Nineteen Eighty-Four Essay

In Nineteen Eighty Four, major themes include the authoritarianism of the government and the manipulation of language to control the minds of the people. Oceania, the nation featured in Nineteen Eighty Four, is an authoritarian state which constantly monitors its people and immediately suppresses any dissent through the use of Thought Police and its “Ministry of Love”. However, despite the use of these institutions to directly oppress the people, the language of Oceania itself is used in suppressing dissent, with concepts newspeak and doublethink passively controlling the people with little effort on the side of the ruling party. Many critics such as Shah argue that the writings of George Orwell warn of the intrusions on freedom by an oppressive government through artificial scarcity, suppression of dissent, and constant surveillance of the people; however, the development of newspeak, erasure of “untruth” by the Ministry of Truth, and the manipulation used in the Ministry of Love demonstrate that Orwell really refers to the use of language by a governing …show more content…
This derives from the concept of a panopticon from Jeremy Bentham, which is a circular prison with a guard tower in the middle to watch prisoners at all times without the prisoners knowing whether they are being watched in that moment or not. Shah asserts that the concept of panopticism in Nineteen Eighty Four, in which citizens of Oceania are always monitored but do not know if they are being watched in that moment, is the key to their psychology of fearing the influence of the Party, especially due to the possibility of being the Thought Police taking one away to the Ministry of Love for