Individuality In 1984 By George Orwell

The definition of an individual is a characteristic that distinguishes a person from others of the same kind. In 1984, by George Orwell, there is a lack of individuality in the citizens due to the control of the government. Since individuality would go against all of Orwell’s branches of ministry within the government, steps are taken to avoid it. Although there are singularity that arise within the community, it is fear that puts citizens back into what the government wants. Orwell creates new technologies and new branches of government to keep each citizen in check, and ensure full control of Big Brother. To avoid any forms of individuality from developing in the community, Orwell’s Inner Party in 1984 creates a government that turns …show more content…
Language is an essential part of people becoming their own person, as its huge range of vocabulary that can be used to express different ideas and thoughts. Since the Orwell’s main goal in 1984 is to remove individuality, a new language was developed to take away the citizen’s old language. This new language limited the citizen’s freedom of thought and leaves citizens no option to have any of their own thoughts. “In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now,” since the vocabulary is changing the belief of thoughts each year. (pg 53) Orwell’s decision to have the government enforce a new language would take away the past language from its citizens in order to shape them into a specific model. With each new edition, the vocabulary shrinks and leads to the fact that “…Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year.” (pg 51) As Orwell’s limited language only allows specific thoughts, it forces other thoughts dissolve into history and past generations. It is nearly impossible for society to think of a thought, when there are no words that have any close meaning to that thought and “in the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” (pg 52) Orwell decision on selective vocabulary for Newspeak, such as the removing frilly and …show more content…
The main goal of the Ministry of Truth is to lie to the public, and it has succeeded by changing history daily. Orwell’s actions of rewriting history has spread corruption throughout the ministry, and, sequentially, the community. Most of the citizens are ignorant to the rewriting, and are led to believe that Big Brother has always been correct in the past. “This day-to-day falsification of the past, carried out by the Ministry of Truth” gives Big Brother the power to convince the public that history has never been altered by anyone. (pg 213) Orwell’s Big Brother changes any mistakes made in the history, and in turn makes everyone who had different opinions seem wrong. This causes people to put their belief in Big Brother, and forces the main character to come to the false realization that “he loved Big Brother.” (pg 297) There is no reason for a person to dislike a person if all of their actions have turned out to best help the public. One of the main things of individuality is that everyone has their own opinion, but in 1984 everyone is following the belief of Big Brother. This prevents any opinions against Big Brother from arising, as citizens are too afraid to act out against the beliefs of the whole rest of the community. The whole community revolves around the fake history that