimited surveillance power.

Everyone has always wondered if people were ever watching them. Our technology today is capable to eavesdrop in on anyone’s conversations even if their phones are turned off. In the novel, “1984”, the party INGSOC uses telescreens to watch over the people and always know what they are up to. This denies the people’s rights and privileges to go about their business as they please. The technology we have today is almost exact to what big brother uses in George Orwell’s novel by taking over the public and private parts of our lives.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell, is a superb novel with outstanding themes. One of the most prominent themes found in this novel is psychological manipulation. Citizens in this society are subject to ever present signs declaring “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” (Orwell 1). Along with psychological manipulation, physical control takes place. The Party not only controls what people in Oceania think, but what they do as well. Technology is another important theme. Without the constant telescreens, microphones, and computers, the Party would be all but powerless. Big Brother is the main figure of the Party. The main symbol that drives these themes is the telescreens. It is representative of the party always watching and controlling

George Orwell’s 1984 is more than just a novel, it is a warning to a potential dystopian society of the future. Written in 1949, Orwell envisioned a totalitarian government under the figurehead Big Brother. In this totalitarian society, every thought and action is carefully examined for any sign of rebellion against the ruling party. Emotion has been abolished and love is nonexistent; an entire new language is being drafted to reduce human thought to the bare minimum. In a society such as the one portrayed in 1984, one is hardly human. In George Orwell’s 1984, the party uses fear, oppression, and propaganda to strip the people of their humanity.

The main character in George Orwell’s 1948 novel, 1984, Winston Smith can be seen as many things. To some, he may be a hero, but to others he is a coward and a fool. Throughout the novel, Winston’s characteristics are explored, and readers are shown the reasoning behind Winston’s twisted mind. It is evident that although Winston thinks he had control over his own mind and body, this is an imagined factor. The world of 1984 is one of a totalitarian society, where no one can be trusted, and no one is safe, Winston being the primary example of one who trusted thoughtlessly.

George Orwell’s novel 1984 reflects on the society of dystopian city Airstrip 1 where main character Winston Smith lives. Along with the many other citizens, Winston is controlled by the Inner Party by constantly being monitored via telescreens that keep sight of everybody and their actions. Besides using telescreens the government also easily arrests people in any case of “thoughtcrime” which consists of any thoughts that regard disobedience towards the government. Thoughtcrime and telescreens are two of the several factors that reflect the extreme surveillance in 1984. Orwell uses surveillance as the central theme of the novel to spread his idea that the usage of more extreme surveillance could eventually lead to a totalitarian society. On a less extreme scale, today’s society also has a significant amount of surveillance but many question whether or not more surveillance is necessary. With the many current text sources, it is certain that we need less surveillance in order to keep a stable society that does not take away the individualism of people.

In 1984, the ultimate form of betrayal is introduced when The Party causes Winston to betray his own mind and accept their views, and love Big Brother. It the beginning, Winston stresses the importance of keeping your own thoughts, in a world where other opinions and alternate accounts of past events are being forced upon the population. Winston points out that “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.” and thoughts like this become important to the reader, who, as Winston does, believes that they are safe in his head as a facet of his character (Orwell 29). However, the torture in the Ministry of Love gets to Winston, and he begins to lose his individual opinions. O’Brien systematically removes all rebellious thoughts in Winston’s mind, replacing them with the ideology of The Party. In doing so, it is as if they are killing a character. When Winston is released he behaves like a new character altogether, he loses the battle with himself and betrays his original opinions against The Party. In using self-betrayal to show

Orwell’s novel of 1984 depicts a dystopian society in which people are brainwashed with propaganda and bound to the chains of a strong dictatorship, also known as the Inner Party. Humanity has been filled with lies, as not a single person knows the truth that lies beneath the dictatorship. History is constantly being rewritten to mask their true identity. Any skeptical thoughts may make you disappear."Big Brother" is constantly observing you along with a telescreen watching every facial expression and recording any abnormal body language. However, two citizens called Winston and Julia rebel against "Big Brother's" totalitarian rule which triggers an astonishing warning towards future generations. Orwell is warning future generations of a society

Initially, the imagery of this section is the memory that connects with the reader. This precisely articulated expressions and emotions of the characters brings life to the argument that itself it could not create. The preface to this interrogation, the period of torture Winston suffers, creates the mindset of helplessness and pain before Winston ever even discusses with O’Brien. “Always there were five or six men in black uniforms at him simultaneously. Sometimes it was firsts, sometimes it was truncheons, sometimes it was steel rods, sometimes it was boots. There were times he rolled about on the floor, as shameless as an animal…” (Orwell 263). All of this inhumane torture degraded our protagonist to a decrepit state. For

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell uses draws upon his experiences of witnessing political authority in Spain, Russia and the Soviet Union exploiting advanced technology for potentially violent purposes. He also draws upon the idea of McCarthyism, in the continuous theme of monetarisation and the feeling of consistently guarding thoughts – rather than a hunt for communists, Oceania hunts for thoughtcriminals. And it is this knowledge of constantly being watched that changes your behaviour. When describing a portrait of Big Brother on the cover of a history book, Orwell describes the eyes as “hypnotic,” using diction to suggest that the eyes literally changed the behaviour of any individual that looked at them by simply being there. Orwell also states that upon seeing this portrait, “it was as if some huge force were pressing down on you – something that penetrated your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs”, using a simile to suggest to the audience that the image of Big Brother could enter your mind and control you.

Shortly after world war two George Orwell obviously wanted us to know what could have really happened if the government gets too powerful over its citizens. So he wrote the novel 1984 to show us what life would've been like in a totalitarian state. In the beginning of the novel Winston the main character of the story saw a poster that had a face on it and on the bottom of it said, “Big Brother is watching you.” Already by that first citation you could guess it was one of those stories where people live in a dystopian, brink of human rights. I’ve read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, which is very similar to this novel. They both could relate to the telescreens, limited knowledge, and human rights being taken away and privacy being invaded.

and it’s telescreens are similar to the NSA. Orwell is effective in making people aware of that issue, however, it failed to predict that today’s society willingly contributes to the NSA surveillance. Who knew that Orwell's 1984 and today's NSA would be so alike. “ If you want to keep a secret you must keep it from yourself” (). This illustrates that in 1984 their privacy was limited.

In George Orwell’s novel, “1984”, the existence of every person is examined by their form of government called “Big Brother”. The main character, Winston Smith, is constantly monitored throughout his daily life by the telescreen, placed strategically so that it can see and hear everything that is going on around him. George Orwell may have written a warning novel, but there is little possibility that he could have predicted how close to reality his novel would truly develop. In the previous years, the world has become a much more dangerous place. Along with this danger has come a call for governments to do more to protect their citizens. This protection has changed over the years, but it has become more and more aggressive

Across the world, History instructors educate their students with fundamental facts about wars dating back to 2700 BCE and so forth, and also the affirmative or cynical aftermath of costs, alliances, and materialistic items relating to the wars. However, a handful of teachers bypass and omit the most interesting parts of warfare, such as the development of citizens during and after these vicious conflicts. Author, George Orwell, seeks to find the effects of citizens in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. Orwell witnessed “nightmarish atrocities committed by fascist political regimes,” (1984) on citizens of Spain, Germany, and the Soviet Union. The government of Spain, the Soviet Union, and Germany captured “tens of thousands of civilians and refugees who [died] in concentration camps and prisons” (Process of Extermination). These vicious acts lead Orwell to fear the idea of a totalitarian society. Moreover, Orwell wrote 1984 to warn people of the dangers associated with a totalitarian society, because he believed that one-day history would repeat itself. Furthermore, Orwell includes his vision of “a post-atomic dictatorship in which every individual would be monitored ceaselessly by means of the telescreen [that] seemed terrifyingly possible” (1984). In addition to the stalking telescreens, Orwell introduces the effectiveness of thought control. Orwell uses characters and organizations such as The Party, who controls its citizens’ thoughts, as well as their feelings, to show

Jim Morrison once stated that “Whoever controls the media controls the mind.” This means that any individual or group of people that possesses the most control can reshape the minds of others in society. Such is described in George Orwell’s novel 1984, where the higher class uses torturous and vicious methods to alter thoughts and judgements and to dehumanize personalities. Big Brother is the commander of society, the tyrant, and the symbol of domination. He uses the media to transform opinions and perceptions to imprison everyone in the palm of his hand, and controls it with his advantage of being omnipotent. Through these tactics, Big Brother obtains his power by trapping the mind with verbal manipulation, such as Hate Week and Newspeak, visual oppression which is defined with telescreens, and mental control by means of Doublethink; we discover that the quote Morrison asserts proves to be true.