By: Lida Prypchan
George Orwell (1903-1950), the pseudonym for Eric Blair, an essayist and novelist born in India and educated in England, after writing several almost documentary tales – including the political satire Animal Farm (1945), which deals with the corruption engendered by power – published his most popular novel in 1949, a year before this death: 1984. A fictional work with political implications, it has had tremendous repercussions all over the world. It is the fascinating vision of a future under the domination of a totalitarian government.
In this chilling prophecy, Orwell shows us the world of the future divided into three great totalitarian states, Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. This is obviously a reference to the arrangement of the globe into three vast dominions of political influence, with their governments centralized in Washington, Moscow and Peking. Orwell’s protagonist in this essay in the form of a novel, or novel in the form of an essay, is Winston Smith, a 39 year old inhabitant of Oceania, who stands up against the overwhelmingly monstrous and manipulative power of a political system that prohibits opposition, lacks elections, concentrates authority in the hands of one person, a charismatic figure supported by a single party, and reinforces its power by means of propaganda and the control of information and the communication media. It is, in a word, the annihilation of individualism and the regimentation of the masses for easier manipulation. Regimentation by terror is the mainstay of this type of regime, a police state that has managed to take hold of the lives and minds of all its subjects, interfering in the most intimate spheres of human emotions.
Opposition? This is prohibited… Orwell’s fruitful imagination conjures up a power such as Oceania, where every nook and cranny is dominated by the huge “telescreen” that provides a sort of audiovisual surveillance. The least whisper is captured; the slightest look of disdain in disagreement with the regime is latched upon and taken very seriously. The result is that no one can even joke about it, because it is impossible not to be under surveillance. Authority is concentrated in one single party, its representative being Big Brother, posters of whom are all over the place, in every strategic location, displaying his enormous face. It is one of those pictures where the eyes follow you no matter where you are – and across the bottom of this insidious placard are the hypnotic words, “Big Brother is watching you.”
Of course, the authorities have other ways of controlling the already torpid masses: the thought police, carefully prepared propaganda – evocative of the Hitlerian style and based on the irrational instincts of man – and control of communications media. When this powerful monstrosity of terror is unable to subdue the masses, torture is used, even “brainwashing.” Torture is tailored to each individual because the video screen, constantly exploring and spying upon everyone’s likes and dislikes is supremely aware of how best to produce the most unpleasant pain or sensation for achieving its objective: that the individual should eventually adulate Big Brother as much as he once hated him.
As I mentioned before, the hero, Winston Smith, struggles against this regime of lies and terror. He dreams of belonging to a group of revolutionaries and being able to live free. The regime lays a trap for him, making him think he is part of a revolutionary organization. Smith and his girlfriend accomplice are spied upon by the video screen and the thought police, and one day they are taken prisoner. Together they become enmeshed in the net of steal laid by the thought police and torture experts, the very ones who deceived them into joining the group of revolutionaries – and who flush all thoughts from their brains with electric currents, leaving them as good as idiots, with no recourse other than to worship Big Brother.
1984 is not a novel to casually pass the time. The sociological problems that Orwell poses in his novel are worthy of careful consideration.
