1984: A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY AND REVIEW OF THE DYSTOPIAN NOVEL

PICTURE CREDIT: THE MILWAUKEE INDEPENDENT

THE BOOK IN BRIEF

The book 1984, written by George Orwell, circles around the events that unfold in Winston Smith’s life, a man who lives in a dystopian version of our world, set in the year 1984, in London. In this dystopian era, the majority of the world falls under one country- Oceania. This country is ruled by a dictator, a supreme unquestioned leader, who throughout the book is referred to as Big Brother, and is the leader of the ruling organization, INGSOC (Newspeak for English Socialist Party), which throughout the book is referred to as simple The Party. In Oceania, the Party controls lives through four ministries.There is the Ministry of Peace, whose concern is wars, Ministry of Plenty, whose responsibility is economic affairs, Ministry of Love, which maintains law and order, and finally, the Ministry of Truth, which concerns itself with the creation of news, entertainment, education, and fine arts. In Newspeak, an invented language the Party is trying to enforce, their names were Minipax, Miniplenty, Miniluv, and Minitrue respectively.

The book starts off with Winston Smith writing the words “ DOWN WITH THE BIG BROTHER” in an illegally purchased journal after the words “ War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strenght” flashed on his telescreen, a flat screen that displays messages and propaganda videos of the Party. Winston Smith is a low level worker in the Ministry of Truth’s Records department. The cause of his outburst is his frustrations with the structure of society created by the Party which prohibits free thought, sex, and any expression of individuality. He is also troubled by the Party’s outlook on history and its management of it. His outburst is what is known as THOUGHTCRIME, the worst kind of crime that could be committed.

At work, He notices a co-worker, a beautiful dark-haired woman, who keeps looking at him, so he suspects that she was an informant and would turn him in for his thoughtcrime. He also starts fixating over a powerful Party member O’Brien, who Winston feels also shares his hatred for the Party and all of its activities, and is secretly a part of the Brotherhood, an underground organisation working to overthrow Big Brother.

The Party claims that the Brotherhood’s leader, Emmanuel Goldstein, was an extremely dangerous man. However, Winston did not find that to be plausible, especially after spending evenings wandering in the poorest streets of London, where he saw the proletarians, or poor working class people, live in insalubrious conditions, and with comparatively less monitoring by the Party.

One day, he receives a note from the dark-haired woman expressing her love for him. She introduces herself as Julia, and from this point Winston and Julia commenced their surreptitious relationship, always having to look over their shoulder to ensure it was kept covert. As his relationship with Julia continued, Winston’s hate for the Party grew.

He finally receives a message he was hoping to receive- it was from O’Brien, asking for his and Julia’s private audience. They meet O’Brien, who confirms Winston’s idea that he is against the Party and working for the Brotherhood. He indoctrinates the two into the Brotherhood and hands them a copy of Emmanuel Goldstein’s The Theory And Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, which throughout the book is referred to as ‘The Book’. The book is, in reality, a coalescence of several forms of class-based twentieth-century social theory. A little later, while Winston reads out the Book’s contents to Julia, they are caught red-handed by the Thought Police.

Torn from Julia, Winston was taken to the Miniluv (Ministry of Love), where he discovered that O’Brien was actually never a part of the Brotherhood and was working to catch Winston for his Thought Crimes.O’Brien spends months torturing Winston, who tries his best to resist. Finally, he is taken to the dreaded Room 101, the last destination for those who opposed the Party. Here, O’Brien tells him that he will be forced to face his worst fears. Throughout the book, Winston gets recurring nightmares about rats; O’brien now straps a cage full of rats onto Winston and prepares to allow them to eat his face. Winston gives in and pleads with O’Brien to do it to Julia and spare him. This is exactly what O’Brien wanted. His spirit broken, he allowed to leave.

Now, Winston leads an inconsequential and meaningless life, continuing his work for the Party.He meets Julia, who admits that she too turned on Winston and asked them to spare her, and they realise that they now share no feelings for each other.

The book ends with Winston looking at a poster of Big Brother and experiencing a sense of triumph because he now loves Big Brother. Winston’s complete acceptance of the Party in totality marks the end of the novel.

THE HISTORY OF 1984

George Orwell’s 1984 is unlike other dystopian novels as most dystopian novels are set in unfamiliar futures, whereas 1984 is drawn very much from the reality Orwell saw around him.

Prior to writing the book, Orwell had supported and seen the Russian Revolution and decided to fight against the Fascist Government in the Spanish Civil War. His support for the Russian Revolution changed after realizing that behind the facade of justice and equality existed the reality with widespread famines, internal power struggles and political repression. While fighting in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell became disillusioned with elements within the resistance forces that he felt wanted to replace the Fascist government with a totalitarian regime of its own. These experiences provide much of the political satire of 1984.

The rise of Nazism and Hitler, and the defenestration of humanitarianism of any kind with the mass murder of the Jewish people really affected Orwell. He realized that they key factor in Hitler’s rise to supremacy lay in the manipulation of mass media. He realised that mass media could be wielded to enable prominent leaders to shape public opinion as it suits them. The intrusive telescreens and the Party’s frequent parades and events are drawn from Nazi Party public propaganda and its marches and rallies.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS NOVEL

The realistic descriptions and the enthralling and fascinating way Orwell writes this riveting farce is what makes this one of my favourite novels. He drew a lot of descriptions and situations from the world around him. For example, “2 + 2 = 5” was a real political slogan from the Soviet Union, which signified the promise they were making to complete the industrializing Five-Year Plan in four years. Orwell satirizes the slogan to demonstrate authority’s tendency to suspend reality.

Another very good example is that much of the Party’s brutality, paranoia, and betrayals as described in the book, are drawn from the Great Purges of 1936–1938 in the Soviet Union. Over 600,000 people died in an official purge of the Communist Party, in an era that also included widespread repression of the public, police surveillance and execution without trial, and an atmosphere of fear. In 1984, Goldstein is the stand-in for Leon Trotsky, the revolutionary figurehead who Stalin cast out of the party and denounced as a traitor to the cause. Trotsky’s manifesto, The Revolution Betrayed, has much in common with Goldstein’s book.

Orwell used a dystopian society, which he drew from the context of the world he saw around him, to show us this- as humankind, we don’t question enough. Wars, Death, Politics, and Dictatorships have come around and gloriously come to an end, and these ends go down in history. Yet, these mistakes can be repeated again. Just because history has happened once, it doesn’t mean it will not happen again. This is why this book is genius, and frankly a little eerie. There are so many times I pick up the newspaper and feel queasy because of how uncanny the resemblance of the happenings in the book 1984 and the happenings of our world, our country are.

Hence this book makes you aware of every possibility of a 1984 situation in the world you live, which is why the book is relevant even today, 70 years after it was written.

ANALYSIS:

● DYSTOPIA AND UTOPIA:

1984 is written almost as a map of the journey of Winston’s mind, that starts with looking at his reality as a society with great injustice. At this stage, for the reader, Oceania is a dystopian society. However, he is tortured out of that state of mind, after which he begins to love and respect everything and everyone he previously hated- the Party and Big Brother. This is when for the reader, the description of the same place and society turns, from a dystopian society, to a utopian one.

That said, for a major part of the book, Orwell describes Oceania as a dystopia. Dystopian literature is defined as those pieces of literature that are described with characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society, with unfortunate events or characterizations such as tyrannical incumbent establishments. Scholars such as Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent, make distinctions between literary dystopia and anti-dystopia, saying literary dystopias as societies that substantially worse off than the society in which the author lives in, whereas anti-utopia are criticisms of attempts to apply utopian concepts.

There are many facets of the book that identify it as a dystopia. The main determining factor is that the book reflects contemporary sociopolitical realities and extrapolates incidents as a jarring reminder for the requirement of social change. For example, 1984 was written after World War II, which made people believe that the book represented a very real future, a post - World War III reality. Orwell, in 1984, also refers to Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in the book when he mentions multiple nuclear bombings. Details such as unappetizing food, irregular electricity, and scant household goods are things that Orwell drew from his real-life experience with wartime rationing in London, during World War II. Orwell also incorporates the occurrence of frequent bombing raids in London, referring to the Blitz campaign carried out by the Germans on London, in which approximately 40,000 people died and almost a million buildings were turned to rubble.

Robert Paul Resch, while decoding this very subject in “Utopia, Dystopia, and the Middle Class in George Orwell’s 1984”, writes,“Oceania is a dystopian negation of Orwell’s vision of England as “a family with strong members in control”.

He goes on to explain that a revolution could not have been started by the proletariat as the “dystopian framework” in Oceania would not have allowed such a revolution to come about, the dystopian framework being the stark distinction between the powerful bourgeoisie and the rest of Oceania. However, it is important to note this- although Winston was considerably middle class and was also getting oppressed by the same group of people as the proletariat were, he did not associate himself with the proletariat. Instead, he too looked down upon them. This is looked at by various thinkers in two different ways. Critics say that Winston’s view against the proles is the reflection of Orwell’s elitist outlook, that these elitist thoughts got spoken through his middle-class protagonist. Others felt this was an accurate representation of middle-class thought.

The crux of this dystopia is Totalitarianism and Socialism. Resch, in support of this statement, writes, “Oceania is not just a satire on the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, or merely a warning of a global tendency toward totalitarianism, or, finally, simply a piece of anti-totalitarian propaganda designed to scare people out of their complacency. Oceania is all these things, but before it is any of them, it is a parodic inversion of Orwell’s own populist socialism, and therefore, the opposition of totalitarianism and socialism may be said to constitute the novels deep structure.”

The driver of totalitarianism and socialism in Oceania is INGSOC, Newspeak for English Socialist Party, which is otherwise referred to as The Party. INGSOC divided the society in Oceania into three groups- the inner party members, outer party members, and proletariat, who were more generally known or referred to as proles.

There is an explanation given in the book 1984 itself for INGSOC and for the totalitarianism as adopted by their administration. One explanation is given in “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism”, written by the leader of the Brotherhood movement- Emmanuel Goldstein, in which he describes INGSOC or the Party’s ideology as an oligarchical collective, which "rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it does so in the name of Socialism.” The words oligarchical collectivism, if broken down for better understanding, would mean the ‘practice or principle of giving priority to a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution over each individual in it, or the practice of giving priority to an oligarchy.’

The other explanation is given by O’Brien to Winston, where he says “The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

Thus, Orwell’s 1984 is one of the finest examples of dystopian literature.

● CONTROL OF INFORMATION AND HISTORY

“‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”’

This forms the basis of one of the main narratives in the book. In the book, Winston works for the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, where his job was to edit records of history as it suited the party. Winston wasn’t the only one; an entire Records department in the Ministry of Truth worked on doing just that. The Party controls every source of information, managing and rewriting the content of all newspapers and histories for its own ends. One instance of this in the book is when Winston is asked to invent a backstory of comrade who was declared an ‘unperson’. Winston’s thoughts were reflected in the words, “Suddenly there sprang into his mind, ready-made as it were, the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently died in battle, in heroic circumstances. . . . It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence.”This was when he reflected about the Party’s ideology, and this is when as a reader we realize that he is able to create a perfect narrative for the Party because of the fact that he had completely internalized that Party’s ideology.

For most efficient control over the citizens of Oceania, the Party does not allow anybody to keep any personal memorabilia. The result is that people’s memories about there own pasts become dreamy and fuzzy, and since they don’t have anything to substantiate their thoughts and memories, they willingly believe whatever the Party tells them. The Party creates truths and history that will keep the belief going memories become fuzzy and unreliable, and citizens become perfectly willing to believe whatever the Party tells them. This is how by controlling the present, the Party is able to manipulate the pasta and in

controlling the past, the Party can justify all of its actions in the present.

Emmanuel Goldstein, too, in his book ‘The Theory And Practice Of Oligarchical Collectivism’ wrote the following words explaining why the party’s slogan “Who controls the past controls the future” is what happens in reality as well- “The Party member, like the proletarian, tolerates present-day conditions because he has no standards of comparison. He must be cut of from the past, just as he must be cut of from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better of than his ancestors and that the average level of material comfort is constantly rising.” The manipulation of history and facts has been a long-standing strategy applied by many invaders and dictators throughout history. The understanding of a ruthless dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte, was- “What is history but a fable agreed upon?” This reflects a very real understanding and under-estimated value of history.

History is a very important contributor to culture and, through culture, it affects our socialisation. Our understanding of the world is defined by the explanation of the history of objects and ideas that our parents give us when we are young. For example, in India, our textbooks, for generations have stressed about the contribution of Mahatma Gandhi in the Indian Freedom Struggle, and emphasise the idea of nonviolent means to achieve our aim as a nation. However, the history of our freedom in these textbooks is also limited to the struggle in mainland India in North India, and does not give any North-East Indian or South Indian context. This has now become a part of the outlook of a lot of people, especially in north India, who know little to nothing about south India and northeast India. This can be attributed to the unimportance of these two regions in our popular history. Our socialisation is now such that the happenings in these two regions are not as important, and the languages and customs of these areas are misunderstood, by everyone, including the people who live in these two regions, who fail to understand each other. An extreme outcome of this socialisation is racism.

A culture is defined by its history, the basis of material culture being historical practices, monuments etc. and the foundation of non-material culture being historical beliefs and societal codes. Although those societal codes of the past may be subjected to change, modern societal codes are born out of the old societal codes. This is why even in a fairly globalized world, we see cultural differences between America and India, or the existence of a cultural gap between the West and the East.

Winston Churchill expressed the understanding expressed about history in the book 1984 the best when he said-

“ History is written by the victors.”

● CONFORMITY AND DEVIANCE

The book highlights the idea of conformity and deviance, and how deviance gets quashed by the structure, norms, and authority of a society.

Conformity is the phenomenon of individuals in a society following the norms of the society he or she is a part of . It is the concept of obedience to the norms that make an individual acceptable in a particular society, group, and social setting. The entire idea of the dystopia shown in 1984 is built on conformity. To enforce their ideology, to make every citizen of Oceania conform to their ideology and practices, the Party uses a multitude of instruments. These instruments, broadly can be divided into physical control and psychological manipulation, of which surveillance plays an enormous part.

The most important tool used by the Party to ensure maximum conformity is psychological manipulation. The citizens of Oceania are subjected to an onslaught of propaganda through newspaper articles that are carefully worded to send the correct message and propaganda that pours out of the Telescreen. This, along with the fact that all information of all kinds comes from the INGSOC, with an entire ministry, the Ministry of Truth, existing to just churn out ‘information’ or carefully created narratives, which is the information the entire country has. This itself holds so much power, because there is no place where one can escape the narrative. As was mentioned earlier as well, Winston too knew exactly how to create information because he had thoroughly imbibed the Party’s narrative and ideology to such an extent that although he hated that ideology that made him feel stifled, he knew how to write the right language, and how to perfectly blend into an indoctrinated mass of people who believed in everything he hated. Not only did they create content for the masses to consume, they also created a lot of enemies, who may not necessarily have existed in order to channelise all the frustration people felt because the system in Oceania was extremely regulated. When Winston did what is known as thought crime, i.e, thinking deviantly, against the ideas of the Party, he wrote in his illegally purchased diary, fully accepting the imminent situation where the Thought police would find out, and take him away in the dead of night, and soon, no one would remember that he existed, just like the Thought Police had done with so many others. In that sense, Winston’s actions were fatalistic.

However, the most important part of the psychological manipulation that really kept the entire dystopia together was surveillance. Every movement, every thought of every individual seemed to be accessible to the Party, and to the most-feared Thought Police. The telescreens enabled the Thought Police to be able to see and hear every movement in each apartment. Everywhere people went they were reminded of the fact that they were being scrutinized, with omnipresent signs which said “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”. Surveillance was also accepted, and lauded in society, even though surveillance sometimes came at the cost of family structure by inducting children into Party organised groups called Junior Spies, who were then indoctrinated and encouraged to spy on their parents and neighbours and report any disloyalty to the Party.

The Thought Police, and the Party also, can be compared to a Panopticon. The Panopticon is a building and a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single security guard without the inmates being able to tell whether they are being watched.Although it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates' cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched means that they are motivated to act as though they are being watched at all times. Thus, the inmates are effectively compelled to regulate their own behaviour. Michel Foucault developed a sociological theory based on the surveillance structure of the panopticon which he explained in his book Discipline & Punish, called Panopticism. The theory’s development is dated back to the seventeenth century. The main idea of panopticism is an authority’s power over a large group of individuals. This was achieved in the seventeenth century using a tactic where individuals were forced to assume they were constantly being monitored.

The second broad branch of instruments used by the party is physical control. This has not, however, been as emphasised as psychological manipulation was. Every citizen of Oceania is almost micromanaged to each second. Each person’s day is preplanned and mirrors half a million others. The Party forces its members to undergo mass morning exercises, that are called Physical Jerks, who then undergo a long day at work to keep everyone exhausted, too exhausted to defy the Party or

think against the actions of the Party. Furthermore, the Party watches even physical signs of deviance. Every twitch of the face is noted, or at least that is what everyone is made to believe.

From this draconian regulation springs equally intense deviance. Winston’s hate for the Party. He was so frustrated with the regulation that he was willing to die, just to write his feelings down in a journal and express himself against Big Brother and the Party. His relationship with Julia, too, was more a result of deviance than it as of love. Their affair was more enticing to them both because it was forbidden, and they would possibly have to pay with their lives for it. Another example of deviance is the establishment of the Brotherhood. The existence of the organisation is a sign of deviance.

CONCLUSION

The book 1984 is a dystopian novel that does not allow its reader to breeze through the text. Each word, each sentence, and each event seems significant at the end of the book. It’s sociological outlook has been masterfully masked in a layman novel by George Orwell. Although only the main sociological aspects have been discussed in this review, there are other aspects that fall under the umbrella of the three main ideas expressly explained in this writing. I must confess that I have a slight bias towards the book 1984, as it shaped my view of this world. It’s content greatly affected the 13-year old self, who eagerly lapped up this rather pessimistic view of the world very early on. However, in my limited experience of the world after that, i have realised that the world is not yet that bleak, and i also realised that that was exactly what Orwell was trying to express through this book. Our world, 70 years after publishing this piece of literature, has still not completely turned into the society that he described. However, that is still not to say that there aren’t uncanny resemblances to certain things, certain practices of INGSOC. Hence, this piece of literary dystopia, 1984 by George Orwell, has gone down in history as a one-of-a-kind farce that truly remains relevant through the ages.

WARNING: If this piece of work resembles any existing piece of work, that is entirely unintentional.