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Doublethink In George Orwell's 1984

Decent Essays

1984 is a novel written by George Orwell depicting a dystopian society in Oceania where the government known as the Party oppresses human actions with the omniscient, ever watching Big Brother. His novel introduces the phrase describing life without freedom: Big Brother is watching you. The main character, Winston Smith, struggles against the persecution of the Party through the expressions of thoughts in a diary and pursuing forbidden relationships, but soon his criminal actions ensnare him in the hands of the Party after being betrayed by his “friend”, and he is forced to undergo reformation. The rundown, tyrannical government of 1984 is often being compared to today’s society, and Americans fear that we will become the dystopian civilization …show more content…

Winston Smith analyzes the concept of doublethink, in which the Party slogan comes to his mind. The slogan states, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past” (Orwell 34). For example, Winston Smith knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia at one time, but the Party claims that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. If all the others accept the Party’s lie, then that lie will be passed into history as truth. Doublethink was essentially the reality control of 1984. In today’s society, pleasure is not banned, but rather encouraged. We celebrate and congratulate each others for our proper achievements, and most of us do not live in fear of our government every day. Our food supply is rather abundant, history is not disguised by other sources, and there is no spy after every hallway. We may have the surveillance technology consistently taking a glimpse into our social behavior, but the powers granted to surveillance operations are extremely limited that we will never reach 1984. Through our freedom and rights, today’s society suggests a different world than the Orwellian dystopia depicted in

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