Abuse Of Power In 1984 By George Orwell

858 Words4 Pages
The theme, lack of freedom involves various motifs such as control through threat or creation of an illusion, manipulation, privacy elimination, and restriction of originality and individualism. Some of the main motifs tackled in these novels is the manipulation of truth and information and brainwashing of the citizens so that they are under control of a leader figure or monopoly power. The Circle’s society is advanced in technology, and there is presence of a nearly-monopoly of one company called “The Circle”. Such power gives them the ability to degrade rights, opinions, and power that individuals are supposed to possess. An example would be a scene where Ty mentions a person who attempted opposition against the company, “who could be ruined…show more content…
At the same time, they may also notice the dangers of a media-based society that relies on technology, as media easily manipulates one’s mind, and can mind control them. This suggests that the current world of developing technology is putting itself at risk of turning into a real-life dystopia. 1984 portrays the brainwashing of citizens differently from The Circle, but on an equally fearful level. Firstly, the party controls language use of the society in order to limit thought. In the section Orwell, Freud, and 1984 (Roazen, Paul) in Modern Critical Interpretations, George Orwell’s 1984, author Paul Roazen states that “Orwell was convinced that politics and language was intimately connected,”(Roazen, 33) this gave Orwell the idea of ‘Newspeak’, a new language created in the society of 1984 to limit vocabulary and thoughts of its citizens. Newspeak existed so that thought crimes would be logically impossible, and “by destroying old words and creating new ones, thoughts can be so narrowed“ that anything under the party’s inconveniences become unthinkable(Roazen, 33) Likewise, Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth, which possess control over the entire mass media of…show more content…
This thought would make readers shiver and rethink about how truth is controlled in their society, a chance for readers to notice that there is no evidence of the past, and that they do not witness events shown on the news first handedly, making their knowledge less reliable. The primary source of information for ordinary citizens is the media, whose truthfulness and reliability is not fully credible. The citizens of 1984 lack media literacy, which is a modern approach that allows citizens to “access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with messages in a variety of forms”(“Media Literacy:). Without this, citizens are more likely to be manipulated by false information easier. Readers are likely to be grateful towards their access to media literacy. Furthermore, manipulation of truth occurs in the 1984 society as well, through its restricted society in which rule-breakers and outlaws are strictly prosecuted by law and
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