George Orwell’s main goal in writing 1984 is to warn his audience of the dangers of a totalitarian government. In this novel depicting a dystopian society, Orwell shows the horrifying amounts of power that the government is capable of obtaining and maintaining. Through the struggle of the main character, Winston, to escape and expose the totalitarian society of Oceania and the Party, Orwell develops and links the two major themes of 1984, which effectively convey the horror he wants the audience to be aware of.
Winston Smith is low on the societal hierarchy within the ruling Party in London, which is a part of the nation Oceania. Everywhere he and the others living there go, the Party watches them on spy cameras called telescreens. Everywhere the people of Oceania look they are faced with posters and propaganda worshipping the Party’s leader, Big Brother, who is spoken of but has never been seen before. The Party controls everything within Oceania–especially the history and language of their people. Newspeak is the language that the Party forces everybody to use, preventing all political rebellion by obliterating any and all words related to it. It’s even illegal to think rebellious thoughts, which is called thoughtcrime. Oceania, Big Brother, and the Party embody the essence of a totalitarian and dystopian society.
The most prominent method of manipulation displayed by the Party is their ability to change and remove historic records to make Big Brother seem more appealing and god-like. Without the manipulation of the past, the Party’s power would be nonexistent. “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed–if all the records told the same tale–then the lie passed into history and became the truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ ‘Reality control,’ they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink.’” (270). In this quote, Winston expresses his belief that as long as...