...In George Orwell’s “1984”, reality is not always what you perceive it to be. Orwell uses a theme that is comprised of the horror of a totalitarian dictatorship, which is demonstrated throughout the novel in the laws, and leaders of “The Party”. There is also a Big Brother character that helps to accentuate the totalitarian theme and brings a reality to the reader that the world is hidden behind this figure. The theme of reality versus appearance is a theme that is displayed throughout the novel in many different ways, such as characters, slogans and war. I will examine a couple of examples of reality versus appearance in George Orwell’s “1984” over the next several paragraphs. We are introduced early in the novel to a character by the name of Julia. Julia’s relationship with Winston mixes love and partnership in the strife against Big Brother. Julia is a survivalist and a rebel, she is a Party supporter, and very sexually promiscuous. Julia says, “Have you done this before? Of course. Hundreds of times – well, score of times, anyway.” (Page 104) In this quote from Julia it is first presenting to be another foolish drone of the party but Julia is uncovered to be an insurgent that uses her sex appeal and anatomy as a way to rebel....
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...their personal interest, not caring enough about the interest or sharing an interest with other countries." Senior Chief Correspondent and journalist, Hidetoshi Fujisawa concludes a theme that has been a concerning issue, circulating over and over again. This statement is well relevant in the novel, 1984, written by George Orwell; he concludes the paradoxical phrase “War is Peace” as an attempt to warn readers of the dangers of totalitarian government. This slogan is lived by and sworn by, and the essence of everything that the Party represents, having a double meaning; one for the Party and one for the people as a whole. In their society, keeping the masses believing that constant...
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...George Orwell’s 1984 was written to be a warning to future societies about the dangers of an overly powerful government. One of the ways the government used to keep the people in control was altering their perception of reality using the media. Could even a very powerful government control the minds of citizens so that they no longer believe scientific facts or even something as simple as 2+2=5? Reality is a concept that is mainly based on one person’s belief. Therefore, if they could infiltrate one’s mind enough to redefine their whole belief structure, they may be able to control their concept of reality on a small scale. Big Brother had many ways of altering the minds of the people of Oceania. Some of these were through media and propaganda,...
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...how the way you think of it. In the book 1984 written by George Orwell, he talks about the government is presented as a totalitarian state and how it is set up in this book also how George Orwell describes the life in Oceania. Some allusions that Orwell uses are deliberately used to describe Oceania of what it is and what it should not be “Though Winston is technically a member of the ruling class, his life is still under the Party’s oppressive political control. In his apartment, an instrument called a telescreen—which is always on, spouting propaganda, and through which the Thought Police are known to monitor the actions of...
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...George Orwell was born in India, 1903 as Eric Arthur Blair. His father was a British Civil Servant who was working for the British Arms. His mother took him and his younger sister back to England a year after George was born to attend an English boarding school. Gorge first experienced social classes when he was attending his school. Eric learned about social classes from school when he realized that the rich children were treated better than the poor. George did not have any friends, so he took an interest in reading and writing. He wrote poems describing his situation and how people were treated. George did well in school, and got good grades, for that reason he got a scholarship to attend Eton College. Orwell studied through college, however...
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...Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future ”-Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler and his regime is a great example of how a society based of hate will not last. After reading Book One in 1984 by George Orwell, one fundamental question is brought to mind, can society based on hate survive? In the book, the main character, Winston, believes that a society based on hate would basically kill itself. Another character in the book, O’brien, said that their society would last because they were founded on hate unlike other society founded on love and peace that eventually disappeared. No society based on hate can survive because history has proven that to be true. One example of a society based...
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...If ‘1984’ by George Orwell had been written in a different time and place, how and why might it differ? The novel ‘1984’ by George Orwell, written in 1948, is a tragic illustration of what the world would be without the freedom to think independently. The internal context of the novel, which is set in London in 1984, whose protagonist is a rebellious low ranking party member called Winston Smith, is meant to portray a world of government domination defined by fear, hatred and ultimate control. The mode of the novel is written and the tenor is close as the story is told in limited third person. The target audience of the novel is people interested in reading and politics. Orwell wrote ‘1984’ as a warning against totalitarian tendencies and...
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...People use rhetoric in many different ways to influence and change the audience’s opinion or perception of a specific topic. Rhetoric was used by George Orwell in the novel “1984” by representing what it is like to have your freedoms taken away. The main protagonist, Winston Smith, often finds himself struggling with himself and others to find the truth. In Plato’s “The Allegory of a Cave”, the character struggles to get his point across to his friends who refuse to accept the truth. Plato and George Orwell use rhetoric to explain the importance of freedom, whether the oppressor is someone else or yourself. George Orwell’s “1984” represents what life is like under a strict totalitarian government through the use of rhetoric. In his document, “Why I Write”, Orwell describes himself as “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for...
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...Inequality has created a country with economic despair. George Orwell’s novel 1984 displays a future dystopian world with a lot of warnings. Some of the warnings begin portrayed in the novel should not be taken for granted. The Novel talks about Party Members of INSCOG and the proles. The two characters presented in the book could be foreshadowing the heroes for our time. Emmanuel Goldstein and Winston Smith are the protagonists in the book. Many elements in the year 2016, are in 1984. Orwell predicted that a powerful few will control an entire population of inferior humans. Today, the powerful few are the businessmen, CEOs, and the wealthy. The media calls the wealthy the 1% and the rest is the 99%. In the real world, the financially unstable have tons of struggles. Some issues are but not limited to overwhelming debt, no good pay, and not having benefits. Poverty and Wealth in today’s world is the exact same concept in 1984. The poor and the rich live in two different universes. In the United States, the top 1% have more wealth than the rest of the country combined (Reich). The wealthy live in housing best suited...
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...Based on his knowledge of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, George Orwell, an English novelist and journalist, depicts the terror under a totalitarian government in his utopian and dystopian novel, 1984. Winston Smith, a member of the Ministry of Truth and rebel against the Party, performs rebellious and punishable crimes such as writing a diary with his thoughts and having a love affair with Julia, the “Thought Police” as Winston thought in the beginning and Fiction Department worker at the Ministry of Truth. They are caught by the Thought Police and are tortured into confessing everything they know and have done. Orwell’s use of rhetorical devices, such as parallel structure to state the extensive amount of pain he inflicted and metaphor to express the attack of questions, describe the torture sessions. Orwell uses parallel structure to describe the extensive amount of torture the officers...
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...Without the Party – Big Brother – being right all the time, they lack authority, and prevent new generations from accepting their views as the truth. “’Who controls the past’ ran the Party Slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’” (Orwell, 34). This was the aim of the Party and they achieved this through the help of the image Big Brother. While ideas were set out in order to convince people that what they believed wasn’t true, and the Party was always right, Big Brother enforced this. Big Brother was all seeing, so to say that anyone who believed contrary to this and expressed it, was charged with thoughtcrime – the biggest crime you could commit in Oceania – and never seen again. However, those who “believed” this and also kept their old beliefs participated in thoughtcrime. Moreover, aside from the values and information distributed from the Party, in the lives of the people in Oceania, there was a constant experience of...
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...The theme of Political Strife in Orwell’s 1984 Student’s name Institution name Abstract Orwell’s 1984 is another masterfully done piece of work that captures the political scenario across the world. Having written it in 1964, the book foretells the political events of the coming 1984 generations. This is a purely prophetic book that is inspired by Orwell’s sharp observation and political analytical skills. In this book, the life of the characters is purely determined by the political happenings of the time. (Bloom, 2007). Many literary and political analysts have found a place to refer to in interpreting political realities of the world in George Orwell’s works. Orwell is remembered for his other book Animal Farm that continues to spark emotional reactions from all over the world every day. A look at how the political theme gets manifested can help one to understand better the happenings in the story and their general applicability to the world we are living in. The Theme of Political Strife There are a number of themes that Orwell (1964) brings out in his book 1984. It is a prediction of the coming political sceneries in future since its publication came earlier before the year 1984. Among the major themes that can be found in the story are betrayal...
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...Western hero and the Lewis and Clark Expedition written in the early nineteenth century gave readers some of their first visions of the landscape and native peoples of the West. Later explorers added to the colorful picture of the West. However, as the realities of the West changed, so did the focus of writers who used the West as subject and symbol. Land became less available and the uses of land came into question. The environmental movement led to a reevaluation of humanity’s relationship to nature. As the region was settled a mix of cultures came into play. Writers now have come to emphasize the complexity of Western life, rather than its simplicity. Contemporary Westerns sound with more diverse voices than ever before. In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, he writes about his dark vision of the future. It may not just be of the future of the West, but the way of thinking and system portrayed are particularly Western in nature. A lot of terms coined in this novel are also use widely already in the modern day English language. It is a chilling depiction of how the power of the state could come to dominate the lives of individuals through cultural conditioning. Perhaps the most powerful science fiction novel of the twentieth century, this apocalyptic satire shows with grim conviction how Winston Smith's individual personality is wiped out and how he is recreated in the Party's image...
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...Social critic Neil Postman expresses his opinions on both George Orwell and Aldous Huxley’s visions of the future, believing that Huxley’s less popular vision in Brave New World is more realistic and relevant to current society than Orwell’s vision in 1984. Postman’s assertion was correct, and Brave New World is more accurate than 1984 in its predictions of the future, as it provides a better understanding of contemporary society. Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, provides a better prediction of the future because of its assumptions on implosion of society. Rather than portraying the idea of an outside force such as the government taking over America and destroying society, Huxley proclaims that, “no Big Brother is required to deprive the people of their autonomy, maturity, and history.” An external force is not required to destroy...
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...William PattersonPatterson 1 Enc1102 Dachuex 07/31/2013 Patterson: Critical Analysis In this essay we will take a critical analysis approach to George Orwell's “Shooting an Elephant” and its use of certain nonfiction elements that it uses. In “Shooting an Elephant” Orwell tells a tale of when he was an officer in Burma under the British empire. He hates his job and he hates the fact that he is forced to subjugate these people, but he also despises them for making his job so hard with their rebellious ways while also sympathizes with them. He is young and he is very confused with life at this point and has come to the realization that imperialism is wrong in any form. The plot of the story is the strongest non fiction element present because it goes so in depth. It has repercussions not just in the story, but you can infer by the writing other things going on around that time with just the little text present. The non fiction element plot is the main focal point in the story to better convey the situation at that time. What is plot? Plot is a literary term defined as the events that make up a story, particularly as they relate to one another in a pattern, in a sequence, through cause and effect, how the reader views the story, or simply by coincidence. One is generally interested in how well this pattern of events accomplishes some artistic or emotional effect. Plots usually follow the same steps exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution...
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