Comparing Brave New World And George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 contain protagonists that are vital to conveying the author’s message about the possibility of losing personal liberties to totalitarian regimes. These protagonists are John the Savage, from Brave New World, and Winston Smith, from 1984. In both novels, John and Winston realize that there is a force that takes away people’s liberties. Additionally, they see that their government has also hidden the truth from society in order to maintain control and stability. Finally, the government is also able to “reprogram” the way people think in order to keep them under control. As a result of their continuous rebellion, they are eventually forced to succumb to their totalitarian regime. While …show more content…
This force is the ignorance of truth. As a member of the Ministry of Truth, Winston is responsible for helping the Party rewrite history to ensure that it aligns with the Party’s ideals. One of the necessary skills he must have in order to do his job is the power to doublethink, which is the ability “...to be conscious of complete truthfulness while carefully telling constructed lies” (Orwell Book 1 Chapter 3). However, Winston struggles to doublethink throughout the novel because his morals, which include having liberty, and the Party’s ethics conflict, causing him to dislike their government known as Big Brother. As he does his job, Winston realizes that he is partially responsible for society’s ignorance since he helps hide the true history from them. His discomfort about constantly changing the past is obvious to O’Brien who tells him “Who controls the past controls the future” (Orwell Book 3 Chapter 2). Since Big Brother controls the Ministry of Truth, which controls the past, they are also able to control the future of Oceania by recreating history and keeping citizens ignorant of government oppression and abuse, thus preventing them from obtaining any liberty or