Totalitarianism In 1984

A successful totalitarian regime has complete control over media, industrial production, food, and other assets to society so that the citizens of it feel slight discomfort in their lives. In the novel 1984 by George Orwell, Big Brother not only controls all of these things but also something bigger, something that when controlled causes profound and detrimental psychological impacts. Big Brother controls humanity as a whole. Individual wants and desires are nonexistent in Oceania. Innate impulses like sexuality and love are suppressed. When humanity is nonexistent in a society, the citizens in it are indefinitely in an unconscious, dreamlike state and are constantly adhering to whatever the leader tells them to think or be. Orwell, with his

Big Brother, or more specifically the Party, maintains control over its members’ humanities with propaganda that simultaneously produces feelings of intense hatred and intense love while also suppressing all true human emotion. Every day In Oceania, party members willingly participate in a ritualistic act of hatred called “Two Minutes Hate”. During these two minutes, party members must watch a program on the telescreen which “[...] varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure” (12). The program shows Goldstein, the essential enemy or “primal traitor” (12) of the party, speaking out against Party doctrine and promoting freedom. He is also shown with the Eurasian army marching behind him with “the dull, rhythmic tramp of the soldiers’ boots [forming] the background to Goldstein’s bleating voice” (13). The Party shows Goldstein with Eurasians because Eurasia is the current enemy of Oceania and in order to promote nationalism the Party first has to promote hatred of the enemy. In these two minutes of hate, Party members have “[...] uncontrollable exclamations of rage [...] [and] a hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in a with a

People incarcerated by the Thought Police and placed in the Ministry of Love undergo intense psychological torture before they are sent to Room 101, so when finally in the room filled with “[...] the worst thing in the world” (283), they have only a fraction of their humanity that they may have had before. For the protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, Room 101 has inside of it a cage that is full of hungry and carnivorous rats and equipped with an open face mask so that the rats will burrow through Winston’s face. Rats are Winston’s ultimate fear, so in order to make him completely subordinate to the Party he must pass one final “test” in this room to show his love to the party. O’Brien, the administrator of this test, claims its purpose is to make takers of it experience “[...] an instinct which cannot be disobeyed [...] [from] a form of pressure that [one] cannot withstand” (284). This instinct is to betray another person that one loves, as to fully exterminate any trace of humanity that a person can have left after experiencing physical and psychological torture in the Ministry of Love. As the rat cage approaches Winston with its open mask, Winston’s instinct is to demand that this torture is given to Julia, the woman he loves, instead of him. He screams to