And for my next trick...

 I'll make the enemies of the state DISAPPEAR!

There are a lot of disturbing elements in 1984, to say the least, but the fact that you can be whisked away without a trace would be terrifying. It's made even more terrifying that a single nervous twitch could essentially condemn you to torture and death. The scary part is that it is probably one of the more realistic dystopian elements that could, given the right circumstances, be possible in our world. 

The most notable examples would probably be Russia and North Korea. Every once in a while you might hear about the disappearance or death of some political figure who stood against the government in power. It's safe to say that normal people who are vocal enough against the government are equally in danger of not only being arrested, but essentially erased.  Of course, this fear further strengthens the regime since people are forced to keep their opinions to themselves. We see the full extent of this in 1984, where Winston is afraid of going into the bar or the antique shop in the poor area of town for fear of being spotted. 1984 shows a further extreme than what we see now. The nervous twitch, taking a different route home, any small thing, can be enough to indict you. Suspicion is enough to be guilty. With the news manipulation, anyone arrested ceases to exist. Scary. 


Comments

  1. NiiicoFebruary 11, 2021 at 7:32 AM

    What's happening in NK and Russia is already bad, but now with big advances in facial recognition software around the globe, we already see technology being used against us in wayy more intrusive ways, even within the US. Most people have seen images of HK protesters tearing down these surveillance towers and wearing masks to hide their identities. Another recent thing I remember reading about was a lawsuit again instagram claiming that the app was accessing cameras without authorization.

    ReplyDelete
  2. KatelynFebruary 11, 2021 at 7:42 AM

    I think another scary thing that 1984's society holds true is the idea that there are technically no laws to break and therefore no crime, but if you act out of what would be considered the "norm", you get killed. It makes it easy to have simply suspicion be the thing that kills you when there are no legal tools for anyone to use to fight back.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. L. MoffittFebruary 11, 2021 at 7:48 AM

      This IS scary. I have heard about cases in history in various countries (China during the Cultural Revolution, for example) where people were arrested and brought in and not charged with anything at all but simply detained and made to "confess their crimes." Ultimately they all confessed something, even if it wasn't real, under threat of torture. Scary!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How many fingers am I holding up?

So O'Brien's a bad guy. I didn't expect that.  It sort of makes me wonder if the Brotherhood is a figment created by the Party to weed out those who might stand against it. Since they already have so much control and already instill fear in everyone so that they don't rise up, it might be unlikely. But they certainly seem paranoid to do something like that. The Party already embraces the suspected existence of Goldstein and the Brotherhood for its two minutes Hate. Just like the constant warfare against Eur/Eastasia, having a set enemy of the state helps to exert control. He is another enemy to use in order to bring people together in support of Big Brother. I wouldn't put it past the Party to have O'Brian's job be to find "heretics" and lull them in so that they can be persecuted as we saw with Winston and Julia. I guess this is what Orwell is trying to do to the reader. We have no concrete knowledge of what is going on in society. It is all so am...
Read more

Misinformation

I found it interesting in the first part of the book that the Party can completely rewrite all of history without anyone noticing. While they are able to strategically edit and redistribute all written texts so that it fits their narrative, they'd still have to recall all of the "incorrect" versions. After a while you'd think that it would be suspicious.  The Party consistently changes their statistics in order to falsely lead the people to believe that they are successfully helping them. They can completely edit anything that is written to eliminate anything that would stain the Party in the view of the people. Since there is no evidence to tell them otherwise, the people believe the new propaganda.  I don't think it is possible to brainwash to the extent we see in 1984  where no one has any memory of the past many years and unquestioningly follows what is put out in front of them. Over the past few years we have seen how misinformation and editing information to...
Read more

So now what?

 It still seems odd to me that the Party is so obsessed with rehabilitating the minds of enemies of the state before they kill them. It seems rather insecure of them. I guess it is their mentality of power and triumph. They cannot allow themselves to "lose" by letting them die with heretical views. Seems like an awful lot of work for reassuring themselves.  We've seen a lot of ways in which the Party tortures their enemies. Room 101 seems to be the final way of breaking their enemies, psychologically or physically. In Winston's case, it is destroying the emotional attachment to his former rebellious self. His last tie to his old self was through Julia, but with the rats set to kill him, he gives in. He finally has lost all sense of his former self. The Party has succeeded at quelling his foolhardy "revolution."  It seems to me that we will see an ending similar to Brave New World. Just like how the world continued onward after John dies, Winston will be kill...
Read more