Kellie Stokes

Christina Phillips 

English 101

April 11th, 2015

Following the end of World War II, a form of government where abusive control was placed on its country's citizens began to rise up, this form of government was known as totalitarianism. Characteristically, a single party ruled this government with one leader in the party's center in charge and the public was controlled using methods of propaganda and torture. George Orwell noticed this rise of government and wrote 1984 to warn people of the abusive nature of a totalitarianism government. In this novel, he wrote about Oceania, a fictional futuristic world, which was under full control of the government through the eyes of a man who lived before there power who was able to compare the party's wrong doings. Many of the elements of this world were replicas of Fascism, Stalinism, and Nazism, which were all very infamous and feared during the time of the book's writing. Also occurring during this time was an increase in the use of technology during everyday life, such as household televisions. Written as a warning, Orwell's 1984 features many aspects of totalitarianism that was occurring, such as a mass party and control, along with its dangers and the downside to common use of technology. 

Totalitarianism's goal is to achieve a perfect state of mankind. To do this, the public is controlled by a mass party and made to follow its ideas. Both 1984 and the history of the time period in which it was written show the use of this practice. Much like similar governments of the post World War II era, the government in Orwell's novel is centered around a mass party, which is centered around a leader, and all are enforced to join. Ingsoc, which stood for English Socialism, was the name of the party in 1984, and control almost every aspect of human life. People were becoming less and less individual and more of a product of the party. This was the goal for totalitarian governments, so they could create a perfect society. In the center of Ingsoc, was its leader "Big Brother". In many ways Ingsoc is like Nazism and Stalinism and Hitler and Stalin were Big Brother, because they would be the sole leader of the party. The party leader has a huge impact on people and is very skillful in controlling the masses using techniques such as censorship, propaganda and control. Much of there power allowed them to be informed of information directly by spying, "Indeed, Soviet control organisations not only audited the bureaucracy and reported to the dictator but also executed control functions" (Markevich). In 1984, Big Brother had full power over information and would shape it or discard if before giving it to the media. This allowed for a deeper control by altering what the public was informed of and what they would see in everyday life. 

During Nazi Germany, Hitler's face was shown everywhere; Orwell used this in his novel by telling about the Ingsoc party being promoted everywhere as well. "there seemed to be no color in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black mustachioed face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU" (Orwell 1), Orwell talks brings about the fact that no matter where you went you were always going to be near Big Brother and that everywhere you looked it would be the only thing that stood out in the dull and lifeless background. Fear is used to enforce participation and history is rewritten in order to support the party, this is shown in 1984 when Big Brother changed history to support its ideas, "And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed  --  if all records told the same tale  --  then the lie passed into history and became truth" (Orwell 19). Big Brother uses three year plans to achieve the ultimate society, much like Stalin who was using five year plans to fulfill the USSR, "Soviet economic growth since 1928, under nine five-year plans, attests to the power of Soviet economic planning" (Hunter). Children who were born during the reign of totalitarianism were the most dangerous aspect because they only know the party and spend their whole lives devoted. They were trained to spy and turn in people who opposed with the party, even their parents. Children who overheard their parents talking against the party turned on them and became violent, "'You're a traitor!' yelled the boy. 'You're a thought-criminal! You're a Eurasian spy! I'll shoot you, I'll vaporize you, I'll send you to the salt mines!'" (Orwell 12). The party needed them in order to keep their existence. 

Control was a main factor in allowing for a totalitarianism government to achieve so much power. Most of information was censored and government used a lot of propaganda, allowing for the party and its leader to be basically the only thing that its people see everyday. This included the parties ideas and thoughts which controlled what people thought, after only being allowed to know certain information people will only begin to think what they are told. In other words, the party would manipulate its people by giving them false information to make them feel a certain way. Not only in the book, but also under similar governments, "Nazis understood and manipulated the power of the brand, creating what amounts to a parallel universe of imagery and symbolism" (O'shaughnessy). Along with this, parties imposed control by changing history, "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past" (Orwell 19). Once people began to think that what the party was doing was normal and how it always was then they would not question how they are living and would never be aware that it is not how people always lived. 

In 1984, Big Brother created a program called "Two Minute Hate", in which Big Brother was endorsed and spread public hatred of all who resisted. This program was filled with false advertising and false history to manipulate the people into following the rules. The main part to the Two Minute Hate was to spread animosity of people who opposed the party and bring fear to people in order to stop the opposition, because people became fearful of the hatred of the party. It was similar to the practices of Hitler and Stalin, who remade and edited history. Totalitarianism is known for having an unjust police system that gains power by using fear. Secret police were used frequently. Orwell wished to show how irrational they were by creating thought crime. This was a crime from opposition in only your mind, even though it was an extreme practice it helped to really show how powerful the control was and how depersonalizing this form of government was on society. Much of what he was conveying was based off of the SS, police of the Nazi Regime, who used threats and torture to control its people. If someone was to go against the party the SS would send them to concentration camps, basically making them disappear and without a trace. Similarly, if someone were to oppose Ingsoc, then the thought police would come in the middle of the night and "vaporize" people, almost as if they never existed. Orwell also told about Ingsoc creating a new simplified language called "Newspeak". This language took out all unfavorable words, especially words that went against the party. Eventually people would be unable to be think or talk against the party be cause the words would not exist, "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible" (Orwell 29). Particularly children who were born into the party become the most controlled by this because they would have never have even been aware of the words existence. 

Along with these characteristics of the time period, technology was also on the rise and with it brought a second wave of fear. During the writing of this book more and more families were beginning to own household televisions and many already owned radios. Many people of this time were paranoid and skeptical of using technology; some saw it as evil or corrupt. Especially the idea of allowing technology to be a common thing and bringing it into their homes made people very wary of trusting in its benefits. An example of this is the publics reaction of television use and McCarthyism. He was able to publicly control peoples thoughts by simply airing them on the television, "Although optimistic rhetoric often attends the rise of new technologies, worries and fears about the power of television pervaded coverage of the hearings. The popular press expressed concern that Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy exercised unrivaled control over television viewers" (Achter). Orwell used this uncertainty to fuel the fear people had by writing about telescreens, monitors that were placed in everyone's homes that gave nonstop news and kept an eye out on the people of the home. They were unable to be turned off and gave nonstop ideas of the party, and no matter what the people in the household had to constantly listen and also be watched, "The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely" (Orwell 1). Telescreens were so advanced that they could even detect a person's heartbeat, and used it to determine if they were being rebellious. It was especially frightening because telescreens highly resembled the common television. Only the higher members of Ingsoc were allowed to remove their telescreens. Even though technology had many benefits, he was warning of the dangers on technology too and that an all powerful government could use this gift for evil purposes. Microphones were placed around the town making it impossible to have a conversation without being monitored. Orwell expanded on people's fear of totalitarianism by combining it with the rise of technology, by implying that if people let technology into their homes then eventually they might be letting the government in as well, which would leave them with no privacy. 

Totalitarianism and its rise during the 1930s and 1940s, especially after the end of World War II and during the time of the novel's writting, brought a lot of panic and terror of future conditions under this power. Characteristically, this form of government has a mass party that controls it and in the center of the party is a leader. Along with this the party creates a lot of control on the average person, which takes away human identity and expression. To warn about the dangers of this government, George Orwell wrote his novel, 1984, to show what the average human life would be like if this totalitarianism trend continued. Additionally, Orwell applies technology being used as a tool for the government to control it people through telescreens and hidden microphones, which took away the average persons feeling of comfort in their home life and made the government, and its rules, inescapable. This goes along with the time period which 1984 was written, because of the common uneasiness people had toward the modernization of technology and the growing reliance on it for daily life. Many aspects of common everyday life were incorporated into Orwell's novel but along with it he added a twist to show how corrupt the totalitarianism government was by putting someone who lived partly during common life in the future and through the change to a different control.

Works Cited

Achter, Paul J. "TV, Technology, and McCarthyism: Crafting the Democratic Renaissance in an Age of Fear." Quarterly Journal of Speech 90.3 (2004): 307-26. Web.

Hunter, Holland. "The Overambitious First Soviet Five-Year Plan." Slavic Review 32.2 (1973): 237. Web.

Markevich, Andrei. "How Much Control Is Enough? Monitoring and Enforcement Under Stalin." SSRN Electronic Journal SSRN Journal (n.d.): n. pag. Web.

Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Signet Classic, 1961. Print.

O'shaughnessy, Nicholas. "Selling Hitler: Propaganda and the Nazi Brand." Journal of Public Affairs J. Publ. Aff. 9.1 (2009): 55-76. Web.
