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Examples Of Manipulation In The Handmaid's Tale

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Wash Yourself From Brainwash: 1984 1984 is the dystopian novel that inspired Margaret Atwood to write The Handmaid's Tale. George Orwell, the author of 1984, reflects on different aspects of society during this time. He described how the Party used its power to influence the people of Oceania from the Party's life perspective. The Party manipulates its members into thinking there is no past shown through the thoughts of the main character, Winston, from the beginning to the end. 1984 demonstrates the ownership of one’s body and conscience by terminating privacy, act of conformity, and the need to control people at all costs. The Party uses manipulation to take away its member's privacy. At the beginning of 1984, it is revealed to the readers …show more content…

Winston despises the Party because it has persuaded people that their feelings and impulses are not valuable. He wishes he was one of the Proles, the lowest level of society. The Party did not bother with the Proles, and the Proles were not conscious of what was happening in society. Winston explains to Julia how “' [the] proles are human beings,' he said aloud. 'We are not human'” (165). Winston realizes that the Party has taken away all of its member's humanity. The Proles still have emotions and feelings, but the Party members have been reprogrammed to not. Becoming unwomen in Gilead is the same as being the Proles in a way by not being a part of Gilead’s government. Once Winston is eventually caught due to his rebellious acts with Julia, he is sent to the Ministry of Love. While in his cell, he observes the other criminals around him. He notices a man dying of starvation being sent to Room 101 by an officer while the man screams, “[you] can take the lot of them and cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I'll stand by and watch it. But not Room 101!'” (237). The Party’s ability was so powerful that they were able to get information out of anyone and even sacrifice the people they love. This man is willing to watch his own family die in front of him instead of being sent to room 101. Gilead and Oceania both use fear and violence to make their citizens obey them. Gilead's hanging wall is a constant everyday reminder to society that this is what happens when one rebels. It is used as a strategy to scare their people into never going against them. Oceania uses room 101 as a fear tactic, as it is every individual's biggest fear. At this part of the book, O’Brien informs Winston that he does not exist and is in training to see and think as the Party wants him to. Winston shares how he would rather die than go through this torture. However, the Party does “...not merely

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211 Words | 1 Pages

1. Winston believes that the true way to defeat the Party is by the proles. He says that he knows that power lies within the proles and that power can be used to overthrow and defeat the Party. 2. To Winston, the most important thing for him is that he knows that the Brotherhood exists.

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967 Words | 4 Pages

The Party seeks to remove all emotion from people’s lives, save hatred, fear, and triumph. When Winston falls in love and starts to feel empathy and care for Julia, he himself admits that he has lost the need for drinking. He has another avenue to relieve the pressure of living in such a society. Along with love for Julia, Winston becomes passionate about his hatred of the Party and his desire for change. With the stupor of alcohol being lifted, he is becoming more and more aware of the evil that the government spreads and instead of trying to tune it out, he tries to fight against it.

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1135 Words | 5 Pages

In the book, the proles are seen as the hope that has the power to overthrow the Party. An example of this is “If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could force to destroy the Party ever be generated” (Orwell 69). This evidence shows that this disregarded minority that is seen as subhuman is the hope to change their society as they know it. To further emphasize this, Winston follows up by saying that the party wouldn’t have the chance to build themselves against the vast majority of the proles. In contrast to this, a dark reality kills this hope and this is shown in the quote, “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious” (70).

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136 Words | 1 Pages

When Winston states, “The proles are human beings. We are not human,” he means that while the proles experience the human condition on a genuine level, members of the Party reside on mechanical action and reactions, for the Party conditions its own into becoming hollowed-out, babbling puppets with a stark lacking of profound sensibilities and loyalties. To be fully human, I believe a person must relinquish the state of being all for himself and allow himself to integrate his emotions and perception with that of other people and the natural world, as well as his own spirituality. The ability to value sentiment and emphasize with the plights of others, alongside the ability to derive humor, beauty, and his own conclusions from all of life’s moment

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431 Words | 2 Pages

He has hope in them, but in the end this hope is never proven, nor any other way the Party was defeated. Julia is the character who exhibits the most defiance against the Party. She goes against the Party by breaking the rule about sex outside of marriage, even just the act on it’s own. Winston ponders on the idea, going on in his thoughts on the idea, “He wondered vaguely how many others like her might be in the younger generation--not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog” (131). This act of rebellion is subtle and proves that there are those who will go against the Party, perhaps not outright fighting, but in silence.

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Winston has an imaginative mind and later in the book he claims that the “power that would one day overturn the world” lies “in the proles”. He feels that the fate of the Party would lie in their hands and “when their time came, the world they constructed would not be just as alien to him” since “at the least it would be a world of sanity” (220). Winston expresses one of his heroic qualities through displaying his vision for the good of

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570 Words | 3 Pages

The proles have limited access to information meaning everything they read, watch, or listen to has been approved by the inner party and is used to prevent them from having differing views from the party. The proles are less watched over than the outer party members because the inner party doesn’t believe they are a threat. But Winston thinks they could take down the party because on page 69 he states “If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population.” Which shows that there could be a possibility that the proles start working together to beat the inner

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1032 Words | 5 Pages

Likewise, the Party fights to hold onto its power by having extra surveillance to keep an eye out for people like Winston or any others who are acting differently because in 1984,

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748 Words | 3 Pages

Demonstrating how the party’s ideals have caused Winston to automatically make the assumption that all proles are subhuman. In the text, Winston never actively challenges this presumption; consequently, displaying his unconscious superiority complex caused by the government's orthodoxical ideals. Correspondingly, the use of the third-person in the second quotation serves to distance Winston from the proles; further empathizing the class division between Winston and the proles, which distinguishes the likelihood of insurgency to

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1559 Words | 7 Pages

In the novel 1984, by George Orwell, he uses truth and reality as a theme throughout the novel to demonstrate the acts of betrayal and loyalty through the characters of Winston and Julia. Orwell expresses these themes through the Party, who controls and brainwashes the citizens of Oceania. The party is able to control its citizens through “Big Brother,” a fictional character who is the leader of Oceania. Big Brother is used to brainwash the citizens into whatever he says. Orwell uses truth and reality in this book to reflect on what has happened in the real world such as the Holocaust and slavery.

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853 Words | 4 Pages

As mentioned in the text, “the Party taught that the proles were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals...”, Winston along with other members of the party were embedded with the idea that it’s conventional for the members of the party to treat the proles in a degrading manner similar to the ways in which they would treat animals. This idea is reiterated as Winston remembers the party slogan that states: ‘Proles and animals are free’ and compares the behaviors of the proles with words like ‘work’ and ‘breed’. These words and phrases signify that Party members simply view the proles as a mere source of entertainment and a place in which it is justified for the party members to further contaminate and sabotage for its already

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835 Words | 4 Pages

Authority and Power 1984 explores power through, manipulation of language and children. The fact the party has the ability through propaganda to influence the children to the point they are more loyal to Big Brother than their own parents shows the power of the party’s propaganda. The manipulation of language by Ingsoc and BB also displays the party’s power. They seek to completely eradicate the people’s ability to even think against the party, making ‘thoughtcrime’ impossible all together.

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1497 Words | 6 Pages

“It seems to me that most men have received from nature enough common sense to make laws, but that everyone is not just enough to make good laws” (Philosophical Dictionary 186, European Graduate School). Voltaire spent his life sharing sentiments such as these and through these created great change. Many consider Voltaire a brave hero, not for his prominence as a warrior or tactfulness as a businessman, but for his bold, modern philosophy, determination to spread his ideas, and the impact of his work had during and long after his life. Voltaire achieves heroic status solely with his renown for modern philosophy and ideas; not even mentioning the other heroic traits about him. “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the

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1499 Words | 6 Pages

Winston also acknowledges the fact that the proles will remain ignorant to their power until they rebel but they will not rebel until they are aware of their power. This cyclic contradiction proves that the proles will never be able to overthrow the government. This ignorance of the people gives strength to the Party. The Ministry of Truth, where Winston works, has a big part in keeping the people ignorant. Winston’s job is to change the past.

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1102 Words | 5 Pages

They always conform by directing their contempt towards enemies of the Party and fear those conspiring against it. Through the threat of rebellion and sabotage, citizens are kept in fear and have their hate directed at the Party’s enemies and are manipulated to rely on it for protection. Winston, however, fears the Party and its total control on his life and on society. He secretly harbors dreams of a revolution and the destruction of the Party. His failure to be manipulated is later rectified through other tactics until he becomes a “perfect” member of society, relying on and loving the Party.

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