Into A Police State Essay

Introduction In a time when WW2 had just finished, people were worried that communism might spread around the world, and the overall scariness of the changing world around, George Orwell wrote a dystopian novel, set in the future, in a world that changes the past to suit the needs ofcalled 1984. Orwell’s novel has been written to make his audience challenge the values that have been presented in the novel. The values of freedom and truth and an attitude of love have been used to make us challenge the way we think of these things. 1984 is a novel in which the world has been transformed into a society in which a group called the Party can watch every person’s moves at any time of the day.   1984 manipulates the society into believing everything they say.   George Orwell’s masterpiece makes the audience challenge the values and attitudes of the novel.   Values of freedom, privacy and trust. Attitudes of anger, and love. BP1 1984 makes the audience challenge the value of freedom. What is freedom Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. This quote shows that the Party controls the world so much that they have the power to change the answer for 2+2=4 to 2+2=5 (or any other number).   That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better.   This quote shows that people in the world of Oceania have a choice of freedom or happiness. Because most people know the consequences of having freedom, they choose the safe option and have happiness in the Party. This leads into the next quote:   To die hating them, that was freedom. If you are with the Party, you will have happiness (previous quote) and if you are against them, you will have the freedom to speak out against the Party. But this means that you must die, because almost all of the haters of the Party will get caught eventually and ‘shot’ or ‘killed’. Because the world that people live in has been manipulated so that people do not have freedom, we as the audience are challenged with the moral of freedom and what it means having it. BP2   Orwell’s setting in 1984 also makes us challenge the values of truth. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.   This is saying that the people of Oceania know their own truths, and everyone has an opinion as to what is the truth and what is not. But people are forced to believe in a truth that is untrue when they know a truth which is true. Thus people have two truths to believe or know in. The people who follow the Party and respect them will believe in the untruth and forget the real truth, and the people who are against the Party will know their truth which is the truth. So the people who are against the Party are the sane ones.   If all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth.   This is saying that if all of the novels in the world said the same things, this would become the truth. And if one thing was different from a book/magazine etc. then the Party would change it so it would become the truth. It is like saying if 10 books said that WW1 did not occur, and another book did, the Party would get that one book and change it so that it would say that WW1 did not occur. If everything in the world said that something happened, then the lie would pass into history and would become the truth.   Whatever the party holds to be truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.   This is saying that everything the Party says is the truth and that everyone should listen to it. If you don’t listen to the truth, then you can’t see the reality of what the world is. If you want to understand the world, then you must be with the Party. The world is a blur without them. These quotes show how the Party has manipulated the truth so that the entire super state believes every word they say. By doing this everyone will do what they want. However some people are already thinking against the Party and they are the sane ones but they will be the ones that will most likely die. BP3 * Orwell also challenges the audience with his dystopian society with the attitude of love.   The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. This is saying that the entire world is based around hatred. This can be backed up with the two minutes hate and the hatred that people have for the Party. * There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science.   1984’s society has been challenged in a way that no love ever exists. People are not allowed to love another person. The only way that people are allowed to marry is so that they can produce for the Party. They only believe in the Party and listen to what they tell people to do. Nothing exists anymore except that Party and everything that they do.   Ã¢â‚¬Å"Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter: only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal. †   This is saying that the only way that people in Oceania can stop loving someone is if that Party ‘brainwash’ them so that they won’t love them anymore. That is the only way that people can betray someone. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.   This quote is saying that the society of 1984 has no feeling for anything. Everyone is straight faced and just does what the Party want them to do. The line â€Å"Never again will you be capable of love† just says that the world can become a world has place of hatred for one another. This definitely challenges the audiences on love.   This novel has very little love in it and it makes us challenge what love actually is and why it is such a special thing for us as humans to have. CONCLUSION   These points that have been made so that the audience of 1984 challenges their values and attitudes.   The novel explores the values of truth and freedom and the attitude of love.   We see that after reading the novel how much we value these things in our world and that we should be grateful for what we have in life.