Gillian Pietrowski Economic and Distribution of wealth

At the end of 1984 by George Orwell, Winston Smith has been beaten down till he as no motivation to revolt and has learned to love Big Brother. Feeling hatred towards the party has caused him a lot but to him it was worth it. Living in a government that controls every aspect of your life can cause some people to become insecure and suspicious with the party. Orwell’s message to his modern day readers is that a totalitarian society is defective. The Economic system is extremely diverse. The upper class has the most valuables and the wealthiest, then the lower class is the working class which is poor and extremely limited freedoms, and last but not least the proles are the bottom of the social pyramid who lives in the poorest neighborhoods and have no intelligence whatsoever. If any one in any class disobeys Big Brother they are taken away and erased from history. Orwell did an excellent job at getting his message across. For example in the quote “For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away”(190). This explains how the party keeps the proles uneducated and distracted incase they ever revolt. But the party has thought-police monitoring the proles for any signs of intelligence, if so the are taken away and executed. They do this in order to prevent the lower class of having their own thought and realizing that the upper classes have no purpose. Another quote is “ We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it”(263). This quote means that the government had all intentions of taking over and never letting go of the power. Setting social classes and distributing the wealth unevenly is exactly what they wanted in their society. Never allowing liberty or equality but managing it in a away that the people wouldn't understand and hand no motivation or reason to revolt. In a scary and interesting way Orwell may have predicted what our society would look like in 1984. In the novel the government controls every aspect of everyones life, whether you re the wealthiest or the poorest among the people. Televisions as cameras, hidden microphones everywhere you go, the thought-police watching, and everyone around you who is willing to give you up if you are going against the rules. Which happens to be similar to modern day society. For example our government has been known for going through emails and messages without our personal consent. Also we have cameras in buildings watching out every move. Some could argue that it is for the best to have security like that but others say it is an invasion of privacy. There are many ways that Orwell’s novel has had some incentive of what our society was going to be like but to an extent. Obviously we are not a totalitarian government but we don't have as much freedom as we think.