ABSTRACT
The book "1984" published in 1949 in Oceania. Oceania is ruled by the totalitarian government, and the government has washed the brain of the population and they just follow the orders of their leader obediently and a new language called Newspeak is created by the Party, which is made to express the strict orders and to promote the Party’s beliefs, rules and regulations. It reflects Party’s ironic slogan or expression: “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery” and “Ignorance is strength.” Party controls and directs the city with the help of the Thought Police. The book’s main character, Winston Smith lives in London and he is a follower of a minor party. He belongs to the Outer Party and is also a member of the brotherhood and his work is to write a new history for the leader in the Ministry of Truth. However,
Winston covertly rebels against the regime. Winston withal had a love affair with Julia, and she is having the same thoughts as Winston. Unbeknownst to Julia and Winston, they are being watched every time as the posters everywhere in the city admonish everyone that “Big Brother is watching you”.
When Winston met Mr. O’Brien, an official member of the Inner Party (i.e. Big brother’s Party) but seems to be a member of the Brotherhood in front of Winston but O’Brien is a secret agent of the Inner Party. And at last Winston and
Julia is caught by the Police because O’Brien and Winston is sent for a violent
Punishment in the Ministry of Love as every ministry is Ironical here. The imprisonment and torture are not only intended to punish him physically or make him submit but to finish his independent thoughts in his mind and demolish his humanity and make his mind in support of the Inner Party. Winston is panicked very badly and rudely a cage full of rats is attached to his head so that he can submit and follow Big Brother’s orders and with this Winston is released and after this Winston and Julia are not interested in each other. Instead, at last, Winston started loving Big Brother.
Keywords – Big Brother, Totalitarianism, Unbeknownst, Monitored, Newspeak.
INTRODUCTION
1) About the author:
George Orwell’s real name was ‘Eric Arthur Blair'. He was born on 25th June,
1903 in Motihari village of Bengal, India, and died on 21st January 1950in London, England. He was a great English novelist, essayist and he never entirely disclose his pristine name, but his first book, “Down and Out in Paris and London”, was published in 1933 as George Orwell's work. He was born in the sahib’s family.
Orwell also won a scholarship at two of England's leading schools, Wellington and Eton. His subjects of work were Anti-fascism, democratic socialism, journalism, and literary criticism.
2) About the Novel:
1984 also known as “Nineteen Eighty-four”, a novel by George Orwell set up in 1949 as a caution against totalitarianism, and the tone of the novel is serious and satire. The author uses symbols of rudeness, madness, insanity, and full control. The dystopia makes a deep impression on readers and many concepts of the book like Big Brother, Winston, and Thought Police are immediately recognizable.
He wrote 1984as a caution to citizens of Oceania after some years of autocracy in Russia and Germany. In Oceania thinking differently is rewarded with torture. The citizens are monitored every time, they are being watched everywhere even in personal space, they are watched through Televisions and they are not allowed to turn off them as there was a warning poster everywhere in city on which, “Big Brother is watching you” is written and where inner-party easily trumps and continues the ridiculous and insane rules of their totalitarian government. The citizens have lost their confidence and they have not to hope for something better in the future as their brains are washed and they have to just be obedient to the leader. Winston thinks modern and he is a symbol of civilized and better life but his big defeat is the vulnerability of such values in the city.
3) Legal aspect in the Novel :
The novel’s story is about totalitarianism and a totalitarian regime is one which endeavors to control every kinetics of life, how people spend their every second even in private space, whom they are associating, what they are saying and even government want to know that what people thinks and believes. So the citizens don’t have any law and also they almost have no rights as there was no right to express, right to think, right to privacy, right to liberty, and many more. Many times bombs were blasted in the streets and the government didn’t take any action, they were just like machines who have to just work without thinking or feeling anything. They were badly tortured if anyone was found talking with someone or making a friend. That was all illegal in almost every country as their rights are violated and that’s a dystopian world but nothing can be illegal if there is no law so that’s why they can’t do anything and just have to follow the orders of Big Brother.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research methodology is based on the qualitative approach in researching it will look into the social aspects as in How does excessive power given to a particular person affects his state of mind, as well as the people around him like the character of Big Brother in the book "1984”, has excessive or in a way absolute power in his hands which even gave him the rights as well as the audacity to form a totalitarian government. From this research paper, the researcher would try to understand the mindset of the citizens who were being oppressed particularly through the eyes of the hero, Winston as well as the oppressor himself i.e. The Big Brother. The research paper would also give a brief idea as to the thinking of a normal citizen under a totalitarian government. All this will be analyzed using structural elements and a sociological approach. The book "1984" by Gorge Orwell portrays one thing that resistance should be embraced. The researcher would further try to analyze and understand the aforementioned points to get in-depth knowledge about the topic.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The researcher had gone through and analyzed no. of research works about George Orwell’s novel “1984.”
As the article of Eric Jaccard i.e. “ (Jaccard, Not Death, but Annihilation: Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Catastrophe of Englishness, 1961)” compares understandings of George Orwell’s 1984 as a worldly novel with the pacts and philosophical distractions of English novels which are disastrous. It is firmly connected in the U.K since emergency in the late nineteenth century, uncovered an important tension amid its evolution of totalitarian government and its composition for the immemorial qualities and progressive possibility of a culture of English. Although dystopia works officially as extensive activities in world development, narrative catastrophes work fundamentally as world destruction. There is huge worth in perusing these two structures counter to each other: examining apocalypse as a disastrous chronicle discloses the narrow elements of the previous' assumptions to predominance while perusing a cataclysmal as anti-utopia enlightens how the second one approaches normalizing those extents. Consequently, if an exemplary tragic hero is represented by Orwell’s Winston Smith, planning a deficiency of independence and tolerability in an automated and dictator world, Orwell likewise fills the role of a perfect English adversity survivor, a “last man” arranging the deficiency of English qualities in and by which his personality has framed. The writer declares that "Nineteen Eighty-four" philosophically conflates both of these with the end goal that theoretical ideas, for example, verifiable advancement and independent opportunity are made subject to their earlier establishment in a democratizing English tradition. Subsequently, the novel's genuine fear lies not in the demise of theoretical independence under a totalitarian government, yet rather in the absolute destruction of the English racial establishments from which the actual prospect of independent life continues.
Also in the article of Daphne Patai i.e. “Gamesmanship and Androcentrism in Orwell’s 1984” (Patai, 1982) she talked about George Orwell’s most significant contributions to the dystopian works. She said as when we relate 1984 with some former twentieth-century dystopia, Orwell’s invention stands out noticeably and its chief forerunners represent cultures dominated by “reasons,” and the production process. Previous utopian literature frequently uses a nearly anthropological system to describe the mechanisms of utopian civilization by big discussions among a native informer and a representer of the old civilization. The reader is exposed not merely to impressions of the modern civilization but also to a strictly rational presentation of its inner logic. The dystopian fiction that started to be lavishly produced towards the end of the 19th century differs from this method as now there is classically an act in which the main authority clarifies the reason of control to the rebellious protagonist. The control in one way or another also appears in Zamiatin’s We and Huxley’s Brave New World. But Orwell breaks this chain by offering a sight of the near succeedings deprived of providing any virtuous explanation for the regulator. Mainly this lack of virtuous explanation is a vital feature of Orwell’s novel. Another 20th-century apocalypse forecast of a fascination with control sake of its own, but “1984” is uncommon in its total refusal of the virtuous explanation for the exertion of control.
According to Aurora Biondo’s article i.e. “Newspeak” and “doublethink”: the defeated Language in 1984 by George Orwell” (Biondo, 2004) this thesis targets focusing on one significant issue at stake in 1984 by George Orwell, that is Orwell’s distraction about the rot of language. The examination begins from two works by the author, "New Words" and "Politics and English Language", and attempts to bring notice to their significance in the formation of the troubling language of the novel. The point is to show the perception of the author’s investigation about connection among linguistic and culture. Through the fiction developments of the "Newspeak" and the "doublethink", the creator condemns the risks of a purposely unfair language. The primary section deals with his two expositions. In "New words" Orwell grumbles about the absence of some words in the English language passing on conceptual thoughts and the author recommends that the creation of fresh vocab is the solution to this problem. In "Politics and English Language" the author emphasizes the risk of the perversion of the language inferred in its political usage. Orwell expresses that this depravity has just begun and along these lines proposes a few principles for the correct use of language. The contentions of "New words" and "Politics and English Language" are the sources for the imagined language of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the "Newspeak", which shows the result of the utmost control of speech, where any considered contradiction is made unthinkable. The "doublethink" is the important mental attitude to have the option to use the "Newspeak", without feeling a deep vibe of self-revelation. The "doublethink" is the necessity of the vagueness of governmental discussions. The 2nd and the 3rd section of this paper are dedicated to the investigation of the fundamental highlights of "Newspeak" and "doublethink". In the 2nd section, after a small instigation to the various efforts to make a worldwide speech and the due quotations of prompt as the significant impact on Orwell's efforts, the attention is on the most important indications of the "Newspeak" all through Nineteen Eighty-Four. The 3rd part is committed to the doublethink of "doublethink", and to its aspects in the novel in the connections between the chief dramatic personae: for example the adherent Winston Smith and the vague individual from the Party leader O' Brien. The ending sections of this exposition are given to the clear instincts of Orwell about the predetermination of the learned. In the examination of the inconsistent learned duel between Winston and O'Brien, Orwell condemns the loss of the solitary rational man, while O'Brien's neurotic squabbles improve the final attempt for an unchained idea and an unchained speech.
The book "Cinema and its representations - poetics and politics" (Beyad, Cinema and its representations- poetics and politics, 2020) edited by Hossein Keramatfar and Maryam Beyad talk about the totalitarian government in the novel 1984 being ruled in by Big brother. It talks about how Big brother formed several rules that oppressed people's freedom of speech and personal liberty. It further talks about how a person named Winston had to finally accept the oppressing rules which he earlier hated. This book talks about the governing system that controls every move of the citizens.
The research paper “HE LOVED BIG BROTHER”: WINSTON’S MOVEMENT TOWARDS A POSTRUCTURALIST DISCOURSE IN GEORGE ORWELL’S 1984" (Hernandez, 2018) by Lucía Sánchez-Valdepeñas Hernández mainly discusses how the mindset of Winston was forcefully changed and how was he tortured to accept the fact that he would further have to live in with the rules that the Big brother created. This research paper mostly deals with the power of Big Brother as to how the people who worked for him would torture someone who wouldn't accept the rules that he created.
Bibliography
Beyad, H. K. (2020). Cinema and its representations- poetics and politics. UK: Cambridge Scholar.
Biondo, A. (2004). 'Newspeak'' and "doublethink": the annihilated Language in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.
Hernandez, L. S. (2018). HE LOVED BIG BROTHER”: WINSTON’S MOVEMENT TOWARDS A POSTSTRUCTURALIST DISCOURSE IN GEORGE ORWELL'S 1984.
Jaccard, E. (1961). Not Death, but Annihilation: Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Catastrophe of Englishness. Department of English, University of Washington, 102-110.
Patai, D. (1982). Gamesmanship and Androcentrism in Orwell’s 1984. PMLA, 856-870.
ANALYSIS
In this novel i.e. 1984 the author discards moral explanations concerning the activity of control and defies it as an end in itself. At the point when seen along these lines, the quest for control takes the form of a game. The play focuses on O’Brien’s role in 1984 and a point of view acquired from game theory explains Winston Smith's participation in the contest among tormentor and victim, demonstrating that both offer a frame of reference and major qualities. Analyzing these qualities, prompts scrutinize of Orwell's androcentrism and sexism. Only in a philosophy that belittles the female when approving the male members as the perfect for the species might it be able to have gone unremarked that 1984 concerns the communication of two men. Orwell saw that the quest for power presented a risk to mankind but couldn't consider this to be as only an extraordinary type of conventional manly conduct. Trapped in this inconsistency, Orwell lost hope.
We can also relate it with various quotes;
· Big brother- “Big brother is watching you”
· Power- “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
· Insanity- “The party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the goods of others; we are solely interested in power, pure power”
· Ironical slogans- “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery” and “Ignorance is strength”
· “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 once they had done this, they would realize that the privileged minority had no function…"
CONCLUSION
It’s often said, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
This statement is well versed with the character of Big Brother from the concerned topic. The character though didn't appear himself in the novel but through his party formed numerous laws like laws on hate speech, loves restricting freedom of free thought, sex, and self-expression. As far as the researchers could understand the Big brother's ideology is that he wants to have a totalitarian government, so he could govern Oceania. Through this novel and the character of Big Brother, George Orwell wants to alarm the people to choose their leaders wisely and with proper knowledge as one wrong decision can destroy their lives crushing them under an oppressing party. This will not only affect their lives but also the lives of the future generation giving them no freedom either politically, socially, or personally. Herein, the researcher agrees with the point of view of the author the reason being that there have been a no. of instances wherein rulers like Big Brother have ruined the capability of a nation causing it to shackles like ruins a country that could have flourished like blossoms. The researcher would like to conclude here with a quote;
“Power is not a means; it is an end”
CONTENT WRITER:
NAME: SANKET
COLLEGE: SYMBIOSIS LAW SCHOOL, HYDERABAD
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