After Reading 1984

After reading this novel, I know more about the ordeal of a totalitarian state. The main message from this novel is satirising the dictator of USSR in mid-20th century, Joseph Stalin. Even though the world in this book is only an imaginative work, the details are actually based on the society in USSR under Stalin. People have no freedom, welfare, and rights. Those are the features of totalitarianism. In Oceania, people only have a little or even no knowledge as the party was afraid of objections from scholars and students.

As mentioned before, the world in 1984 was a prophecy by George Orwell. His prophecy was accurate that in the mid to late 20th century, there were different totalitarian states which were coincident to Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. For example, North Korea, the new modern China, the Soviet Union, Spain, Cuba etc. Obviously, the author objected to totalitarianism as his ideal world was governed under capitalism and liberalism. This book was written in 1948, that was post World War II. Most of the countries involved in the war were politically unstable and the future of mankind was somewhat misty. Therefore, the author had such a prophecy.

Human like power, they are thirst for that from ancient times to nowadays. As people want to rise in power, there are many battles, revolutions, assassinations in human history. Most of us cannot refuse the temptation of getting power. This novel emphasised that power needs the crowd to support. Therefore, the political party in this book indoctrinated citizens so that their stable power would not collapse easily.

There were three slogans from Ingsoc in "1984". The first one was "War is Peace". Everyone knows war is brutal which brings us countless casualties physically and psychologically. Why is war peace? War involves consumption of food and energy. An abundant amount of food is needed. In the story's world, commoners could only have a fixed amount of food in a meal. It was difficult for them to have savings, and be rich. The lives of the commoners were almost controlled by the political party. In this case, people were not able to object and overthrow the government. No one will be involved in chaos except the soldiers in the warzone. Consequently, commoners could have a simple and peaceful life. This slogan should be viewed from the party's perspective. Since there were no conflicts of resources and no fighting between the government officials and citizens, war is peace.

The second one was "Freedom is slavery". Generally speaking, slaves do not have any freedom and rights. In a totalitarian state, everybody does not have freedom. However, if you commit a serious crime like opposing to the political party, you will be put in jail and subsequently, you have no freedom at all. Compared to sinners, commoners already have more freedom as they do not need to be treated violently and cruelly.