The Characterization And Orwell's Mood In 1984

Bob Dylan, a singer-songwriter, once stated that “No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky”, but little did he know the prominence of his speech as it pertains to the novel 1984 by George Orwell. The novel depicts a totalitarian dystopia, where protagonist Winston Smith is fighting a perpetual battle against Big Brother, the government, that allows no freedom to its citizens while continuously brainwashing them. Winston, who is married to Catherine decidedly has an affair with Julia who is about ten years younger than he is, though this us an act forbid by the government, because marriage and relationships are reserved for procreation only. Winston works for the Ministry of Truth as a “drone”, where they rewrite history and spread falsehoods. Individuality is an indecipherable concept to Oceania, that “without any sense of individual fairness, people work for the party just like the gear wheels in a machine” (Chang). The book calls out for us to be aware of our surrounds and to take notice of the oppressions that are among us. Things such as our freedom of speech and freedom of thought are things taken for granted in our current day society, but to a citizen in Oceania these are unfathomable concepts, in fact they are derived from totalitarian and communist constructs. When stripped of our privacy and repressed of our natural impulses, we lose sight of what it means you be human and with that, individuality subsequently is lost using the tactic of fear as a procurance to its downfall.

Orwell's eludes in his novel to a society completely brainwashed by the government until they are merely dehumanized zombies roaming around aimlessly, no color nor human emotion. The government is holding the reins on human nature, but is that really something that could happen in todays society, The setting in which the novel takes place is no where someone would actively choose to live, a austrity of what was referred to as London, and for Wiston never is he safe because everything you do or think can be used against you. Privacy is an insurrection against the government. Is this truly what it means to live? That is what we are compelled to ask ourselves when reading 1984, as its society is denuded of the ability to be an individual separate from government influence. Orwell’s novel is influenced by the nature of humans to fall in line with constructs, taking out our individuality until we are the same person, but it also calls into question to what extent a human will go when morality is called into question. I am referencing the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Simsonian brown eyes and blues eyes experiment, and the Milgram experiment, where people are given tasks that test the magnitude to which an individual will drop down to, hurting another person. For example the Milgram experiment breaks this down for us, by setting up an experiment where there is both a student and a teacher, the teacher asks the student questions and if they answer them wrong they are shocked, increasing progressively as they get more wrong (McLeod). It was shocking the results that they found though this, people were willing to take the directions from an authoritative figure though they were hurting the student through there actions. People are so easily manipulated by a figure in power and we see this played out in 1984, Big Brother being the man “dressed in a gray lab coat” and the citizens of Oceania being the teachers, the easily manipulated (McLeod). They are stripped of there natural human desire to have sex and love one another, because thoose actions were onky reserved for procreation only (Orwell). They are driven by fear, fear of individuality, because that is forbid by the government. There human nature was suppressed into a small box and as Orwell states, “We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable” (Orwell). Here he states that men are malleable and that human nature will “turn against us”, but as we know without them are we even still human? This is why Orwell’s novel 1984 is a classic because of these questions that it calls for us to take a look into. Human nature, is something so complex, but could we lose it so easily through manipulation and fear. I would argue that Orwell would agree with this statement because this is the society that he depicts in his novel. Our human nature has been called into question in this novel, and what we will be without it.

Privacy is another thing that we see broken down and analysed in Orwell's novel, along with what would we be without it, and how do humans act when they are stripped of it. The idea of privacy doesn’t exist in Orwell's society, as a matter of fact there is no privacy, because with privacy comes free thinking, leading to new ideas and revelations, things the party refuses to allow. Winston depicts that he had experienced 'a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a blue bottle, and darted away with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people’s windows”, this being an complete invasion of privacy (Orwell). As a matter of fact if something like this were to happen today in our current societal climate there would be major repercussions, but to the people of Oceania, they know no better. Propaganda us plastered everywhere with the daunting statement that “Big Brother is Watching You”, and it is true, there are not only cameras and microphones basically everywhere you go, but there are also telescreens in everyone's home, where as Winston states “it could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely” and you never knew when you were being watched or listened upon (Orwell). There were few places unmonitored by cameras or microphones, but that was where the Kid Spies came in, they patrolled the people and would report back to the government it misconduct occurred. Orwell warns us of the extent to which technology can get out of hand and privacy can be thrown to the side. If you think about we all are Big Brother to one and another, by this I mean that we live in a society where we are continuously watching one and other where that be through the media or other means, we are always watching to see what this next persons move my be. Therefore aren’t we all Big Brother? This I would have to argue to be true and Orwell wouldn't contradict, though in his novel the government is Big Brother, which we are being watched by the government as Snowden pointed out ot us, but we are also already watching eachother. Now the main topic of privacy in the novel is more closely related to the government observation that we are receiving, through the government tapping into our phones and cameras watching our over move, which arguably to an extent is beneficial, but when it starts becoming extreme in the case of 1984, will we know? We have already been acclimated to the surveillance that we incur now, but as it gradually increases will we become accustomed to it then? Will freedom be gone for good?

Owrell writes in a way to annihilate individualism through the lack of language and through suppressing ones own emotions and natural impulse, and limiting out freedom of expression that we hold so near and dear to us in the present. As Orwell writes in his novel “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought”, and being that your language and thoughts are complimentary in an way where without language you wouldn’t have deep thought and without thought you wouldn’t have language, the citizens of Oceania can’t express there natural impulses thought therefore they are left without freedom in individualism. Without encouraging the thirst for knowledge and understanding, and liberating the natural impulse to be an active and inventive participant rather than a passive recipient only, people will fine difficulty in retaining individual freedom within the confines of a oppressive society. That’s what we are called out to take action to. We must