Myers
College Prep
22 November 2011
A Critical Analysis of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows” (Orwell 81). Rationalization and using logic to dispel lies is the foundation of freedom. The sanctity of the mind and of the individual require freedom from the lies of an untruthful past and present. Only what the collective knows is important when it is in power; without the ability to freely think and believe, it no longer matters what the individual knows. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four showcases an oppressive government’s struggles with human unorthodoxy through his use of detailed descriptions of the human mind’s thoughts.
The greatest conflict of Nineteen Eighty-four is the conflict of the mind. The book speaks often of a term known as doublethink. Doublethink is to accept two completely contrary ideas, opinions, or beliefs at the same time. It is to believe two opposing ideas completely even though they cannot both be true. Doublethink is “to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic” (Orwell 36). An example from the book is stated directly in the party slogan. The Ministry of Peace deals with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture, and the Ministry of plenty deals with starvation. Big Brother uses polar opposite ideas to destroy logic by making them mean the same thing. Doublethink is by its very nature contradictory. It is the only way for those in the inner and outer Parties can stay safe. In the book it is called “reality control” and it is basically keeping your mind in a constant state of contradiction. Doublethink is to destroy the ability to rationalize and to rebel against the Party.
Rebellion is an important and repeated theme in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston is given the opportunity to rebel against the Party and Big Brother. He bought a blank diary from a Prole shop before the book begins and has committed thoughtcrime. Thoughtcrime is to think outside of the views of the Party. Because of his unorthodoxy, he sees himself as a walking corpse, just waiting to die. Winston feels liberated by his decision to rebel, however; he has accepted that he is going to die because of his crime and is now just trying to live with what time he has left. Winston has an opportunity to change the future. He has an opportunity to make a world that is not governed by absolute terror. Winston uses his unorthodoxy as a weapon against his oppressive government. The Party teaches that “The heresy of heresies was common sense” (Orwell 80). To think outside of the Party’s views is to commit thought crime, but Winston does so regardless. The workings of his inner-mind, characterized by his repeated struggle to think rationally instead of in doublethink, is in all actuality a struggle against his oppressive government.
A portion of doublethink is to replace the past with whatever new past the Party imposes. The past is murky at best, and at worst is a complete concoction of lies and stories told to generate fear by Big Brother. The Party can and does often change the past. Big Brother is always right because he controls the past. Winston, in his struggles against his oppressive government, contemplates how the past is changed and warped:
And if all others accepted the lie which the party imposed - if all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘Controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its very nature alterable never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting (Orwell 35).
The control of ‘facts’ and history is one of the single most important parts of the Party’s control. Orwell’s vivid description and well thought out statements show that Big Brother is oppressive by his very nature. The passage shows this by explaining that the whole past of Oceania is intentionally corrupted and no longer truthful. Winston is unsuccessful in his attempts of war against the Party; just as all the others, he is broken in the end. Anything the Party wants to be true, is true in the minds of the people. Control of the past and the present is control over the very minds of the people.
Human unorthodoxy’s struggles against an oppressive government are showcased in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four through his use of detailed descriptions of the thoughts in the human mind. (Orwell 81). Orwell’s descriptions thematically show that the foundation of freedom is rationalization and pure logic. The sanctity of the mind and of the individual require freedom from the lies of an untruthful past and present. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows.” In the struggle against an oppressive government, the ability to freely think and believe, is the most vital weapon any individual possesses.
