Telescreen In The Novel 1984

The United States of America looks like an ideal home for freedom and individuality. Citizens are free and able to make their own decisions and choose their own paths without the interference of a more powerful body like the government. While it appears that one can do as one pleases, the government has different opinions in mind and enforcing them. After 9/11, the United States Congress passed the Patriot Act in an endeavor to detect signs of terrorism before it can strike American soil. However, the law also meant that the public had to surrender a portion of their Fourth Amendment rights as they were being spied and monitored upon by the government. In George Orwell’s novel 1984, the people live under a more extreme variance of constant …show more content…
Winston Smith arrives in his house to encounter one of the most overbearing forms of control, the telescreen. The device is constantly on to transmit news of the day, but to also spy on the citizens; it has the capability to pick up the lowest of whispers and visually see the viewer to the point where that “so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard” (Orwell 3). The telescreen is presents an effect of stalking its prey as “instead of [it] being placed, as was normal, in the end wall, where it could command the whole room, it was in the longer wall, opposite the window” (Orwell 5). The monitoring machine is intended to make sure that it knows what the viewer is doing whether one wants it to or …show more content…
In this small recourse of space, he writes his independent thoughts and opinions in his diary. The restriction of privacy and free thinking becomes apparent as he states a contrast in having a diary, a tool for thought, and the result of having one; while having a diary is “not illegal”, but if it is “detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labor camp” (Orwell 6). The reason for the harsh consequences can be witnessed when Smith writes “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” multiple times in his diary, forcefully expressing his hatred of Big Brother and the system that it has created, which is something that Big Brother will not tolerate (Orwell 18). Even Winston realizes this as noticing what he has written, he comes to the conclusion that “whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it… the Thought Police would get him just the same” because he has committed the act of thoughtcrime (Orwell 19). With thoughtcrime being any thought against Big Brother that will eventually be discovered by the Thought Police, Winston determines for the rest of the novel that he will be discovered by writing “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death” in his diary (Orwell 28). The disapproval of individual thinking is so brutal that even one appearance of it can mean a slow and eventual death for the