Controlling a Population in 1984 Essay

Controlling A Population

The mind is everything. What you think is what you become (Buddha). Politics is always a subject that people either try to stay away from or try to get extremely involved in. One thing that always comes up during discussions of politics is control, and how much control the government should have in society. In the book 1984 by George Orwell, a world where there is too much government control is illustrated elegantly. The novel eloquently lays out that: the human mind can be easily controlled by a totalitarian government in order to manipulate its own citizens through fear, lack of education, and alteration of the past.

Ingsoc from the beginning had fear set in through the European country of the United Kingdom. Ingsoc took control violently and set fear in party members and other citizens from the beginning. An physical example of fear was the telescreens that the government put in every room of the country. The telescreen was a device that received and transmitted both sound and video simultaneously (Orwell 6). The telescreen created a huge fear within the futuristic society. It also was also a basic tool, even acting as an alarm clock and a woman would get on the screen and telling all that it is getting-up time for office workers, thereby proving the huge invasion of privacy that the telescreen gave the government, making solitude and secrecy unattainable. In order to police the actions on the telescreen, the government created the thought police. The thought police have a full reign of control over what happens in the society depicted by Orwell, the thought police could easily vaporize [someone] and make sure they would become an unperson, before anyone would ask what happened to them. The thought police helped to articulate the authors view of the impact that a corrupt police system can have on society, the police can ultimately control peoples mind depending on the amount of power they are given. The thought police could hold the threat of one becoming an unperson, above their head. To completely get rid of ones existence, was an unperson and the unperson was a the ultimate fate of one who does not follow the rules of the society.

As the story of 1984 progresses, limited education is becoming more apparent throughout the novel. Limited education is layed out through the governments manipulation of the past, newspeak which is the government limiting language, and mob physcology. Newspeak is the new way people speak in the country, it is condensing vocabulary to the most limited words possible. The point of Newspeak was to limit human thought in order to keep the citizens unable to express thoughts that the goverement did not want them to think, which illustrates the pyscological power of a goverement in society. Another example of the nation limited education is mob physcology, when everyone accepts everything they are told it is scary to become an indivisual and think for yourself in fear of what others will do to you or think. The goverement also alters the past immensely in the novel

After Ingsoc took control, one of the first things that they implemented was their alteration of the past. Altering the past was not a difficult task under control of the goverement. First off, the goverement implemented the concept in everyones mind that things are better in the way they are, this was important for the author to illistrate throughout the novel in order for the audience to understand the citizens of big brother. They also altered the past by taking religon out of the nation, such as the church that became the ministry of love which altered religon making everything be perfect they way it is in the novel. The reason the goverement implemented this and author decided to include it is, because the goverement wanted no power to be higher than big brother. It became impossible for citizen to look into the past in an intelligent way, because there was nothing left of the real past. Winston did find the pawn shop which had many things from the past, and Winston felt comfortable in the pawn shop mostly because the absence of the telescreen which created a feeling of not being constantly watched that Winston liked, but considering the pawn shop owner, Mr. Charrington, was a spy for the party, this leaves the question of: was anything in that pawn shop really from the past, or just things the government wanted the public to see? open ended for the audience to decide on their own.

In conclusion, the society that Orwell mapped out in the novel 1984, was a perfect example of when government has too much power and for all the wrong ways, controlling its own citizens through fear, limited education, and the alteration of the past.

Works Cited

Buddah. "Mind Quotes - BrainyQuote." Famous Quotes at BrainyQuote. Web. 16 May 2011. .

Orwell, George. 1984. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984. Print.