George Orwell\'s 1984 Post-9/11 America

George Orwell's 1984

Post-9/11 America is an uncomfortably appropriate time to be taking a look at literature like George Orwell's 1984. Given the current political climate of the United States, Orwell's dark, repressive world hits close to home. As Winston Smith goes about his regular routines being constantly reminded that "Big Brother is Watching You!" The reader can't help but to think about President Bush's implementation of the Patriot Act (Orwell 5). By making a bastardized version of English, "Newspeak," such a prominent element in the text of 1984, it seems clear that at least one message that can be taken from this work is about the power of language. Not only does this power exist within the pages of Orwell's fictitious dystopia, but there is increasing evidence that the American government is attempting to control and manipulate the masses by hijacking the common language. 1984 shows us that he who controls the language, controls the people. However, it is the people that offer the control by using the language that is given to them in the first place. Though this is a sound theory, and can, unfortunately, be seen in practice all over the world, the weakness in language that allows this to occur, is ironically the same as the strength that will keep it from taking over completely and pushing society over the edge into the kind of system that is presented in 1984.

When the year 1984 came and went without the gloomy socialist world of the novel 1984 coming to fruition, the Western world probably sighed a bit of relief. However, as Orwell points out in his appendix entry on Newspeak, the full implementation of Newspeak isn't actually scheduled to occur until around the year 2050. This gives the Western world another 66 years to worry about the predictive nature of Orwell's work. Though in the fictitious 1984, Newspeak was in wide usage already, it has taken until the 21st century to really begin to see this concept implemented in the real world.

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible" (Orwell 303). Through this statement we can see that language is the key to control. Words are simply abstract sounds until someone applies a meaning to them, and certainly something as important as our major form of communication couldn't possibly be trusted to anyone other than those placed in a position of leadership. Leadership itself doesn't necessarily equate to control, but it inspires the general population to willingly hand over tools to enable the leader to take control. In the case of 1984, Ingsoc is in charge, therefore Ingsoc is able to manipulate the language, but who gave Ingsoc the permission to achieve this?

The trait, or in this case the failing, of language that allows this control to take place through its instrument is the "slippery-ness" of language. Words themselves mean nothing until we allow them to mean something, but even when meaning is ascribed to a word, this meaning is filtered through the perceptions and experiences of both the person speaking it, and the person hearing it. Take, for example, the word "cat." While most of us would agree that this word means to label a small, four-legged mammal that meows and has whiskers, it does not tell us exactly what to think about when we hear the word. If Jane says to John, "Did you see that cat?" then John could understand this in many ways while Jane may be thinking of something completely different. Jane could be seeing a cute, fuzzy ginger tabby cat, while John could be thinking of, perhaps a solid grey cat, or even a jungle cat. He could even think that Jane means a man if he were prone to using beatnik vocabulary. Somehow, despite this dynamic nature of language, we manage to communicate.

What Newspeak proposes to do is not only to control the sounds that come out of our mouth and enter our ears, but to also manipulate and control the pictures that come into our heads. Being able to dictate what we perceive as well as what we speak and hear generates a situation where those who dictate have achieved a "social control through forcibly narrowed language" (Sisk 2). So, essentially, complete language control is the ultimate goal for Ingsoc, but there are many steps that must be taken in order to achieve this goal.

Language has a dynamic relationship with perception, and experience flavors our perception. Take again the example of Jane and John and their cat. If John had never seen a cat, whether in real life, a picture book, drawing, or in any form at all then the communication between them would fall short. Jane could then explain to John what a cat is, but John would then have not a primary perception of "cat," but a secondary perception delivered through Jane. Jane now has control of John -- at least as far as cats are concerned. She could explain to John what a cat looks like and dictate the size and color, but she can also go even further to tell John that cats are friendly animals, and very pleasant to be around. This would likely encourage John to welcome a cat if one were to cross his path, accepting its pleasant nature. Now imagine if Jane were to tell John that a cat is an evil, vile creature that lashes out unpredictably at anyone and anything. She explains to John how a cat can multiply at an astounding rate, and sometimes, when the population of cats is large enough in any given area, they will begin to form large packs that roam the streets at night, seeking out innocent, defenseless human children as midnight snacks -- and of course their terrifically long and nimble claws can pick any lock or scratch through a pane of glass with amazing speed. John, having a fleshy morsel of a six-month-old daughter at home is then inspired to kill any cat he sees roaming dangerously close to his home, especially if they appear in numbers. Jane has just been able to orchestrate a dangerous beasticide simply by telling John what to think about something he had no prior experience with. Granted it's an extreme example, but Orwell didn't shrink from extreme examples in 1984 to bring this overlooked stronghold of the hegemony to light. "By drawing attention to the most extreme, even transient features of the totalitarian system -- the wholesale rewriting of the past; the constantly shifting political line; the outright doctoring of texts and pictures; the deification, relentless demonization, or total elimination of historical figures; even the outright denial of simple fact (two plus two is four) -- Orwell anticipates the postmodern debate about truth and language, yet falls short of contributing to it" (Dickstein 107).

If Ingsoc were able to remove the possibility of personal experience of certain things -- literature, sex, political freedom -- then it could remove the desire to partake in these things, or to think of these things at all therefore eradicating the possibility of any kind of rebellion or attempt at overthrowing their authority.

To give a single example. The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as 'This dog is free from lice' or This field is free from weeds'. It could not be used in its old sense of ' politically free' or 'intellectually free' since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless (Orwell 305).

This creates a cyclic process; we remove the concept through removing the name, and through removing the concept we remove the need for the name rendering the process relatively permanent. This is only reinforced through generations of populations because the further the society is removed from the language, the further they are from the concept being reborn. Those generations who are born into the society lacking these ideas never have the opportunity to question the absence of something they never knew existed, and so the state of Oceanic-like oppression is perpetuated.

Of course this doesn't happen through utter ignorance of the masses. Anyone who is paying any attention at all in a society will become well aware of this shift in language, but there is no guarantee that this will foster a total understanding of what the change in language implies. However, there will be a certain level of understanding on the surface of the situation that may, provided there are still the words, provoke further thought by the people who are suffering the oppression of language. Party member Syme specifically addresses Newspeak himself:

The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer,

Shakespeare, Milton, Byron - they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate will be different. In fact there will be no thought as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness (Orwell 54).

So clearly the masses are understanding the situation to some level, but Ingsoc has made it impossible for them to dig any deeper, or rebel against the Newspeak movement by targeting those dangerous concepts for removal from the vocabulary first. While Syme can still follow it to a logical conclusion, the conclusion itself has still been decided for him.

Though Ingsoc wishes to make the people of Oceana believe that this is progress, it really is a regression of civilization. Because of the natural fluidity of language, to suppress it is to kill it. Of course, if the concepts still exist then the words will just take on a different form, such as with Latin evolving and mutating into the Romance languages. Newspeak, however, has placed such strict mandates on the language that it can no longer grow. "Newspeak, indeed, differed from almost all other languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to make thought. Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all (Orwell 319).

Of course at this point we have to ask to what end did Orwell have in mind when he wrote 1984. If this degradation of language and society were allowed to run its course then we would end up no better than cavemen at best. But it is this precise conclusion that I believe Orwell is aiming for the reader to come to. "His famous image of the future as "a boot stamping on a human face -- forever" is less a forecast than a warning, by way of a grim, perhaps sadistic metaphor that no one would ever forget" (Dickstein 109). 1984 is designed to frighten us into action against oppressive forces that are revealed when we apply Orwellian glasses to the world around us. It is especially poignant in America right now.

One clear-cut indication of how 1984 can come to fruition is the implementation of "politically correct" language. Take, for instance, the recent replacement of a widely used and descriptively accurate term "civilian casualties"; t he meaning of this term is clear, and needs no explanation. When the masses hear this word on the news, they immediately understand that one or more innocent life has been destroyed though extremely violent means. This could have been a group of men demonstrating in a dangerous manner and with Anti-American overtones. It could have been a young, beautiful woman preparing dinner for her parents and new boyfriend. It could have been a six-month-old infant sleeping quietly. The words conjure up as many different visions as there are people who heard the news. How could a public imagine their government guilty of such terrible, malicious acts and still support the war effort? Eventually, they couldn't, and so the term is changed. You will no longer hear the term "civilian casualties" from official channels in America; what you will here is "collateral damage." This is Newspeak in action.