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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. Read more: What Is a Theme in Literature?
The Dangers of Totalitarianism
Informed by George Orwell’s firsthand experiences and observations during the tumultuous decades prior to its publication, 1984 is a political novel written to warn about the destructive impact of oppression by totalitarian governments. In the novel, Orwell presents the most extreme realization imaginable of a government with absolute power. Employing a wide range of psychological, physical, and technological tools, the Party has developed a perfect totalitarianism state in which government monitors and controls every aspect of human life to the extent that even having a disloyal thought is against the law.
The impact of the state’s absolute control on its “Outer Party” citizens is ruinous, as they live in physical squalor and intellectual vacancy. Every aspect of humanity that is taken for granted in non-totalitarian societies, including the rights to live, love, lean, aspire, and think freely, are strictly forbidden and punished with extreme force when they are invariably detected, as Winston and Julia discover.
A reflection of how completely totalitarianism permeates society in 1984 is how dominant the idea is within the context of the novel itself. Everything in 1984 is rooted in how totalitarianism works, how it impacts the characters, and their reactions to it. Therefore, all the themes of the novel discussed below focus on the tools and techniques that the Party uses to control its people or describe totalitarianism’s impact on the characters. This is also the case for most of the Motifs (Doublespeak, Technology and Loyalty) and two of the Symbols (Big Brother and Telescreens) discussed in those pages of this guide.
Psychological Curbs on Individualism
The use of psychological manipulation to diminish and destroy individualism is the core of the Party’s control over its citizens. While the Party does not hesitate to employ brutal physical punishments when it feels they are needed to ensure its control over the populace in 1984 (as is discussed below under “Physical Aspects of Control”), these efforts pale in comparison to its ubiquitous deployment of psychological methods that include technology, propaganda, the manipulation of children, and the suppression of sexual desires. In fact, the Party uses psychological tools so effectively and so efficiently that the need to resort to physical coercion seems to be relatively rare.
The Party floods its citizens with psychological stimuli designed to overwhelm the mind’s capacity for independent thought. The giant telescreen in every citizen’s room blasts a constant stream of propaganda designed to make the failures and shortcomings of the Party appear to be triumphant successes. The telescreens also monitor behavior—everywhere they go, citizens are continuously reminded, especially by means of the omnipresent signs reading “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU,” that the authorities are scrutinizing them.
The Party uses these psychological tools to force individuals to suppress their sexual desires, treating sex as merely a procreative duty whose end is the creation of new Party members. Then, when the pliant couples do produce new citizens, the Party undermines family structure by inducting children into an organization called the Junior Spies, which brainwashes and encourages them to spy on their parents and report any instance of disloyalty to the Party. The longer-term benefit of this to the Party is these children will grow up with little if any sense on individualism, meaning that controlling them can be accomplished even more efficiently than with prior generations.
The Party then channels people’s pent-up frustration and emotion into intense, ferocious displays of hatred against the Party’s political enemies. Many of these enemies have been invented by the Party expressly for this purpose.
Physical Aspects of Control
The Party’s physical manipulation of the citizens by the totalitarian government in 1984 involves psychological components as well. There are two distinct forms of physical manipulation: the relatively rare inflecting of intense physical pain (torture) done in specific situations by the Ministry of Love, and the everyday scrutiny and manipulation of the physical actions of individual citizens, which will be discussed first.
Through telescreens, the Party constantly watches for any sign of disloyalty, to the point that, as Winston observes, even a tiny facial twitch could lead to an arrest. A person’s own nervous system becomes their greatest enemy. The Party forces its members to undergo mass morning exercises called the Physical Jerks, and then to work long, grueling days at government agencies, keeping people in a general state of physical and mental exhaustion.
Anyone who does manage to defy the Party is punished and “reeducated” through systematic and brutal torture. After being subjected to weeks of this intense treatment, Winston himself concludes that nothing is more powerful than physical pain—no emotional loyalty or moral conviction can overcome it. By conditioning the minds of its victims with physical torture, the Party controls reality, convincing its citizens that 2 + 2 = 5.
Language as Mind Control
One of Orwell’s most important messages in 1984 is that language is of central importance to human thought because it structures and limits the ideas that individuals can formulate and express. If control of language were centralized in a political agency, Orwell posits, such an agency could possibly alter the very structure of language to make it impossible to even conceive of disobedient or rebellious thoughts, because there would be no words with which to think them. This idea manifests itself in the language of Newspeak, which the Party has introduced to replace English. The Party is constantly refining and perfecting Newspeak, with the goal that no one will be capable of conceptualizing anything that might question the Party’s absolute power.
It seems likely that Orwell’s ideas on the control of language being a control on thinking were impacted by his experiences in colonial India, which became independent in 1947 after two centuries of British control. During colonial times, foreign occupiers typically instituted their own language as the language of government and business, leading to a loss of cultural and historical connections among the people being colonized.
Control of Information and History
In 1984, Winston works as a propaganda officer at the Ministry of Truth altering historical records to match the Party’s official version of past events. The Party controls every source of information, managing and rewriting the content of all newspapers and histories for its own ends. Moreover, the Party forbids individuals from keeping records of their past, such as photographs or documents. As a result, memories become fuzzy and unreliable, and the conditioned citizens become perfectly willing to believe whatever the Party tells them. By controlling the present, the Party is able to manipulate the past. And in controlling the past, the Party can justify all its actions in the present.
Curbs on Independence and Identity
Another of the Party’s totalitarian tools for manipulating the Outer Party populace are the steps it takes to rein in and discourage independence and identity in individuals. For example, the basic traits of establishing one’s identity are unavailable to Winston and the other citizens of Oceania. Winston does not know how old he is. He does not know whether he is married or not. He does not know whether his mother is alive or dead. None of his childhood memories are reliable, because he has no photos or documents to help him sort real memories from imagined ones.
Instead of being unique individuals with specific, identifying details, every member of the Outer Party is identical. All Party members wear the same clothing, smoke the same brand of cigarettes, drink the same brand of gin, and so forth. As such, forming a sense of individual identity is not only psychologically challenging, but logistically difficult.
Most of Winston’s significant decisions can be interpreted as attempts to build a sense of identity. His decision to purchase a diary and begin recording his thoughts is an attempt to create memory and history. His decision to purchase the coral paperweight is driven by a desire to have something of his own that represents a time before the Party. Winston’s sexual relationship with Julia and their decision to rent an apartment where they can spend time together represent dangerous crimes in the world of 1984. In deciding to pursue a relationship with Julia, Winston asserts his independence and further establishes his identity as an individual who resists the Party’s control.
Ultimately, though, Winston’s attempts to maintain his independence and create a unique identity are no match for the Party. Winston’s experiences in the Ministry of Love represent the complete disassembly and destruction of all aspects of his individuality. When he returns to society, he has lost all independence and uniqueness and has become part of the Party’s faceless collective.
Resistance and Revolution
In 1984, Winston explores increasingly risky and significant acts of resistance against the Party. In Book One, Chapter 7, Winston observes that “rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word.” Winston builds up these minor rebellions by committing personal acts of disobedience such as keeping a journal and buying a decorative paperweight. Eventually he escalates his rebellion through his sexual relationship with Julia. The relationship is a double rebellion, as it includes the thoughtcrime of desire. Winston doesn’t believe his actions or the actions of others will lead to the destruction of the Party within his lifetime, but before he is apprehended by the Thought Police he holds out hope that in the future someone will be able to look back at Winston’s time from a world that is free.
Winston’s most concrete hope for actual revolution against the Party lies with the social underclass of the city, called the proles (which is short for the proletariat). He observes that the proles already have far greater numbers than the Party and that they have the strength to carry out a revolution if they could ever organize themselves. The problem is that the proles have been subject to such serious poverty for so long that they are unable to see past the goal of survival. The very notion of trying to build a better world is too much for them to contemplate.
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