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Introduction
The key aims of writing any literary work is to entertain, as well as effect lasting change in the mode of thinking and decision making in the people of a certain nation or region. In fact, a large number of literary works have been inspired by the varied forms of governments, in which case they have been written to outline the negative aspects of these countries, especially dictatorship. This is the case for George Orwell’s story titled 1984.
This story outlines the depressing world of a fictional, totalitarian state called Oceania. The story constructs the image of an omniscient government using the briefly, rebellious life of an average middle class man called Winston Smith. The writer, in essence, creates an image of the state via different pieces pertaining to the collective controlling apparatus, where Winston experiences every piece. The apparatus may be divided into knowledge and memory, language and thought, and fear and pain. It is worth noting that the pieces are specifically designed to ensure total molding and domination of mankind. Memory and knowledge of the past and the present is regulated via the Ministry of Truth, which always rewrites history in a manner that would benefit the party. The power of controlling the memory is exemplified in the statement “Who controls the future, Who controls the present, controls the past” (Orwell, 35). The power of memory control is the power over the people’s knowledge, which Orwell underlines as paramount to control by totalitarian governments. The ideology’s significance is underlined by the allotment of an entire ministry to it. The ministry is solely devoted to the memory control and ignorance of the people of that country. It is worth noting that the party’s memory control goes beyond the unspoken distortion of history and the propaganda, considering that the mind may go beyond the restrictions of the material world. This underlines the necessity of incorporating more invasive techniques that would control the physical, as well as the abstract world of the brain. In addition, there is the Ministry of Love, an apparatus by which the Big Brother reprograms people’s brains, as is the case for people of Oceania. This ministry is a physical representation of fear as seen in the terrifying description, that one can only enter “by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine gun nests” (Orwell, 4). Big Brother uses fear of pain and torture to control the memory, knowledge and action. In most cases, the fear is used in preventing rebellion as seen in the fact that the people of Oceania are unwilling to even write a diary as they fear being thrown to the Ministry of Love. However, fear does not come as a complete guarantee for obedience as Winston’s treachery shows. As much as fear cannot be used as control for thought crime, the Oceania government seeks to have absolute control and regulation of thought to the extent that it does not need to treat thought crime incidents by preventing their inception (Orwell, 297).
Oceania’s government also uses language and thought as its control apparatus. Orwell acknowledges the significance of language not only for expression but also control. Any totalitarian regime has to use and manipulation. It is stated “In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it” (Orwell, 52). 1984 is a representation of the significance of control attained through the development of an extreme. The completion of control by Big Brother on language means that the totalitarian regime has absolute power by absolute control. It converts the people of Oceania into mindless drones that do not have the capacity to think freely and forms a hive-like state that the government seeks.
