The novel 1984, by George Orwell, presented an eerily realistic society brainwashed and controlled by their government. The main character, Winston Smith, was not easily manipulated, and documented his rebellious thoughts in a journal. He also rebelled physically, and was eventually caught. He was taken to the Ministry of Love to be tortured, and submitted to the control of the government. Throughout the novel, Orwell accurately depicted many aspects of Nazi Germany in the fictional nation of Oceania. The three main parallels were media deception, dictatorship, and the government’s treatment towards people.
There were two forms of media deception used in both Nazi Germany and Oceania. The first form was propaganda. Adolf Hitler wrote in his
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Orwell wrote, “Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black moustachioed face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston’s own,” (Orwell ). Just as the Big Brother posters promoted fear, Nazi propaganda speaking out against Jews had the same effect on the Germans. Posters depicting Jews as monsters, animals, or criminals promoted hatred out of fear towards the race. Along with the racist posters, radio broadcasts encouraged violence towards the Jews (Kehoe …show more content…
The character O’Brien stated, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past,” (Orwell ). In 1984, the government censored history by altering photographs, preventing any threatening information to their regime from reaching the public. Likewise, Joseph Goebbels, head of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, “took control of all forms of communication in Germany: newspapers, magazines, books, public meetings, and rallies, art, music, movies, and radio,” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Any ideas that contradicted those of the Nazi party were censored from the media as well (United States Holocaust Memorial