1984 And 1984 Comparative Essay

Dystopian texts espouse a variety of didactic messages that depend significantly upon both the context and zeitgeist of the time in which they were created. Differences can be found when comparing the techniques and perspectives the authors have chosen to represent their contextual concerns to audiences. Together both Fritz Lang’s silent black and white film ‘Metropolis’ 1927 and George Orwell’s novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (*referred to as 1984) 1948, confront and provoke audiences to consider the impact that (abusive power + unquestionable control=insert question statement) can have not only on the characters in these two texts, but also on the cultural and political lives of the reader and viewer.

By subjugating & dehumanising the lower classes, dictators are

As a form of control people who do not comply with the Party thinking simply disappear. Their names were removed from any register and their existence was denied and subsequently forgotten. Accumulation is used to emphasis the severity of the situation, “You were abolished; annihilated, vaporised was the usual word.” (Book 1 Chapter 1). Yet the end of this sentence is ironic as it almost rebukes their impact through understatement, proving that these are common occurrences and almost ‘expected’ in this abused social system. These circumstances echo the lengths regimes such as Hitler’s Nazi Party and Stalin’s Russian regime went through to maintain control. It is therefore no surprise that Newspeak is an integral political device used in the manipulation of both law + fact. Orwell’s use of Emphatic Spartan diction ‘the chosen lie would pass into the permanent records and become truth” promulgates the obfuscation process that the Party goes through to make history unclear, and thus irrefutable through the lack of evidence and certifiable documentation. EFFECT +