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Comparison Of Fear In 1984 And The Time Machine By H. G. Wells

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George Orwell’s novel, 1984 and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, both share fear as a common theme. Fear as a tool can control, change, and force people to do things that do not seem acceptable, such as make people turn on others, become violent, and forgo their belief system. Fear can be used in many different ways, such as controlling a population of people to gain power or wealth. In The Time Machine, a group of people called the Eloi, had direct power over another group called the Morlocks. In 1984, one small group of people called the “brother hood” had complete control of society. This dilemma is shown throughout history and has led to severe consequences. Fear is used as a tool in both The Time Machine and 1984 sometimes for different …show more content…

The main character in this story is Winston Smith who in constantly living in fear of what The Party will do to him if he is caught saying something negative about them or about Big Brother, who is the leader of The Party. An example of Winston being controlled by fear is when Julia, a woman who was following him, sent him a letter saying that she loved him. “drew the next batch of work toward him, with the scrap of paper on top of it. He flattened it out. On it was written, in a large unformed handwriting: I love you.” (Orwell 108). Winston thought for sure that the Party was monitoring him and that he would get caught and taken away. Winston was always worried about being punished for thought crime. Mr. Parsons, whose children were spies and informed on their father, was taken away because of what he had said about The Party, “Down with big brother!’ Yes, I said that”’ (Orwell 233). Then a little bit later Winston asked “Who denounced you?” then Parsons said “It was my little daughter” (Orwell 233). This shows how The Party is taking advantage over people so they can have power to do what they want. When Julia and Winston were captured by O’Brien,who was a spy for the Party, he put them in separate rooms, questioned and tortured Winston so he would give up Julia and confess. The Party and O’ Brien wanted to break Winston’s spirit. The only way he knew how to do this was to use fear by destroying whatever strength Winston had. Fear can also brainwash a person into thinking something is right or something is wrong. For example, when he was released by O’Brien he believed in The Party’s teachings and beliefs. “forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache…He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” (Orwell 298). The only reason that Winston changed his mind was

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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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Up until he is tortured into loving “Big Brother,” the sacrifices Winston made were all in the name of attacking “Big Brother” and him seeking freedom of thought. The risks he took, that ultimately wound him broken in the ministry of love, all were in the name of what he truly loved and cared for. In the end, the power of an “all-powerful” government was made apparent when everything Winston loved, including Julia, were sacrificed by Winston. The torture and the mental strain Winston was subjected to broke him as he devoted all of his love toward “Big Brother” and nothing else. George Orwell use of sacrifice as a tool to convey love and what character cared about not only showed the power of free-thinking but also the dangers of a totalitarian government like “Big Brother.”

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Big Brother was never one to be questioned, and he made the consequences known to anyone who did so. Winston clearly expressed his hatred for Big Brother and all of the restrictions placed on members of society in the beginning of the book. Despite this, he constantly hid his facial expressions and thoughts from the telescreens, in great fear that the thought police would catch him. Contrary to that outward conformity, he was always inwardly questioning Big Brother. He directly broke the law by writing in a journal, especially since

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Winston’s vivid description of the brutality of the Ministry of Love is a microcosm of the greater cruelty that Big Brother has done to him and many others living in Oceania. However, though all of these acts are inhumane and unjust, Winston is still willing to go through them as long as his love for Julia remains. Through the imagery of the government’s heartless doings, it further develops Winston’s adoration for Julia by showing the lengths he is willing to go through to be human and have feelings for Julia, something that many in Oceania are not able to

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Throughout the entirety of this passage from George Orwell’s, 1984, Winston Smith is portrayed as a rather paranoid person. While searching for quotes to support this claim, many are found and can be used for this argument. For example, in paragraph 5, sentence 2, it states how any sound that Winston makes is being picked up, recorded, watched, and monitored by the “thought police.” Winston is constantly looking behind his back, scrutinizing the “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” posters, and laying as low as he possibly can. Instead of just accepting the fact that the thought police are everywhere, all the time, as most of society seems to have, Winston is questioning the community in which he lives in.

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Winston was never a devoted follower, constantly questioning the world around him. Even when in custody, Winston continued questioning motives and denouncing the Party and Big Brother, despite the futility. He knew no societal changes would result from his actions, but desperately wanted to share his ideas with someone, and since he was already being tortured, he was capable of speaking freely in the jail area. The purpose was to rid him of his rebellious mindset, and to do so, O’Brien needed to know everything Winston honestly thought in order to ‘correct’ it fully. For example, O’Brien forced Winston to recognize that whatever the Party said was true by holding up four fingers and saying there were five, “But there had been a moment- of luminous certainty, where each new suggestion of O’Brien’s had filled up a patch of emptiness and had become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily five, if that were what was needed (Orwell 258).

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Winston did not have the mindset and it resulted in not only being defeated by his enemy, also loving his enemy. Winston in the beginning wanted to destroy Big Brother. Although he wanted to destroy Big Brother, he ended up not succeeding. An example of Winston not succeeding is, “Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston, however completely you surrender to us. No one who has once gone astray is ever spared.

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At the beginning of the novel, Winston made it prominent that he dissented Big Brother and his party’s idea. He wrote in his diary, in Book 1 Chapter 1, “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER…” (Orwell 18). This shows that Winston dissented his country’s government and was willing to rebel for he knew deep inside that

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Winston and Julia fall in love and together search for the resistance group called The Brotherhood. Winston believes that O’Brien, who also works in the Ministry of Truth, is involved with The Brotherhood so he goes to him to find out more about it. It turns out that O’Brien is a member of the Thought Police and places Winston and Julia in the Ministry of Love to be punished after they are caught by a hidden telescreen in the room they rented from Mr. Charrington. O’Brien runs Winston’s torture sessions with the hope of brainwashing him to have positive thoughts about the Party. Due to Winston and Julia’s secret relationship, they were to betray each other in order to leave.

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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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Through the novel, Gorge Orwell presents Big Brother to symbolize the dictator of the government. Big Brother is a theoretical political figure the government use to gain complete control of the citizen in Winston’s society. Big Brother is the “God” of that society and if one does not worship him one he or is sentenced to death. However, since Winston disproves of the way the society is structure his start to write in his journal “Down with Big Brother” which symbolized his inner frustrations. Winston also starts having about his mother and sister and talking with older proletarians which in a way symbolized Winston’s strong desire to reconnect with the past and understand what drastic changes had taken place from that time to his present.

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During a daily exercise known as the Two Minutes Hate, all Party members view a video usually featuring a speech denouncing the Party’s ideals and advocating for freedom and democracy. Even though Winston secretly supports these principles, he feels compelled to and even cannot avoid joining the frenzy of the Hate, entering a blind but abstract rage. He mentions that, “And yet that rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp. Thus, at one moment Winston’s hatred was not not turned against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police….(Orwell 14). This is how Winston’s fear differs from that of other people’s.

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