The World of 1984 - Perfect, but Terrifying

The World of Nineteen Eighty- Four – perfect, but terrifying

Essay

In the novel Nineteen Eighty- Four George Orwell presents to his reader an unambiguous detailed description of a perfectly- organized society, based on full control over its people. Written in 1949, the book is a forecast of the possible future and yet it uses as fundamentals ideologies which existed in the world at that time and continue living in some parts. Although the world of the book is a hyperbolized one, it could become reality during the 20th century. Moreover, countries where the restrictions depicted in the book are still present. All these facts come to support the statement that is so perfectly created, that it both terrifies and warns its reader of the possible future.

The world of Nineteen Eighty- Four is perfectly organized. People exist under the control of the Party, and although there is no set of laws, the Party manages to fully direct every aspect of their lives. The system presented is indestructible- absolutely no one could damage or obliterate the Party, since the beginning of its existence. Even Winston, the main character failed, and in the end believed in the doctrine, which ruled in Oceania. Namely because of this fact, despite its perfection, the society’s organization is frightening. Human beings are totally manipulated, but they do not even realize it. This detail provides for the terrifying suggestion that such a world, where even people’s minds are controlled, could last forever.

If the reader tries drawing a scheme of the world in Nineteen Eighty- Four, it would probably look as a perfect circle- everything is fixed and cannot develop further. In this world, the individual is sacrificed in the name of the bright future. What is paradoxical is the fact that in the novel, the utopia for the perfect world already exists. The whole society lives in the expected future which is deprived of real values. Main aim and desire of all subjects is servicing the political machine. Thus, all people are dispossessed of their individuality and the only sign, by which they can be separated one from another, is their role in the scheme. The proles are lower in the hierarchy that rules Oceania. They are the people who do not have any power. Yet, Winston believes they would ruin the system because of their multiplicity: “If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles” (72). On upper level are the members of the Ministries who actually exercise authority. The top is occupied by the members from the Party’s core - the ones that control the way power is exerted. They are the community who maintain Oceania to be in a state of constant poverty and perpetual war. People from the Inner Party make decisions on who is a threat to Big Brother and later, they evaporate him/her. For Syme, a devoted to the idea of Ingsoc man, Winston declares: “He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear” (56). Although Syme works honestly and with great enthusiasm for the idea of Newspeak, he is quickly demolished when he is not needed anymore. In the chronicles of the Party, however, he is not present. Namely the act of changing the past is one of the most terrifying proves of the situation’s gravity in the novel. One of the basic principles, by which the world in Nineteen Eighty- Four keeps going, is the belief that “Who controls the past, control the future: who controls the present, controls the past” (37). Not only do members of the Party change the past, according