Arts and Leisure

Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in a dystopian world called Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain. It follows the life of Winston Smith, who is silently trying to rebel against the totalitarian, ominous ruler of the Party, “Big Brother”. To have total jurisdiction over every aspect of everyone’s lives, Big Brother controls what people read, speak, say, think, and do; threatening that if they rebel, they’ll be punished and tortured. Orwell’s 1984 explores themes of government surveillance, totalitarianism, and the inescapable effect that dictatorships have on individuals. Arguably the most frightening concept in 1984 is not only that entire nations under totalitarian states are possible, but also the effect that these governments have on the world and the future. The future could become a cruel, corrupt place, in which every action is controlled by some omnipresent power that uses fear tactics, such as death and torture, to eliminate rebellion.

As time continues, however, Orwell’s novel is viewed as outdated or overly pessimistic. No totalitarian government since the book’s writing has ever manifested in such a large-scale or dramatic way like Big Brother and the Party had. Orwell’s depiction of technology as a means of control and oppression contradicts modern technology’s supposed ability to liberate and uplift individuals. However, it must be noted that Nineteen Eighty-Four is not meant to be a declaration or prediction, but instead a warning. A warning that encourages man and woman to acknowledge attacks on their freedoms, but furthermore, to defend individuality and critical thought.

Today, we are not controlled by a state, a government, or a “Big Brother”. Ironically, we induce that same mindset that the Party enforced in 1984 within ourselves. We control ourselves. Unlike 1984, we are not forced to engage with technology, instead, we choose to. We determine our own government, but pick corrupt politicians that try to control us in one way or another, ultimately meaning that we’re controlling ourselves. The Party’s enforced regime of terror that made even truth unrecognizable is becoming increasingly prevalent in ourselves due to uncertainty within the media and the news. Mass media control in 1984 ensured that Big Brother had total control over all news and propaganda, resulting in a singular, but corrupt way of thought. Surprisingly, the supposed disappearance of authority actually plagues us in a similar way that the excessive authority did in Orwell’s 1984. Today, however, people are bombarded with too much information from too many different sources, leaving people to interpret situations based on their own preconceived notions and biases on certain topics, as they know no better. Because of the vaguity of truth in modern media, individuals unintentionally participate in groupthink in desperate attempts to establish reality. We frequently see a conformity of ideas through social media and politics. The unorthodox eliminate their own individualism by being too scared to speak out against the norm; resulting in self-censorship, which transforms into self-deception, which leads to the acceptance of a conformist way of thinking. Through discouraging unorthodoxy, traditional notions undermine intellectual freedom, but perhaps more importantly, destroy cultural and social progress.

Whether we realize it or not, we are the very thing that Orwell warned us about: we are our own Big Brothers. In order to rebel against oppressive and dictatorial states of mind, we must think critically, defend individualism, and challenge conformist tendencies.