In George Orwell’s 1984, the protagonist, Winston, learns about life and love as he watches the world around him conform to the party and comrades give up their rights. Orwell asks the question, “When should we give up privacy for security?” Through the Party’s constant surveillance and the comrades’ distrust in the people around them, Orwell shows that as security is prioritized over privacy, human nature leads to an increase in suspicion and far fewer relationships.
The Party’s watchful eyes in the novel shows the reader the security and observations by the Party and Big Brother as they disregard privacy in order to have rule and power. For example, when the narrator describes the telescreen (a device used for watching comrades), he says, “The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any
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When the novel describes family relationships, it states, “It was almost normal for people to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak-“Child Hero” was the phrase generally used- had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police,” (Orwell 24). This quote shows the lack of family bonding in Oceania and if you cannot have a relationship with your family, then how will you ever trust another comrade? A personal example that Winston got to witness was Parsons getting turned in to the Thought Police himself. “It was my little daughter,” (Orwell 233) was Parsons response when Winston asked him how he had gotten caught and who turned him in. We see, from this quote, that in Oceania your own children cannot be trusted to keep you safe and to keep your secrets. The Thought Police will catch you committing Thought Crime by any means necessary to maintain their regime