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Free Will In 1984 By George Orwell

552 Words3 Pages

In 1984, George Orwell ridicules the judicial system and its punishments to display how people can lose personality and even lose their own controlled free will. Orwell implements irony and imagery to feed us a taste of what his hypothetical future would be like. Winston writes that “Two and two make five…God is Power…he accepted everything” (Orwell 290). This is an emblem of how ironic the story has turned. In the middle of the book, we can see how much he hates Big Brother, the party, his job, and his life. In the end, after the struggle, pain, and torture he has been through, he submits to the ideals he fought against. A complete switch is demonstrated by Winston’s behavior, which leads us to believe his free will was tampered with. The story was never meant to show how …show more content…

He states his surroundings, especially noting “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”(Orwell 310). Slogans like this and the reactions of the public to them imply the control the Party has over the general population. Winston quite literally believes that sign is just general logic that the whole world follows, that it’s something nothing out of the ordinary. In some ways which people may not realize, this is common with us in today’s society. Not quite at the extent of what was happening in the book, but we can see propaganda as such existent almost everywhere. If we were to explain to an alien right now how the system of government and law worked, it would be impossible to understand. It is entirely possible we were just built around a system we don’t question, or maybe we don’t as much as we should. In other literature, such as The Great Gatsby, an eyeglass sign that looks extremely similar to Big Brother's eyes signifies insight and enlightenment, something which plays a crucial role in the story. Even that story signifies free will/control of those with money and political

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