George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four Essay

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Nineteen Eighty- Four or 1984 is a science fiction novel, written by George Orwell, about a dystopian world where it divided into three nations known as: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia, who constantly at war with each other. The government known as The Party used propaganda, secret police, brainwashing, and other device to oppress their population. Citizens are controlled by fear and brainwashing, and allowing little to no privacy. The novel illustrated the dangers of totalitarian governments. The story revolves around a relatively average member go by the name Winston Smith who, throughout the course of the novel, begins to secretly rebel against the government. Many sociological ideas and concepts were being presented in the novel. These …show more content…

There were the upper class known as the Inner Party, the Outer class, and the Proles who were at the bottom of the pyramid. The Proles make up majority of the population in Oceania yet they were being exploited by the higher class. The main character, Winston Smith, wrote in his diary, “If there was hope, it must lie in the proles” (Orwell 1949). The Proles had the ability to overthrow the Party if they wanted to but they didn’t have the a reason to do it. They were left to themselves and weren’t as controlled by Big Brother as other classes, which mean they are more independent. However the reasons they weren’t being watch much by Big Brother was because the Party thought they weren’t intelligence enough to stand up to the party and their only jobs in society were to work and breed. This situation connected to Karl Marx’s theory about society’s main problems which are the bourgeoisie who are the rich and powerful people that exploit everyone else like the proletariat. According to Marx, in order to end this class conflict there have to be a revolution among the working classes against the bourgeoisie to overthrow them (Marx 1848). But before they could start the revolution, working class need to develop class consciousness instead of false consciousness. They needed to see themselves as one unit and, together, they can take down the