George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen eighty-four by George Orwell is an intriguing book about a oppressive, all powerful government that forces you to conform to their way of thinking. The story follows Winston Smith through his struggle against an authoritarian government by rebelling. Orwell presents a very interesting concept of whether one person can change the way the world works, and by extension, accepting the fact that you cannot tell if you will have made any impact on the future.

Nineteen eighty-four is about a dystopian dictatorship where the government is the only authority there is. There is no religion, no race, no freedom, no love, there is only Big Brother. Big brother is the embodiment of the Party and everything the Party represents. The Party relates

The reality of the fact that, “This is the way things are and there’s nothing you can do to change that.” Big Brother is in charge and everyone just accepts it without thought, and those who don’t are spotted and taken care of. It is a big risk to go against the interests of the Party, and if you don’t know if what you’re doing will have any effect on the future, why do anything at all? Orwell presents the classic risk vs. reward scenario, you have to weigh the risk, getting caught and vaporized, against the reward, possibly making the future better, and decide if it’s worth it. Having the power to erase someone from history, as well as the power to create someone fictional, is having the power to control the narrative. “How could you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically survive?” If you don’t make it, then there is no trace of you in history. No one will even know that you tried to make a difference. Even if by some miracle a record is left behind and someone does know that you tried change things, it would likely not matter. “How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present, in which case it would not listen to him [Winston], or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.” Orwell’s

Orwell is warning people that if we, the human race, continue in the direction that we pointed in, then we are going to end up in a world that no one could think possible. People will lose their humanity and become mindless drones doing whatever they are told to do. The saddest part is that they probably won’t even know it. In the book, the way they live is the only way of life. They don't know anything different. All records of the past that does not agree with Big Brothers way, is erased or changed. “Day by Day and almost minute by minute the past was being brought up to date.” It was being “rectified” to fit the current story. The concept of newspeak, the language of Oceania, is basically reducing the vocabulary with each dictionary. They are removing words that could be used to rebel and speak out. If there is no word for what your trying to say, then you can’t say it. Since the Party is controlling the words that people use, they are controlling the way that people think. By taking out all of the words that can be used to commit thoughtcrime, such as rebelion, fairness, freedom, or falsification, they are eradicating thoughtcrime all together. As well as prohibiting people from expressing themselves and their ideas because all words only relate to the way of Big Brother. Nineteen eighty-four can be interpreted in a modern sense for individuals who are different. People are trapped in societies expectations, and