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Essay about Analysis of 1984 in Reference to Censorship

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Censorship dates all the way back to 443 BC in ancient Rome with the Office of Censor. In that time this was an office of great repute, the Office of Censor was charged with the shaping of the character of the people. Thus it was considered to be an honorable task, since then the connotation of the word and such an office has changed greatly. Today censorship is the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc. and suppressing “unacceptable parts” based on whoever is defining “unacceptable.” Unacceptable has been considered to be a wide range of concepts from ideas to sexually explicit content. Historically in the USSR most leaders used censorship in every form as a means of suppressing whatever or whoever was perceived as a …show more content…

The book painted a very vivid image of the scary idea of Communism becoming an overwhelming superpower. This seemed like an all to realistic possibility at the time. This book took peoples’ greatest fear and amplified it, projecting a terrifying future of a totalitarian government having total control over its citizens. Many schools pushed to ban the book on the grounds of its sexual content as well as the profanity that it details. Amarillo High School in Texas banned it during the 1960s, in a statement they released the school stated that it was “Inappropriate for adolescents or any age group” (Karolides). George Orwell creates a harsh satire outlining the dangers of totalitarianism through the concept of doublethink, a product of psychological manipulation. 1984 creates a world ruled with an iron fist crushing any semblance of resistance or any actions less than complete devotion to The Party. They achieve this through a number of tactics the first and foremost being constant surveillance. Telescreens are omnipresent; they constantly transmit and receive both audio and video having a strong psychological effect on the citizens. They know, or at least believe, that they are constantly under the scrutiny of the thought police. This idea is confirmed from time to time in different ways; one day during the physical jerks, the mandatory

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