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1984 Rhetorical Analysis

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Award winning writer, George Orwell, in his dystopian novel, 1984, Winston and O’Brien debate the nature of reality. Winston and O’Brien’s purpose is to persuade each other to believe their own beliefs of truth and reality. They adopt an aggressive tone in order to convey their beliefs about what is real is true. In George Orwell’s 1984, Winston and O’Brien use a variety of different rhetorical strategies and appeals such as parallel structure, pathos, and logos in order to persuade each other about the validity of memories and doublethink; however, each character’s argument contains flaw in logic. Winston debates with O’Brien that truth and reality are individual and connected to our memories. Winston opens up his argument crying that “it …show more content…

O’Brien attacks Winston and calls him a “lunatic…. a minority of one.” O’Brien uses ad hominem and attacks Winston’s character, which has nothing to do with the argument. Next, O’Brien asks questions and makes statements like “you are no metaphysician…does the past exist concretely in space…where the past is still happening.” O’Brien makes a statement about Winston not being a philosopher of what is true and real, and then goes on to ask him questions about what is real and true. This is called begging the question and it could have severely hurt his argument. Winston had one logical fallacy by repeating the same idea over and over. Winston 's argument was all repetition which is called argumentum ad nauseam. O’Brien’s and Winston’s ways of thought was exploited due to the use of logical fallacies in their …show more content…

Winston’s argument used all repetition and pathos whereas O’Briens argument contained a wide variety of strategies and appeals. Although O’Brien used more fallacies, he still had the more effective argument because he had more concrete details to back his argument up. I believe that truth and reality lie in our past individual memories, just as Winston was trying to argue. Both used different rhetorical strategies and appeals in order to convey their own beliefs about truth and

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