Orwell\'s 1984 There Are Many Similarities Between

Orwell's 1984

There are many similarities between Orwell's 1984 and our world today. One could draw parallels between Emmanuel Goldstein as the Party's personification of evil and the West's depiction of Bin Laden. The "War is Peace" slogan is certainly visible in so many words in today's Congress (which consists of numerous warmongers, supporters of "security" and "peace" through promotion of the military-industrial complex). "Freedom is Slavery" is true enough for proponents of the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and other post-9/11 bills that violate civil liberties in the name of "security," turning free citizens into slaves of a totalitarian State. Citizen's "ignorance" is the State's "strength," and the people's willingness to be docile students to the "two-minute hate" broadcasts on any of the major news networks or (Newsweek magazine covers) makes them the perfect companions to Orwell's Party members. In short, Orwell's 1984 is the picture of our world today; this paper will discuss the numerous ways in which this is so.

As Orwell describes in his essay "Politics and the English Language," one of the problems of our world is the intentional and unintentional correlation between careless and imprecise phrases and careless/imprecise thoughts. In 1984, the Party takes care of everything. Winston, for one, is not applauded by O'Brien for questioning the reality of life, events, history according to the Party. On the contrary, Winston is beaten into submission and back into line, so to speak. The ominous threat of Room 101 ("Do anything to me!...But not Room 101!") (Orwell, 2004, p. 295) is mirrored by today's threat of indefinite detainment (without charges or trial) at some off-shore facility like the one at Guantanamo Bay (our world's "ministry of love"). If today's law-abiding citizens accept with painful sheepishness the passing of new laws that look more and more totalitarian, it is perhaps that they fear imprisonment in the same way that the starved, skull-faced man who momentarily shares a cell with Winston fears Room 101. There can be nothing pleasant about standing up to a brutal, powerful regime. Winston learns to love Big Brother for the same reason we today learn to love/accept our despair, our oppression, and our subservience to governmental waste, bureaucracy, cruelty and hypocrisy: there is nothing else to take its place.

Indeed, just as Big Brother is everywhere in 1984, so too is surveillance in our world. Our lives are monitored on the Internet, on the roads (with hidden cameras installed throughout major cities now), from the skies (with satellites), through our purchases, our communications, our affiliations. The line between a private life and a public life is difficult to discern and as far as some people are concerned (those who read, watch and work for celebrity gossips rags, for instance) there is no line at all. Screens are everywhere: on phones, on desks, on walls. And it is certain that whatever we are watching is watching us too. (Internet cookies exist for a reason).

Orwell's "newspeak" is readily apparent in today's "doublespeak." Both words are terms given to language that is deliberately confusing, obtuse, misleading or false. The goal of such language is to trigger an emotional, political, social or economic bias on the part of the audience. "Enhanced interrogation technique" is a perfect example of Orwell's "newspeak" or our "doublespeak" -- it refers to torture (which is taboo, controversial, and still morally repellant to some) but does so with an absurd "intellectual" gloss, as though the new name somehow made the action different. In 1984, examples of newspeak abound with simplistic new expressions like "doubleplusgood" to replace the superlative qualifier "best," or "blackwhite," which, as Orwell notes, "has two mutually contradictory meanings," a negative one that can be applied to an opponent of the Party (who supposedly contradicts "the facts"), or a positive one that can be applied to a Party member (when he allows himself to believe that black is white and vice versa -- for the good of the Party). "Blackwhite" is also an example of doublethink and mirrors our usage of the word "terrorist" today. For example, when we provide "terrorists" with resources to attack other nations (like Syria) they are called "freedom fighters" but when they attack us they are called "terrorists." In other words, it is not "terrorism" when "we" do it, just like it is not wrong to call black "white" when the Party does it. The double-standard exists to wash away all guilt from the Party in 1984 and all guilt from those who subscribe to Party-like beliefs in our own world.