George Orwell Use Of Propaganda In The Novel 1984

Imagine being followed everywhere by a government agent. They’re watching your every move, and they’ll report you if you even make a wrong facial movement. This is essentially the case in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. Run by an English socialist government called the Party, the people’s every move is watched through telescreens. Citizens are not individual, but rather an extension of the Party. When they aren’t living up to Party standards, like the main character Winston, they are arrested and tortured in order to be controlled. People’s lives are controlled in as many ways as possible. The Party controls its people mainly through direct government interference, propaganda, and thought control. The most obvious way the government controls

The Party uses propaganda as a babysitter for the mind. The propaganda starts when the kids are still young enough to have a babysitter, with the Junior Leagues. The Leagues teach children Party ideals such as chastity and loyalty. As Winston observes, “Chastity was as deeply ingrained in them as Party loyalty. By carefully early conditioning, by games and cold water, by the rubbish that was dinned into them at school and in the Spies and the Youth league, by lectures, parades, songs, slogans, and martial music, the natural feeling had been driven out of them” (Orwell 68). The Leagues use these propaganda methods to make the children into the Party as early as possible, so there is no room for individual thought. These clubs also use the propaganda slogans of Ingsoc (english socialism) to push their points home. These slogans sum up the beliefs of the Party, and are everywhere around you. Ingsoc sayings are burned into your brain until you believe every word of them. They also have a figure to represent these beliefs, lest you forget who is watching you. He is called Big Brother, and they say that he is always watching you. Orwell states, “On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrapping of a cigarette packet- everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you” (27). The goal of the Party is to have eyes on you everywhere; figuratively and

This starts simply with their suppression of instincts. First, they control they hate instinct through what they call Two Minutes Hate. The government endorses hate toward war enemies, so the population doesn’t turn their hatred into rebellion. Sex instinct is also suppressed, for the sake of controlling the primal instincts of people. Instincts and thoughts are only allowed if they work to the Party’s advantage. However, thoughts are always to the Party’s advantage because of a brainwashing tactic called doublethink. Doublethink is the act of holding two contradicting beliefs and simultaneously believing and not believing both, depending on what is convenient for the Party. In a book Julia and Winston read on how the Party operates, doublethink is explained like this: “Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty” (Orwell 214). Aiming to control thoughts, the Party has come up with a method in which they are always correct, no matter what the topic is. However, this will soon become superfluous. The Party is working on their Newspeak dictionaries. Newspeak is a limited language, intending to include only words that the Party deems acceptable and which works for their prerogative. When speaking about the Newspeak dictionary to Winston,