Passion Blog #3 – Review of 1984 by George Orwell

After reviewing Brave New World in my last blog post, I found it fitting to analyze a more well known and iconic dystopian novel this week: 1984 by George Orwell. In this novel, Orwell depicts a more traditional representation of what one would think when they imagine a totalitarian regime, somewhat along the lines of an exaggerated version of today’s North Korea. The regime of Oceania is cruel, oppressive, and seemingly omnipotent; it demands its citizens to display unfailing reverence to the ubiquitous symbol of the regime, “Big Brother”. However, one citizen, named Winston Smith, devotes his life to small acts of rebellion against the party in hopes of being apart of a movement that will eventually bring the party down. His defiance is ultimately unsuccessful, and he undergoes severe torture under the supervision of top party officials to ensure he is converted back to political orthodoxy. Regardless of its unsavory ending, this novel is one that has drastically shaped our society; namely, it has shaped the way we collectively thinks about government, censorship, democracy, and even objective truth. Hence, my short review will seek to demonstrate how Orwell crafted a novel whose message reverberates as an eternal truth by focusing on his use of irony and the motif of suppression of civil liberties.

Irony, or the prevalence of contradictions is a major strategy of the regime in 1984 as it gives them a monopoly upon language and truth. A political regime that can control the language to mean whatever it wants can have complete control over what the society believes. This is evident from the novel’s beginning, where Orwell illustrates irony in the party’s central slogan “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”. While such a slogan seems nonsensical as it literally equates antonyms, it demonstrates that the party has crafted the language in a way that serves their interests.  The importance of language is further emphasized in the linguistic mission of the regime to create an entirely new language named  “Newspeak”. Orwell hones in on language to convey the importance of sharing a common understanding of truth in a society and prophesizes that a nation divided upon something as basic as language will not preserve a prosperous and self-governing society, but will crumble into authoritarianism.

The suppression of civil liberties is a widespread motif throughout 1984 that illustrates Orwell’s belief in the importance of them to a functioning democracy and how their absence breeds despotism. Citizens in Oceania, for example, certainly have no protection of any fundamental rights such as religion, press, speech, fair trial, or participation in the political process. Rather each of these “rights” are considered disloyal against the regime. For instance, speech is encouraged to be strictly orthodox, any organized religion is forbbiden, and the enforcement of crime itself is completely partial and only serves to eliminate political threats to the regime’s stability.

While there are countless things about 1984 that I did not mention in this short review, it remains that this novel portrays one of the greatest political prophecies in modern history. I would suggest that if there is any one singular book that every citizen ought to read as an indirect guide for preserving democracy against totalitarianism, it would be 1984.