The Object of Power is Power: A 5 Star Review of 1984 by George Orwell
Freedom is freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If
that is granted, everything else follows.
Winston Smith lives in post-World War II era, where there are
three super powers in the world, Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, and most of the
land of the world belongs to them. Winston belongs to The Party, which rules
Oceania but only as a member of the outer body and works in the Ministry of
Truth, writing, rewriting and re-rewriting history as demanded by The Party. To
be the member of The Party implies three things for him:
1.
Big Brother is always watching you.
2.
You have no power, thought, purpose or will as
an individual.
3.
But if you consider yourself to be really a part
of The Party so much so that you think you ARE The Party, you own everything in
Oceania and you are as good as indestructible.
Unfortunately for Winston, he does not consider himself to be really a
part of The Party. Instead, he considers himself to be an enemy of The Party.
Consequently, he regularly takes part in all sorts of “thought crimes”
including remembering the past as it was and not as The Party says it was,
falling in love with a woman, Julia, and pursuing the possibility of courting
her, planning to join a rebel underground group bent on destroying The Party
and believing that indeed The Party can be destroyed. However, there is only one
outcome of such crimes in Oceania: a trip to the Ministry of Love.
1984 is by far the worst book I have ever read! Don’t get me wrong,
this is still a 5-star review. What makes 1984 the worst book in the history of
all my book reading is not that the book is terribly written. Instead, it is the
exact opposite. George Orwell writes dystopia as it is meant to be written:
haunting, disturbing and downright nightmarish. Reading Part III was especially
difficult for me. I could not read more than a few pages at a time, because I
was just so disturbed. The torture inflicted in the Ministry of Love does not
make you cry out tears for Winston and it does not make you sad or distraught.
Actually, you end up feeling nothing for Winston, but horrified at the
possibility of such things happening to you. It the mother of all nightmares
coming to life, where you are safe nowhere, not even inside your own head,
because The Party, for its own safekeeping, will get inside it if need be. The
Party will make you love who it wills and hate who it wills, it will make 2 + 2
= 5, even if you know in your head that there is no way that it can be anything
other than 4. It will change the past because it owns the past. The Party
doesn’t only have the power to change the past in the records, but it even has
the power to change it in your memories, because it controls everything- the
records and your memory.
Oceania is not just the epitome of totalitarianism, but it is a step
ahead of it! By mastering doublethink,
a process by which you can hold two contradictory things true in your mind, it
has not only taken control of the land, the people and the resources but also
has taken control of the course of history and the memories and emotions of the
inhabitants of Oceania. The Party from time to time changes its allies from
Eurasia to Eastasia and then back to Eurasia leaving the third its enemy in
war. However, in the records of Oceania and in the minds of the people of
Oceania The Party has only ever been at war with one of them. Whenever The
Party changes its alliance from one to the other, it simply changes all the
records to match the new enemy. Winston remembers that Oceania had been at war
with Eurasia only about four years ago and had been in alliance with Eastasia,
however, all “sane” party members know, remember and believe that, “No, Oceania
is at war with Eastasia. It has always been at war with Eastasia.” If only
yesterday, The Party again betrays Eurasia and declares war on Eurasia, all “sane”
party members will remember that, “Oceania is at war with Eurasia. It has
always been at war with Eurasia.” Only Winston’s “insanity” believes in a
reality that is physically separated from the mind of The Party and that needs
to “cured.”
One of the most intriguing parts of the novel is the three slogans that
arise from The Party’s ideology, “Ingsoc.”
1. WAR IS PEACE: The relevance
of this slogan may be felt from the beginning of time to perhaps the end of
time for the human race. War has been the only constant throughout history.
Conflict has remained ingrained in societies no matter how much they try to
curb it. As Plato once said quite wisely, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
Mr. Orwell takes advantage of his dystopian world and looks deeper into the
meaning of constant war. He insinuates that war is necessary to maintain peace.
War is essential to ensure that all surplus production of a powerful country is
not used to eradicate class structure in the world. War is essential to dump
that surplus in the form of destruction and devastation. War is essential for
constant power, whether it is for a class of people, a mindset, an organization
or even an ideology. WAR IS PEACE.
As Orwell says, "A peace
that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war." Orwell
understands that peace within a community can only remain when its people
remain completely loyal to the ruling authority. To ensure that, there needs to
be an enormous threat on the outside from whom the ruling authority is
constantly protecting them through a never-ending war. Only in such a state of
affairs will the people be focused too well on the external threat that they
will not dream to rise up to become an internal one.
2.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Nothing
could explain this slogan better than O’Brien who says that the truth is that “Slavery
is freedom. Alone – free – the human being is always defeated.” The individual
can never be more than a body travelling towards its death. The individual is “doomed
to die,” and O’Brien dubs that as “the greatest of all failures.” Orwell is
bringing out the truth in human need for submission, whether it is to a promise
beyond the grave, their work before the grave, an ideology, a hobby or even another
human being. Alone, a human being is nothing more than a forgettable entity
that as good as ceases to exist the moment it drops dead. However, “if he can
make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity,” he can
become something more. Nevertheless, as everything has a price, this is priced
at the individual’s freedom. O’Brien reiterates the meaning of being a party
member by saying that “if he (an individual) can merge himself in the Party so
that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal.”
The Party believes its ideology to be eternal and everlasting. Any member of
that ideology will consequently be eternal. However, they shall also be
eternally enslaved.
3.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH: The
simplest of the three, is perhaps also the most deep rooted of all the slogans
of The Party. “The Book”, apparently written by Goldstein, begins with the
ever-known fact that “Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of
the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the
High, the Middle and the Low.” Goldstein gives insight into the true nature of
the three classes. He shows us that the High always want to remain where they
are, the Middle want to overthrow the High and take their places and the Low,
whenever they are not so caught up in trying to survive, being at the very bottom
of the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, wish for equality. However, the Low are
also the only ones who are “never even temporarily successful in achieving
their aims.” They always end up being used by the Middle attracted to their so
called slogans of “freedom, justice and fraternity,” only to be “thrust” back
down “into their old position of servitude” after the Middle have achieved
their aims.
This internal struggle ultimately leads
to instability of power within a land and a never-ending cycle of power
switching results. In order to counter this The Party realizes that it needs to
freeze the classes. The Party does this by learning from the position of the
Low. The Low never have enough resources, time, will or energy to think
anything through. They are always caught up in the acts of survival. The Party
induces a state of ignorance in all the three classes in Oceania by thrusting
them to the basest level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. There is never enough
of anything in the market, what is available is terrible to eat and almost always
artificial, shelter has been transformed into a place of constant surveillance,
sex has been made undesirable and forbidden, family lives have been poisoned
with the children betraying their parents and parents afraid of their own
little ones and security is a concept unknown to all.
In such state of affairs, who
would dream of thinking of equality, liberty, justice or anything apart from
survival? Only a few. The Party ensures that those few are also taken care of.
In order for anyone to rise against their current condition of existence, they
usually need something to compare it to. If the comparison is the Past, The Party
controls it to no end, with its ideology of doublethink and constant “fixing” of “misquoted” facts.
The Past does not exist in Oceania but as a confirmation of the Present.
Therefore, there is no comparison in the past.
If it is a matter of comparison with
another community then The Party ensures that the people of Oceania never lay
eyes on any part or any person of either Eurasia or Eastasia. Lastly, if the
comparison is in their heads, in their whims and their wishes, then The Party “cures”
them in the Ministry of Love before annihilating their very existence!
Ignorance is strength, because it ensures that no one knows any better than
what is, because what is was always what was and what was is nothing more than
what is.
Everything in Oceania is diseased but Winston still realized in the
midst of all the disease a profound truth. “There was truth and there was
untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were
not mad.” But with The Party you were not even safe inside of your own head. To
get you to accept their untruth they would go to the lengths of ensuring you
were mad. The Party would make you believe that their lies were truth. It would
make you unknow what you know and know what you wish to unknow.
The Party’s disease plagues everything, not only the goodness of truth
but also the sanctity of love. Winston tells Julia that betrayal would not be
to confess, because everyone ends up confessing in the end to what they have
done and more. He says that real betrayal would be that if The Party could
somehow make him stop loving her. However, Julia naively states that they could
not do that, “They can make you say anything - anything -
but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you.” If only someone
told her that not only could they do that, but they would do that. And so they
both betray one another in the Ministry of Love and as that thought bleeds into
Winston’s mind at the end of his story, a voice sings in his head,
“Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me-“
One might wonder the purpose of such extreme measures and they are
simply this, “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a
revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship. The
object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object
of power is power.”
It is true that 1984 is one of the worst things that I have ever read
but, in the true spirit of doublethink, that does not
prevent it from being one of the best as well. If it were possible I would have
given it 6 out of 5 stars! ;)
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