NIL GAUDIO FREIRE DOS SANTOS

- English 4

Paper about the novel Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell

The book Nineteen Eighty-four, by George Orwell has a lot of similarities with the real life and this is what I will try to present in this paper. In the novel, it is easy to see that the people is controlled by media, entertainment, they are oppressed by the policy of surveillance and by the mental slavery, and the control of their language, suppressing their consciousness. In modern times it is not that different, if you have an open mind you can see a lot of these nowadays. In the book, there is the telescreen an technological instrument very similar to the television, that can not be turned off and is used not only to be watched, instead is used to observe every move of the citizens of Oceania. There is one of that in every house, on every corner making impossible even to try to hide something. The only difference with the television and the media today is that there is no cameras to observe us. But there is the propaganda, one of the state trying to fool the mass with lies, showing that the country and government are perfect, and also the private propaganda inducing the people to the consumption of things that are not necessary, creating the illusion that one could achieve happiness with material things. Another way to manipulate the mass is with the soap operas, series, the news and mainly with the reality shows. One of the most famous is the Big Brother, its name was inspired by the book that is the subject of this paper. In the reality show, millions of spectators watch people who are confined in a house by their own will to dispute a huge prize, they spend the time partying or talking nonsense conversations. We can see that we have a lot of ways to entertain ourselves or with other words, take the time that we could spent for studying or meditating, knowing ourselves better, then we waste our time talking and thinking about these futile programs. That is very different of the system of the Party. In the IngSoc society there are not many ways of entertainment for the people. There is the Hate week with military parades, lectures and speeches, and for the rest of the time there are the public executions where the traitors are killed in front of thousands of spectators. It is true that they have books and music, but they were changed into newspeak and had lost their meanings. In a certain way it is very different from our society today, we have many choices for our entertainment and we are not governed by a totalitarian system. But if we think in a different way, we are controlled by private banks and corporations who dictate what governments should do and in what to invest. So, they control the governments and the media and then they dictate what people should listen, watch, and do to have fun. Our system oppress us in a way that make most people think that we are free, it is not just the entertainment that is controlled, our education and even our thoughts are in certain way manipulated, most of what society thinks, our theories are based in what we learn on the failed educational system and/or we see in mainstream media. So we can say that the system presented by Orwell is pure oppression, one could not think out of what the system says that is right or he will be arrested, that is called Thougthcrime. The only emotion that they are allowed to feel is hatred, the only love that could exist is for Big Brother, even the sexual relations were only to reproduce. If one feel otherwise he is a heretic. The people who are arrested in this system are tortured until they confess even things they never did. But all of this is for the Outer party, for the proles, there is the slave jobs, scarcity and lots of bombs. Another way to oppress people is the surveillance.

In the novel there are telescreens and the cameras all over the town to watch and observe the citizens. It is possible to see this sort of surveillance in most of the big cities all over the world, specially in London. It was revealed in the documentary Naked Citizens that in street corners of the city there is at least eighteen cameras between state and companies cameras, there is one camera for every fourteen people. A software that is in development takes the images caught on cameras and try to identify different and suspect behavior based in the data collected. The chances of failure are great, the french citizen who lives in London was arrested because he was using a jacket in the summer and the officials who were monitoring the London subway thought that he was with a suspect behavior, his house was inspected and they interrogate him four hours. Another example of the disrespect of our rights is a recent case of the whistleblower Edward Snowden, who alerted the world about the espionage and surveillance by the NSA and FBI in the internet invading private messages from people of many countries through the data of sites like Facebook and others. But, the surveillance, despite bieng terrible, is not the worst. There is what can be called of mental slavery, we can see examples in the book and in the real life. Every day the citizens of Oceania were submitted to this sort of brainwash to put in their minds all the hatred that the Party wanted them to have, feeding this kind of feeling and only this feeling was permitted. They directed this hatred to Goldstein and anything that could bring ideas against the Party's principles. We can compare it with those kind of sensationalists TV programs such as Barra Pesada or Cidade 190 that everyday show the violence with emotion appeals, trying to make the people believe that the criminals deserve death as a sentence without the knowledge of what lead those men to make such actions, in what kind of environment they grew up, oppressed and ignored by society and government in a place where death, violence are common and banal. Like in the book, people become full of hatred. The mass is controlled by fear. The brainwashed mind of the people of Oceania turned the fear and hate for the Party in love for Big Brother. This was easy to make with the people that have born after the Party being in control of the system. But for those who had lived before it, who could resist and think for themselves, the only way of control was by fear. They feared that they could be caught for think or act suspicious, they hated Big Brother and the Party but they could not show it to anyone in anywhere, they were persecuted and controlled by their fear, and when they were caught, they were took to the Room 101, and had to face their worst fears like Winston had to face rats, his worst nightmare, betraying his beloved Julia to make them stop. It is known that the church, media and governments try to control us by fear too, but in different ways. An example is the Church and religions that control their believers creating a myth of a Demon or a beast that will pick up their souls to spend the eternity in a mythic place called Hell where they would suffer for ever. So, if the people don't act in the way the church wants they have a reserved place there. Another example is the media and government, and the protests here in Brazil. They use the police and army to make the people being afraid to go to the streets, and the media give some contribution also, just talking about the violence and the vandals making the people forget the real vandalism that we suffer everyday in the precarious hospitals and the neglect with the poor people. So they conduce the protesters like puppets, these alienated protesters were those who were saying no vandalism when others were trying to make a barricade on the br-116. To all of this make more

sense I will borrow a phrase by the journalist Ricardo Boechat: The press shows the vandalism, that generates fear. The fear lead the people stay in their homes, people who fear don't change the country. Beyond fear, there is also a powerful way tho manipulate people, the control of history. Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present control the past that is the slogan of the Party. They controlled time in certain way, they had the control of the past rewriting history everyday day, both ancient a recent history. There was no history before IngSoc. By this way, they could alter any past news that did not become true, turning they the truth. The Party had the power to do so, because they control the present. Nowadays we also know little about the true history, they teach us the European vision of history. We just learn the point of the iceberg on school, they refuse any possibility that the mass have the knowledge about how they endure in the power. If one search, he can find a lot of books and documentaries that are not accepted by the main group of scientists and historians that are lead by those who really control the information in the system, who do not want that the truth be revealed. If someone want to know how the process of suppression of information is done, he just need to research about it, there are a lot of information about it in libraries and in the internet and alternative media.