George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a pessimistic and dystopian novel. Throughout the novel we are shown a sense of oppression and totalitarianism. In the beginning of the novel Winston, who has a strong sense of individuality rebels against Big brother, who is the dictating party. He writes in big words in his diary “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER.”(Orwell 2013: 36-37) At the end of the novel the party tortures and brainwashes Winston into accepting the ideals of the party. This shows what a horrific world Winston lives in. Anything that someone thought of had to be in accordance with the party’s regime, anything else would be considered a thoughtcrime and would be punished severely.
Considering the mechanisms of control and the possibilities of freedom that follow we will explore the extent to which George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a pessimistic and dystopian novel.
The first mechanism of control that we will explore is Newspeak. Newspeak is the language that was created and enforced by Big Brother, the controlling party in the novel, to control and restrict the way in which party members think. This language has no negative expressions and eliminates all possibilities for a person to have freedom of
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Winston’s job is to alter newspaper articles to suit the party’s current regime, to make outer party members believe that what the party is doing is accurate. This shows us that the party is lying and that they are changing history for their own benefit. Winston finds hard evidence of this but ends up throwing it down the “memory hole” where it was incinerated. The party’s main focus is to establish complete totalitarianism over Oceania and by doing this it will destroy any concept of freedom. Therefore any person, who commits these thought crimes against the party, will be vaporized. The party’s slogan “WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STENGTH.”(Orwell 2013:6) can also be seen as