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Losing Our Identity In George Orwell's '1984'

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Self-awareness is characterised as the “conscious knowledge of one’s own character and feelings” with our ‘self’ comprising of individual identities, thoughts, experiences, and abilities. Displaying the obliteration of self-awareness and exploitation of groupthink, George Orwell’s ‘1984’ is a dystopian novel, which presents the extreme prohibition of all individual thoughts within a monitored and clinical society. Subsequently, social behavior is controlled by a seemingly omnipotent being known as Big Brother. This pursuit for a seemingly achievable eutopia seems inconceivable and irrational, however, considering the lengths certain individuals stress to achieve what is “normal” and “in-trend”, is it possible that destroying our individual identity by losing our self-awareness is a modern day equivalent to …show more content…

Similarly, the society of ‘1984’ is manipulated to act a certain way to maintain the control of the Party. Throughout the entirety of the novel, Winston is faced with conflicting emotions towards the treatment of people and the dictatorship of Big Brother. Undoubtedly, even whilst revolting, Winston exhibits a loyal and agreeable façade towards the Party, “to dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction” (pg. 19). Our identity is a projection, a visual representation of our state of mind and the influences we are subjected to. In the same manner, we are constantly reminded of the rigid philosophies created by our society and are prompted to conform; our existence is created through being defined by others. Consequently, is our identity a true representation of our ‘self’ or is our awareness used to create a person which we see suitable for this world, similarly to how Winston must hide his true feelings so as to

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