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Examples Of Totalitarianism In 1984

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A totalitarian government is a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute control over the citizens in every way. In the novel, 1984 by George Orwell, he uses a futuristic totalitarian government to limit the thoughts of citizens. This controls the people into believing everything The Party says. The book takes place in a city called Oceania and is told in third person by a character named Winston. Orwell uses telescreens, a white chess piece, and a paperweight to describe the theme of having no freedom due to the government. Telescreens are the most visible symbol of monitoring. The Party has telescreens set up everywhere which constantly monitor every citizens move, making them have no privacy. They can see and …show more content…

It is thought to be a crime if someone is not moving or not doing the same actions as everyone else, and the government would certainly find out. The lack of freedom to move and do actions without being watched shows how the people have to give up their individualism to conform to how The Party wants them to …show more content…

White usually represents purity and goodness, but the white chess piece represents The Party and their corruption of the people. It is said that the white piece always wins, "Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won"(243). This quote shows how the people can't win because The Party, represented from the white, has won since it was created. All the black pieces, the people who are thought to have betrayed them, will always lose. Freedom will never win. The people live in fear and follow them because they are afraid of the consequences if they do not, and it limits their thoughts and their freedom since they can not act on their own instincts. Winston drops the white chess piece at the end when he gives in and believes fully in Big Brother. This is major character development for Winston because he has never believed in letting the white win until now. The white winning represents The Party having control over the minds of the people, always. Without the white winning, The Party would cease to exist because people would be free. Winston discovers a coral glass paperweight and he buys it. The paperweight has beautiful corals inside of it, but it can be saw from all angles. The people can be saw at all times, showing their lack of privacy.

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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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Ariana Dalmau Mrs. Stevenson Pre AP English II July 13, 2015 1984 Part One, Chapter One Summary An occurrence at work that morning pushes Winston to start writing an illegal diary. “He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with balks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions?” (Orwell 3)

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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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480 Words | 2 Pages

In the novel 1984, outward conformity is crucial to the survival of the citizens of Oceania. One character in particular who practices this extremely well is the main character, Winston Smith. He not only conforms outwardly, but also questions his society inwardly, due to the overhanging fear that Miniluv will find and torture him. Winston constantly questions Big Brother and all of the laws that the citizens of Oceania are required to obey while also inwardly questioning his forbidden romance with Julia. Without this rising tension throughout the novel, 1984 would lose its suspenseful tone and would easily lose the focus of readers.

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680 Words | 3 Pages

If we take a look at what Winston’s does in the Party, his job is to keep the people ignorant about true facts and statistics in order to keep everyone happy. This allows the party to keep everyone ignorant about everything and make them always feel strong in the progress. If the people were to find out the true facts and their manipulation, they would rebel against the Party. So, the people’s ignorance is the Party’s strength. Through the use of War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength, the Party is able to distort people’s human nature and keep themselves in

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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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Not only are they being watched by the telescreens, but they are also constantly being eavesdropped on by the thought police which further limits the freedom of the citizens making sure they do not say or do anything to undermine the authority of the government. Through

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In 1589, Peter Stubbe made a deal with the Devil. In Bedburg, a small town near Cologne, Germany, animals began to be mutilated in the night. Soon after, children and grown men and women began to disappear, later found mauled beyond recognition. The townspeople suspected a rogue wolf and eventually a group of men corned the creature. But what they found was not a beast, but a man ––one of their own–– named Peter Stubbe, a well liked and well respected farmer.

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In Winston’s believes, liberation is an entity hidden behind a mist of futility, an endless cycle of failed uprisings caused by the insolence of the general masses. The cycle also represents the situation that Winston finds himself within, regardless of his awareness he is still paralyzed by the irrational animalistic instinct to cower in fear of the party’s promised punishment. Resulting in his apathy towards revolution which causes him to abstain from any true revolutionary undertaking; as a result, the cycle of despair continues infinitely. Moreover, the paradox may highlight the extent of Winston’s indoctrination by the party. Winston views the revolution as fantastical due to the Proles oblivious nature, which is an assumption that is made by Winson as a result of party propaganda, which states that all “proles and animals are free”.

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Powerful Governments A government is to be in charge of the economic affairs, policy, and actions of a country. There are various types of governments, with laws and restrictions that citizens are to follow. These laws and restrictions can easily be taken to extremes as portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984.

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The U.S. government is invading the privacy of its’ citizens through the use of mobile devices such as phones and laptops. This use of privacy invasion is similar to the technology used in George Orwell’s novel 1984. What makes today relate to 1984 is how the government tracks us through location, voice, and messaging. George Orwell’s 1984 has a totalitarian government that can track its’ citizens through location with the use of telescreens. In the novel, telescreens can track your location in a room through a telescreen, which is demonstrated by Winston´s thought ¨so long as you remained within the field of vision … you could be seen¨ (Orwell, page 3).

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Imagine being followed everywhere by a government agent. They’re watching your every move, and they’ll report you if you even make a wrong facial movement. This is essentially the case in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. Run by an English socialist government called the Party, the people’s every move is watched through telescreens. Citizens are not individual, but rather an extension of the Party.

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When Faced With Tyranny When one is faced with an oppressive government, they can lose control over all aspects of their daily lives. It is also easy for one to lose authority over themselves when faced with a stronger force. What might one’s response be when they possess little to no control over their lives? Many people may blindly follow society, but others might choose to disobey the rules. In 1984 by George Orwell, Winston Smith’s defiant nature and curious attitude display that one may turn to rebellion when faced with tyranny.

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884 Words | 4 Pages

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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Totalitarianism in 1984 and the Real World The concept of a totalitarian society is a major theme throughout the novel 1984. This theme of totalitarianism can also be applied to the world today. The definition of totalitarianism, a concept used by some political scientists, is a state which holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible. Totalitarianism can be related between the novel 1984 and current events in the real world. George Orwell incorporated the theme of totalitarianism into his novel 1984 to display the ever changing world around him during the time it was written.

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