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Example research essay topic: World Of 1984 Winston Smith - 2,013 words

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The fictional world of 1984 is best described as bleak. In the aftermath of the fall of capitalism and nuclear war, the world has been divided among three practically identical totalitarian nation-states. The novel takes place in London, which has become a part of Oceania, the nation state comprising the Americas and western Europe. A state of perpetual war and poverty is the rule in Oceania. However, this is merely a backdrop, far from the most terrifying aspect of life in 1984. Oceania is governed by a totalitarian bureaucracy, personified in the image of Big Brother, the all-knowing/ all-seeing godlike figure that represents the government.

Big Brother is best described as a 'totalitarian socialist dictator, a political demagogue and religious cult leader all rolled into one. 's o great is the power of Big Brother that the reader is unsure whether he actually exists or is simply a propaganda tool of the government. The party of Big Brother, Ingsoc (English Socialism), uses advanced technology to monitor and control every aspect of personal life in Oceania. Telescreens, two way television sets connected to the thought police, are present everywhere, ensuring that no individual action goes unnoticed. This state of constant surveillance demands complete conformity among the population. In Oceania, there are no laws, but non-conformity is punished by death. The thought police are an omnipresent force of the government, weeding out non-conformists and making them disappear on a regular basis.

Even a slight inflection in the voice or a look of the eye can be construed as thought crime. Propaganda, terror, and technology are the tools of the state, used to coerce and control the thoughts and actions of the populace. Reality is denied on a regular basis if it is non-consistent with party doctrine. The main character of the novel, Winston Smith, said that 'freedom is the freedom to say that 2 + 2 = 4. ' (Orwell, 69) In fact, if the party said that 2 + 2 = 5, the population would believe this to be truth.

History is actually rewritten on a daily basis so as to appear consistent with party doctrine. The enemy of today becomes the enemy of yesterday, poverty becomes progress, war becomes peace, and slavery becomes freedom. This concept of denying reality in the face of obvious contradiction is known as doublespeak. It is central to the philosophy of Ingsoc, and is the greatest tool of the government's mind-control agenda. Winston Smith, the tragic non-conformist main character works as a member of the party.

His job is to rewrite newspaper records which are inconsistent with the current party doctrine. It is Winston's job to alter history. He is plagued by his own individualism and reason which causes him to question the socio-political order of Ingsoc. As the novel progresses, Winston meets and falls in love with a girl named Julia. In this relationship, his non-conformist beliefs are fostered and grow to full-scale rebellion.

Winston learns to use sex as a political act of defiance against the party. In Oceania, love is denied and sexual emotion is channeled into patriotism and hatred of the enemies of Ingsoc. Winston seeks to join what he believes is a secret group of rebels against Big Brother. He obtains and reads a book by Emmanuel Goldstein, a notorious enemy of the state. Through this book, the reader learns the true nature of the party, and the socio-political order of Oceania.

The conclusion of the book is classically pessimistic. In the end, it turns out that the rebellious 'brotherhood' was non-existent. It was only an elaborate trap by the thought police to lure suspected non-conformists. Winston is taken to room 101 in the infamous Ministry Of Love. There he is tortured until his individual spirit is completely eradicated. He admits that 2 + 2 = 5, and he betrays his love for Julia.

Winston is broken into submission and becomes another unthinking drone of the party, incapable of rational thought and interested only in serving his master. In the end, Winston loves Big Brother and Ingsoc. There is no denying Orwell's power as a writer. His story is moving and tragic. It draws the audience into the world of 1984 until the reader becomes Winston Smith, sharing his paranoia, individualism, and his search for meaning and beauty in a world which denies their very existence.

The question remains however, what does it all mean? Given the novel's bleak interpretation of the future of socialism, it is not surprising that Orwell has been celebrated by Western conservatives as the ultimate 'critic of the Red Menace. ' The fact is however that Orwell was a socialist himself. This glaring contradiction of purpose confuses the reader as to Orwell's actual intent in writing the novel. It is only upon close inspection of detail that a coherent reconciliation of Orwell's socialism and his condemnation of Ingsoc become available to the reader. George Orwell was a dystopian socialist.

He believed in the principles of Marx, but doubted the promise of utopian society which was at the heart of socialist rhetoric. At the time of his work on the novel, Orwell had come to the conclusion that socialism was desirable, but deeply questioned if it was in fact possible. He firmly believed that capitalism was doomed to fail, and in its aftermath Orwell saw two options: socialism or barbarism. In Orwell's mind, the latter of these two choices was in fact more likely to occur. This, in essence, is the core belief which governs 1984. The story which Orwell tells is not a condemnation of socialism.

It is a reflection of trends which Orwell saw during his lifetime. His experiences with fascism and Stalinism grew into a fear that totalitarian government would spread throughout the world. The cold war was rapidly developing, and Orwell saw the possibility of world domination by two or three immense superpowers. Orwell was a celebrated critic of British imperialism, experiencing the injustice firsthand as a police officer in British India. He fought in the Spanish civil war on the side of republicanism.

The fact is that Orwell hated totalitarianism in all forms. 1984 is a critique on Stalinism and state communism, not socialism in general. In Orwell's own words, ' (1984) is not intended as an attack on socialism or on the British Labour Party, but as a show-up of the perversions to which a centralized economy is liable and which have already been realized in Communism and Fascism. ' (Kellner, 2) He truly believed that a society similar to Oceania was possible, 'providing for the fact that the book is a satire. ' In short, 1984 was not a condemnation of socialists, but rather a warning to them of the path which they should avoid. Big Brother is obviously modeled after Stalin, Goldstein after Trotsky. 1984 actually reproduces much of the environment of 1930 's Soviet Russia. Ingsoc is socialism based on terror, coercion, and surveillance with a total lack of civil liberty.

Orwell saw in Soviet Russia the betrayal of the revolution and Marxist idealism. Revolution became a perversion of itself, with the new government interested only in maintaining their own power. It is revealed in Goldstein's book that this is exactly the course which Ingsoc took in the days following the fall of capitalism. The betrayal of socialist idealism described in Goldstein's book is actually quite similar to Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed. (Kepler, 4) In Oceania, property is collective, and people refer to each other as 'comrade' and speak of 'the revolution'. The parallel is obvious.

Russia and Oceania had become dystopian, a perversion of Marxist utopian society. Orwell was pessimistic, deeply suspicious of Marx's utopian promise. The references to Marx are only thinly disguised within the book. Sections of Goldstein's book read like an updated version of Marx's Capital and Communist Manifesto. 1984 divides society into three classes: The Inner Party (2 %), The Outer Party, of which Winston is a member (18 %), and the Proles (80 %).

The structure can be likened to Marx's interpretation of society in a number of ways. In The Immorality Of Capitalism, Marx describes the strata of society which have been present throughout human civilization. These strata are arranged in a hierarchy which is very similar to the one seen in 1984, with the minority controlling the majority. This by itself would not be impressive, but upon further reading one can see some amazing parallels between the philosophy of Marx and the fictional world of Orwell. The rise of the Party in Oceania can be likened to the rise of the bourgeoisie over the working class. The inner party represents the bourgeoisie, the proles represent the working class, and the outer party represents the factory foreman.

The outer party in Goldstein's text is described as the hands of the outer party (the brain), keeping control of the proles and in effect doing the dirty work for the bourgeoisie inner party. In Marx's theory, the nature of social revolt is that the middle class (bourgeoisie) enlists the aid of the low class to overthrow the high class (royalty) and establish its dominance of society. The bourgeoisie middle class then establishes itself as the new high class, leaving the low exactly where they stood prior to the revolt. This same philosophy is repeated in almost identical form in Goldstein's book. Orwell's version however benefits from hindsight. Marx did not live to see the betrayal of the revolution, Orwell did.

In Marx's version, the lower class finally unites and overthrows the bourgeoisie, establishing for itself a worker's paradise, a utopia. In Orwell's version, the socialist dream is betrayed by the new bourgeoisie (exactly as it was in the Soviet Union), and society once again reverts to its hierarchy with the proletariat enslaved under new masters, a dystopia. Orwell's criticism of capitalism is brutal as well. In the official party schoolbooks, history is altered to favor party doctrine. However, in their description of capitalist society prior to Ingsoc's revolution, they are strangely truthful. Orwell described the abuses of the capitalist system with a style which rivals writers like Upton Sinclair.

Despite a few inconsistencies probably thrown in for good measure, the Party schoolbook is surprisingly accurate in its history of capitalism. In 1984 however, capitalism was not replaced with socialist utopia when it fell, but rather barbarism and totalitarianism under the guise of socialism. This was Orwell's commentary on the utopian dream and its inevitable failure. In his brilliant analysis of 1984, entitled 'Of Man's Last Disobedience', Gorman Beauchamp states that the nature of civilization lies in regulation, order, and limitations. He goes on to explain that the goal of utopian theorists such as Marx, Skinner, and Plato is to maximize this degree of civilization. In utopian society he argues, only regimentation and repression of natural urges toward individualism achieve security and complacency.

In short, the essence of civilization, and thus utopia, is conformity at the expense of all that is natural in mankind. Utopianism propels the state into the position of god, and thus 'even the most benevolently intended utopias are by their very nature totalitarian, demanding the ultimate concern of their subjects and asserting ultimate control of their destinies. ' This perhaps was Orwell's point. Utopia doesn't work because it is by nature totalitarian and contradictory to the nature of mankind. 1984 is an essay of personal freedom in the face of conformity. It is a struggle between the individual (Winston) and the group (the party).

Beauchamp makes the point that psychologically, from a Freudian viewpoint, this difference is irreconcilable and as a result utopia fails. The nature of Winston's rebellion takes on a sexual nature perhaps not by coincidence. Orwell was probably attempting to illustrate the instinctual drive of the individual in the face of repression, and its ultimate victory over this repression. The failure of utopia thus lies in the instinct of man. The party's greed and lust for power overtakes the idealist socialism of its original philosophy, and Winston's individualism and instinctual drives are at odds with Ingsoc's attempts to control...


Free research essays on topics related to: soviet russia, big brother, world of 1984, utopian society, winston smith

Research essay sample on World Of 1984 Winston Smith

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