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Showing posts from March, 2021

Technology is an Orwellian Takeover

 The main goal of preventing our time period from being described as Orwellian again is stopping a technological takeover. Our generation grew up in a time of advanced technology with constant break throughs in devices becoming more mobile and affordable. However, as a kid my parents made sure I didn’t have access to these until it was absolutely necessary, or I was considered old enough. Much of my childhood was spent off screens and outside and I am grateful for that. It allowed me to use my childlike creativity in a setting where it wasn’t prompted. By this I mean, I and I alone was tasked with keeping myself entertained. Whether that was riding my bike for hours around the neighborhood or pretending to serve nature soup made of grass and mud. My imagination had full control of its surrounding and there were no limitations. For me, to prevent a technological takeover or an Orwellian time is to implement ways our generation was raised with our kids. So many times, I see gets si...

Analysis of the end

              Put simply, I thought the end of the book was fitting for the novel. Throughout 1984 we saw Winston’s journey with himself. Winston increasingly became more and more discontent with big brother.  The one thing that keeps society happy had the opposite effect on his emotion. The end was symbolic of the control that the party had over its people.               Originally, I was upset by the ending as I was hoping for the defiant ending, seeing a breakthrough in 1984. I saw the ending as Winston giving up but in reality, it’s far from that. Before section three of this book I would’ve argued that Winston would rather die than be under big brothers control but I seen now that he would rather fit in. Why else would he endure all the torture and betray Julia unless he wanted a chance at life again. In a way, the end is the new beginning for W...

Thought vs. Love

During one of Winston’s countless torture sessions, O’ Brien states that it’s not enough to follow the party you must love it. Love the party, a simple thing that Winston cannot comprehend to do. He is empowered by his hatred for Big Brother and wants to die with control of his own thought. However, throughout the book it’s always been the mind under control and I never realized how important a love for big brother is. In the end the love for big brother is what keeps society happy not the control of thought. In theory everyone might hate what they are told to think but their blind love for big brother prevents them from realizing it. In the end of this section we begin to see Winston break from this. Winston realizes his hatred for big brother in begins screaming in his cell and inevitably is taken to room 101. Here, O’Brien places him in a chair and informs Winston that this will be the worst torture he has endured. O’Brien explains that a cage of rats will feed on flesh and at thi...

Newspeak

  Newspeak In George Orwell’s 1984 the language newspeak is arguably one of the main forms of brainwashing. This works by slowly diminishing the vocabulary until the language is so bare-boned that room for thought can’t fathom to exist. Whilst this is not like languages today some of the aspects are still similar. We tend to shorten phrases in our language today our formal form is not how we speak in our everyday lives. For example, we wouldn’t say, “I would like to invite you to my house tonight” rather “we would say do you want to come over tonight”. Newspeak eliminates the language down to a basic structure where there is no formal and informal way of language. It’s universally simple.  There are a couple articles claiming that newspeak is much like our language now. These articles don’t speak of newspeak in a grammatical structure but rather as language being an expression an extension of our identity. The argument of these articles is that our language is limited by socia...