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1984 Surveillance Essay

528 Words3 Pages

Surveillance 1984, by George Orwell, is a magnificent dystopian novel about a society with a totalitarian government. Winston, the protagonist in 1984, is a confused resident in the city of Oceania. He is constantly questioning the government in a society where an opinion is not allowed. Surveillance is a method that the government uses to monitor all citizens and keep them under control. The government uses surveillance through telescreens, the Thought Police, and people who seem friendly, but are not. Telescreens, from the human eye, seem to be just a regular wall; however, they are used to constantly study all of the people in Oceania. Winston, along with all of the other people, have to constantly act like they are supposed to. He does not know if he is being watched or not and “any sound that Winston made, above the level of a whisper, would be picked up by it [telescreen]” (Orwell 3). In addition, the telescreens can view Winston no matter where he is. The narrator justifies that “as long as he remained in the field of vision which the metal plate commanded, he could be seen as well as heard” (Orwell 3). The residents of Oceania are “constantly” being under the watch of the telescreen, causing them to have sustained anxiety. This anxiety affects …show more content…

Charrington, a store owner, and O’Brien are friends with Winston, but they are not the friendly people Winston thinks they are. At first, Winston is clueless about who Mr. Charrington is because he seems to be just a standard citizen. Winston finally realized who Mr. Charrington was when he “was looking, with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police,” and that member turned out to be Mr. Charrington. Furthermore, O’Brien is disguised as someone who questions the government, just like Winston. It is not until O’Brien allows the guard to hurt Winston that he realizes that O’Brien is one of “them [Thought Police].” When O’Brien says, “they got me a long time ago” it shows that he is a member of the

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In the fiction novel 1984, George Orwell, English novelist, wrote about a totalitarian society who must live under the ruling of a powerful figure known as Big Brother. In the novel Orwell uses foreshadowing and symbolism to create conflict. Winston, an Outer Party member in the novel, finds a place above a shop where he believes he is safe from being watched by the Party because there are no telescreens in the room. He rents the room from Mr. Charrington, a member of the thought police but Winston believed he was a porle. Mr. Charrington introduces Winston to a rhyme but can't remember the entire thing.

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Imagine your TV is always on and always watching your every move. Welcome to 1984. From now on you must be very careful what you think for you must always live in fear of committing a thought crime. Even one negative thought about Big Brother could force the Thought Police to erase you from existence or, as they say in Newspeak, to make you an unperson. This is the daily life of a citizen of George Orwell’s fictional country called Oceania.

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Telescreens are used within 1984 in order to constantly display propaganda, as well as for the government to gain insight into the private lives of the public. In several manners, the citizens of London are unknowingly subject to manipulation through the telescreen. For example, excluding the Inner Party, the telescreen is required to stay on constantly, projecting false information to every citizen, as well as awaking them in the morning to exercise. Also, telescreens feature both a camera and a microphone. These allow the Thought Police to monitor every action and sound of party citizens, and hence prosecute them if they are believed to be rebelling or not loving Big Brother.

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Orwell states, “If somehow you could cheat the telescreen and get him alone” (pg. 14). The telescreen is used as a symbol to represent the party’s motto that “Big Brother is always watching”. The telescreen is a perfect representation of the manipulation within the party. The party wants to be able to control everything going on and the only way they can do that is if they are able to see everything that is going on. The telescreen is like a security camera in a store.

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(Orwell 3-4). In 1984, telescreens are everywhere, they speak, record, and scan all areas within its reach. These are designed to spy on people, never allowing anyone to ever be alone, lessening the number of people that will rebel against Big Brother. Society is constantly around technology (not much of a choice), people are thought police that will see that you are guilty of committing a thought crime (thinking any bad thought against Big Brother). In this novel, thoughts are not private anymore.

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He was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was the friend.” (Orwell 243-244). O’Brien takes on all positions that are surrounding Winston. It becomes his project to turn Winston into a good party member. He is acting in ways that Winston has been aware of throughout the entire novel, but doing these reprogramming sequences in a way that Winston obviously has never seen before.

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The telescreens play a similar role. They create a lack of transparency between the government and the people. The Party can see Winston at all times. Winston knows the telescreens are there which affects his behavior as he always needs to seem like a Party supporter and cannot display any rebellious behavior. Winston can barely remember a time before all these physical reminders of the Party’s power existed.

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No one should have to live their lives being watched over by someone they don’t know like the government. Another quote shows that Winston needed “to conceal his agitation from the telescreen” (Orwell, page 108). The statement implies the need to hide emotions from an eye watching over a citizen. In the totalitarian government, people have to abide by the rules, in this case he can’t feel different emotions like anger. This shows how privacy is being violated in Orwell’s novel.

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On page 19, it also says, “You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised” Similar to this, when walking into a store, they show you your reflection in the screen so you know you are being

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George Orwell’s 1984 is a precautionary tale of what happens when the government has too much control in our lives. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is at odds in a world in which he is not allowed to counter the government’s surveillance and control. Perhaps more striking is the noticeable relationship between the novel and modern society. In George Orwell’s novel 1984 the book predicts the surveillance of Big Brother in modern day societies.

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The book 1984 was written by Orwell to caution future generations of the dangers of an all controlling government. Comparisons between Orwell’s novel about a tightly controlled totalitarian future ruled by Big Brother are in fact quite similar to today 's world. In 1984 they mention telescreens, nearly all public and private places have large TV screens that broadcast government propaganda, news and approved entertainment, but they also spy on citizens private lives. Today social media like Facebook tracks our likes and dislikes. Also individuals as well as the government are able to hack into our computers and find out what they want to know.

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This is a literary analysis on the novel 1984 by George Orwell. 1984 is a more recent classic dystopian novel. Written in 1949, it's based in the future year of what is presumed to be 1984. It focuses on the life of Winston Smith, a member of the newly established Party that rules over a territory called Oceania and that is led by a man called Big Brother. This novel provides a rather frightening insight into a dystopian socialist environment.

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The struggle between O'Brien and Winston at the end. O'Brien is attempting to condition Winston into loving big brother but Winston's resistance lies in the fact that big brother may be able to control people but they cannot control his thoughts. For Example “He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the pen. The next moment he started violently.

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In 1984, George Orwell depicts a dystopian society pervaded by government control and the obsolescence of human emotion and society. Winston is forced to confront the reality of a totalitarian rule where the residents of Oceania are manipulated to ensure absolute government control and servitude of the people. The theme of totalitarianism and dystopia is employed in 1984 to grant absolute power to the government and ensure the deference of the people through the proliferation of propaganda, the repudiation of privacy and freedom, and the eradication of human thought and values. The repudiation of privacy and independent thought and the ubiquity of government surveillance is employed to secure absolute power to the government over the populace

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Government Surveillance vs Privacy Spying is nothing new to the world. History books tell us that ancient civilizations like the Roman Empire, Egypt, China, India, and so on used it. On top of that, 1900s regimes like the Former Soviet Union and Nazi’s Germany used spying tactics around the world wars. The main use of spying at that time mostly was for political and military advantage. These countries were successful on spying.

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