“War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.” There are probably only a few of us who don’t recognise these sayings. To clarify, these lines are the three slogans of the Party in George Orwell’s 1984. Before last month, and I say this with great shame, I was one of the few who wouldn’t have recognised the slogans. Perhaps that is exactly what caused 1984 to have such a huge impact on me. The stories told by my peers who had already read 1984, the hailing of the novel being one of the greatest of the 20th century and the often made connection between 1984 and Brave New World (which happens to be one of my favourite novels) raised my expectations to a maximum. Often, high expectations only lead to disappointment or disillusionment. Orwell’s great dystopia, however, did not only live up to my expectations, it also blew me away.
Given the fact that so many of us have already read 1984, it seems illogical to portray merely a summary of it in this blog. Rather, I’d like to share with you my perception of the novel. First, for the ones who share the same shame as I did one month ago, let me provide a small summary. The novel is set in alternate reality 20th century London, which is now called Airstrip One and has been integrated into the greater nation of Oceania (the America’s, Australia, Great Britain and several other parts of the world). Oceania is ruled by the Party, an ultra-authoritarian government led by the mysterious and almost godlike Big Brother. The Party regulates and monitors every aspect of daily life: work, marriage, exercise, family and spare time. Even the history and language of Oceania are under direct influence and regulation of Party policy. By altering history and thereby altering knowledge, the Party has an incredible power over its subjects: “He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.” All in all, Oceania has become a nation which has abandoned freedom, rights and love as we know them. On the other hand, the nation has embraced domination, fear and hatred.
Orwell shows us the life of a simple Inner Party worker, Winston Smith. Winston works for the Ministry of Truth and is burdened with the task of creating and erasing history. More and more, Winston realises the brutality and cruelty of the Party and “inwardly rebels” against the life he is forced to live. Despite the realisation that rebelling against the Party will lead to inevitable death, Winston finds himself increasingly resisting the Party rule. Irrevocably, the Party, through its methods of monitoring and regulation, arrests Winston for his crimes against Big Brother. Finally and unfortunately , Winston has to pay the price for his unorthodox actions.
What struck me most about the novel was the extreme methods the Party used in observing, monitoring and controlling its population and the therewith involved consequences. It was not only the types of methods that disturbed me, but also the motivations and implications behind them. The portrayed denial of peoples’ rights, freedoms and privacy on such a scale and to such an extent made me realise that we should always remember to cherish those rights and freedoms that our predecessors have bitterly fought for. In the end, I assume this is what George Orwell intended with writing 1984: ensuring that we remember the importance of personal freedom and privacy. The irony here is that many of us don’t seem to realise that we are unconsciously already giving up many of our privacies through aspects of daily life. Take, for instance, the widespread registration of individual data connected to the OV-card (a card that has to be used for many parts of public transportation). Or another example: yesterday I was throwing away the trash with my little brother. Since two years, there is one location where to dispose of your domestic waste per street. Every household in the particular street is given an individual key to open the waste containers which are provided by the municipality. When walking back home after throwing away the trash, my little brother told me that the municipality registers every time trash is thrown away by a household. This is done through a chip put into every single key given to households. Of course, this is only a small and unimportant example of the giving up of individual privacy, but we should realise that small examples like these occur on a very frequent basis in daily life. Furthermore, we don’t only give up our rights through direct and possibly harmless government registration, but also through exposure by the use of public networks such as Facebook or Twitter. If a government had the ill will to monitor its citizens for wrong purposes, it wouldn’t even have to install the methods as seen in 1984: they would just have to check our Facebook updates. For now, enough cheesy talk of this undergraduate student with his naïve views on life. However, I would like to end this blog entry with a funny and ironic little screenshot I took today from my own Facebook page:
Jules van de Sneppen, 1st year student, LUC
The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.
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