1984 , a tale of future society, by Orwell

Essay by Joel RennerCollege, UndergraduateA-, November 1996

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Nineteen eighty four is a tale of future society, a society in which independent

thinking is a crime punishable by death. This is also a society who's leaders are self

serving and don't set their goals for the common good by which all of the society will

benefit. The party doesn't need to justify its selfish ways because it holds all of the

power. The symbol of the party was Big Brother. The idealism of blind loyalty was

embodied in this symbol. It was the centre of control. The Party has set its agenda of

completely controlling every single human mind by narrowing down the complexity of

human thought. They will try accomplish this through the elimination of speech to a

form where humans can no longer think for themselves. These future citizens would

not be able to commit any crimes against the Party. There is no possible way these

humans would even think 'criminal' thoughts to begin with since they had no

knowledge of any crime from personal experience or history.

The main character of this book is Winston Smith. Even though he is portrayed as a

criminal, I believe that he is a victim of a system that is criminal. All through this book

Winston's convictions lead us to believe that he is ethical and the Party is unjust but it

is left up to the readers discretion to decide whether he is the criminal or just a victim

of a totalitarian society. The first instance of Winstons 'criminal' nature was when he

bought an illegal journal, quill and bottle of ink to record his thoughts. Although he

had so called 'criminal' thoughts before, the journal seemed to bring out the more

daring ideas in him as to how to get free from the Party's reign. This...