Examples Of Power In George Orwell's 1984

Maintaining Power in George Orwell’s 1984

Throughout history, totalitarian regimes have always strived to gain and maintain absolute power over their populace. Having witnessed the lengths to which totalitarian governments would go in order to sustain and increase their power, namely Stalin’s brand of communism and Hitler and Mussolini’s brands of fascism, George Orwell wrote 1984. Orwell's 1984 explores the dehumanizing effects of totalitarianism. The government is controlled by a being known as Big Brother, who is the leader of The Party. Big Brother uses three main methods to ensure The Party’s lasting omnipotence. He narrows the possible range of thought. He keeps the population in a constant state of anger, and uses that anger for

Language, and usage of words are integral parts of rebellion. Big Brother works to create a language where it is impossible to convey a message of rebellion, and to make independent thought impossible. This language is called Newspeak. Newspeak not only eliminates unnecessary words, but also promotes the narrowing of thoughts and, therefore, awareness, and consciousness of life in Airstrip One, the setting of the novel. The ideology behind Newspeak is that, as language becomes less expressive, thoughts of change become impossible as there is no way to express them. As a result, people work constantly to create and perfect newspeak. One of those people is Syme, who is very fascinated, and supportive of Newspeak. Syme expresses his thoughts of newspeak when he says “Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten"(60). By inhibiting disobedient and questioning words, the Party seeks to narrow the range of thought altogether, so