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Abuse Of Power In 1984

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People have many fundamental rights such as the right to free speech, the right to rebel, and the right to have a say in their government. However, governments do not always protect or respect those rights as they should. 1984 addresses these issues in a dystopian world where the government has total control. In 1984 by Orwell, the totalitarian regime of Oceania distorts Winston's morals and beliefs through visual reminders of power, thereby conveying the theme of corrupt governments manipulating people to believe their propaganda through total control. The totalitarian government of Oceania distorts Winston’s morals and beliefs through the constant monitoring and manipulation of citizens through technology and visual cues. The Party has …show more content…

The posters of Big Brother are ominous and say “Big Brother is watching you”. Winston feels like Big Brother’s eyes follow him everywhere. The pictures are a physical manifestation of the Party’s power, as Big Brother is the face of the Party. However, no one knows if he actually exists. The posters are supposed to reassure people that Big Brother has everything under control, but, in reality, they are very threatening, as the posters remind Winston that he is always being watched. 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. After having pretended to believe and go along with the Party’s beliefs, he has also begun to to believe them to a certain extent. The telescreen is also important in the room Winston rents above Mr. Charrington’s shop as it is hidden and Winston and Julia do not know it …show more content…

Party members are assigned vices. Winston’s vices are alcohol and cigarettes. This distorts the actual meaning of a vice, as, typically, vices are morally wrong and are discouraged. The Party also implements 2 Minutes of Hate where a video of Goldstein is played and people yell at the screen. Winston explains how he feels immense hatred toward Goldstein but also Big Brother at one point because the hatred is not coming from Winston’s beliefs but from the people around him and the habit of hatred that watching the video invokes. Because of the omnipresence of the Party and threat of the Thought Police, Winston believes his rebellious acts were discovered from the beginning. This feeling of pessimism leads Winston to subconsciously make the decision to be less careful with covering up his rebellious acts. He takes risks with renting the room and meeting O’Brien which eventually leads to the failure of his resistance towards the government. The culture that the Party forces twisted Winston’s morals and invokes artificial feelings. Winston claims he will never betray Julia to the Party. However, once he is tortured in Room 101 by the rats, he offers her up to be tortured, too. The Party spent hours breaking and brainwashing Winston, and now he is willing to betray someone he thought he loved before. On the other

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Winston conveys the clear message to beware of the ‘eyes’ of the party, enforcing the slogan “big brother is watching you. Winston promotes this awareness towards the other rebels of the party and general people to overall spread his knowledge and hopefully influence revolt. While

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Big Brother, leader of the Party and the antagonist within this tale, has a constant watch over everyone in Oceania and leaves Winston to feel like a prisoner in his own home. The Party is the ruling force in Oceania, therefore

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During the two minutes of hate. It’s as if Winston was already being watched without knowing so. It shows that a poster of Big Brother is always watching from the start to show that Winston truly dislikes Big Brother. Though why does Winston hate Big Brother? This all because Big Brother is controlling everything and everyone, but only in the Outer Party.

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Winston fails to stay true to his belief of staying loyal to Julia going against how a hero is someone who is idealized for being moral. As part of the Party’s plan to reintegrate those who have rebelled against them, the final step is going to room 101 that holds “the worst thing in the world” (283). Winston and Julia have fail to betray each other throughout their obscure time in the Ministry of Love until one of Winston’s greatest fears, rats are literally brought to the table. Winston fears rats more than anything and he did not want to interact with them in any negative way causing him to yell out “'Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia!

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The major characteristic of Winston’s society is the lack of individual thought and privacy. Every aspect of their lives is monitored by telescreens and microphones in the

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Since the Party was always watching through the telescreens it made it difficult for Winston to express thoughts about the way that the Party limited every individual and took away human rights, “The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision…he could be seen as well as heard” (Orwell 3). Another way the Party made it difficult to express one’s thoughts was through the hypnotizing routine, Two Minutes Hate. The Party used Two Minutes Hate to rally the people through hatred and fear of traitors like Emmanuel Goldstein and rival troops from Eurasia. Then at the end of Two Minutes Hate the Party manipulated people by making them feel safe and secure, “The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obligated to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in” (Orwell 14).

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Although there are harsh rules that Winston was scared to disobey as he wanted to live his life without being tortured he decided to make a careless decision and make a rebellious decision to see Julia, a girl that he has become infatuated with, “If he could get her at a table by herself, somewhere in the middle of the room, not too near the telescreens, and with a sufficient buzz of conversation all round — if these conditions endured for, say, thirty seconds, it might be possible to exchange a few words” (Orwell 110). Winston could not keep himself away from Julia and had shared many things about himself that he thought was concealed when later he was caught with her. His act of not sharing anything about how he thinks and then still doing this with Julia and a man named O’Brien, yet relying on O’Brien at some points also led him to his downfall. O’Brien led Winston to think that he could share what he feared and how he felt with him as, “He was a person who could be talked to” (Orwell 252). Winston knew that he could only say, do, and show so much of

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Julia betrays Winston, however, Winston does not betray Julia. In the end, he cannot hold up against the brainwashing and comes to love Big Brother, the leader of the party. After he is released, he and Julia no longer have feelings for each other. He goes on to live an easy and mindless life. The only thing he has left is a few memories of a time before the Party.

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Winston is defiant and rebels against Big Brother and the Party through various illegal actions. After purchasing an empty diary, he continuously wrote “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” when the telescreens were out of view (Orwell 21). This simple thought is considered to be a severe crime where Winston lives because it is direct disapproval towards the Party. Winston feels as if Big Brother is controlling every aspect of his life, so this rebellious action allows for him to vent his frustration.

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Although Winston is able to grasp the concept of love, he truly understands love when he is with Julia. Initially, Winston sees being with Julia as a political act against the Party. He believes that sex and intimacy goes against the constitutional beliefs of the Party and is therefore an act of defiance. However, as Winston spends more time with Julia, he falls in love. When Winston is caught by O’Brien, he endures prolonged torture without betraying Julia.

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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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After a cautiously planned meeting initiated by Julia, they started to see each other more often in secret. Over time, a romantic relationship started to develop, not solely based on physical and sexual attraction, but also as a result of their similar views centered around their hatred of the Party. Although both characters complement each other in terms of their views of Big Brother as Party members, their values and approaches to this issue fundamentally conflict in terms of morality and ethics, history, and politics. With regards to morality and ethics, Winston and Julia’s judgment and beliefs greatly differ. Winston, characterized as an idealist, deeply suffers from the existent totalitarian authorities and their full control of everything.

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