Totalitarianism In 1984

There is a ruling group in every country. Whether it is a dictatorship, democracy ,or monarchy, each governing body rules differently than the rest. In the book 1984, written by George Orwell, the party is revealed as a source of a totalitarian governing body in Oceania. More than that of most governments, the party fully controls the way the citizens think, their relationships with people, and their knowledge of the past.
The party has very strict ideas on what the citizens of Oceania can learn about their past. “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past” (248). The party has complete control of the present time, which enables them to have total control over the past and to interpret; this way the citizens only know what they are allowed to based on the party.

“Perhaps ‘friend’ was not exactly the right word. You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades; but there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others” (48). While revealing that there are no real friendships in Oceania, the party suggests their control over the citizens’ minds. The party has so much control over the citizens’ minds that they no longer have the ability to create and keep real relationships with other citizens. “There was a direct intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the party needed in its member be kept at the right pitch except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the party and the party had turned it to account” (133). Citizens were not allowed to love as the party feared it would harm them; the party controlled the relationships between people based off of the effect it would have on