Joanna Vaklin
Power can be defined as the ability to influence, and often it is connected with wealth, opulence, and fame.[1] One might suggest that in order for power to exist, an individual must acquire these elements, often associated with positions of authority, in order to have an influence on other people. The Ingsoc Party in George Orwell’s 1984 wants a power that is beyond these tangible qualities. It is not a matter of acquiring anything physical within the realm of current human understanding, but rather seizing the unique, mental experiences of human beings and molding them into tools for complete submission to the Party. There is no need for wealth, opulence, or fame when the Brotherhood is top priority. But why is it necessary for the Party to have power for its own sake? The Party’s desire for clean-cut power is a way to be immortal by being attached to a concept rather than just one’s own contrived individual identity.
Uncovering the path the Party is willing to take to acquire this type of power is just as important as analyzing its motive. For the Party to exist as the absolute authority, it must first dismantle the creations of each individual identity. Every individual has personal opinions, thoughts, experiences, and memories. These are essentially what make a person different from others, for these factors are created only through personal, human experience. The Party knows that there can be no place for individuality if it wants to exist as a collective being solely capable of defining everything and everyone. For this reason, the Ingsoc Party wants to excavate the identities of Oceania’s citizens and embed the concept of Big Brother within their daily lives.
One way to complete this excavation is by not granting privacy to any of its citizens. Constant government surveillance does not allow one to ponder deeply about oneself; thus, the individual feels as though “nothing was one’s own except the few cubic centimeters inside one’s skull” (Orwell 27). Winston experiences these restrictions while observing how Big Brother is everywhere he turns, even when he takes out a 25-cent piece with Big Brother’s face on one side and the party’s slogans on the other. The perpetual absence of privacy affects individuals and their ability to claim their beings as their own. Michael Carter notes that the consequence of being “incessantly observed is that the observed loses possession of himself” and that in 1984 the “relative dynamics of the self and the Other are decisively of the type revealed by the Sartrean Analysis.” This concept determines that one who is constantly observed will eventually have the following thought: “I merely become part of the Other’s world, and as the Other’s world is something I cannot know, I am aware of having a dimension that is not understood by me” (Carter 180). When someone is constantly monitored, there exists an incessant self-critique to satisfy the watcher, and in the process, there is only a focus on the “proper” way to act. As Winston goes through his days, he is reminded that he is always being watched, and with every reminder, there is also a discontinuity in the path of creating a personal identity.
The dissipation of the citizen’s identity allows the citizen to remain unquestioned and without suspicion in the eye of the Watcher. While having lunch with Syme, Winston notices that although Syme followed the principles of the Ingsoc and “venerated Big Brother and rejoiced over victories” with sincerity and “restless zeal,” there was still a “disreputability that always clung to him.” Winston senses an aura that represents him once reading too many books and spending a lot of time in the Chestnut Tree Café, a cafe that was filled with the presence of painters and musicians before the revolution (Orwell 55). Syme is a product of the watchful eye of Ingsoc and Big Brother. Yet Winston observes that the natural, unique identity, which the party did not create, is still buried inside Syme and has been stifled and replaced with complete devotion to Ingsoc. This is a conscious yet subconscious decision for protection. Syme, like many of the citizens of Oceania, internally understands that the Party’s beliefs should be the only foundation of one’s identity.
Although the Party has tried diligently to use its authority to overshadow aspects of individuality, for a period of time there still exists a residue of who the individual once was and what they could have been. Nevertheless, this residue is merely a shadow of an aspect of individuality, since the Party’s authority is strong enough to weaken this residue and slowly allow it to disappear. Mitzi M. Brunsdale notes that Orwell himself specified that “Goldstein’s Book was what Winston would have written if he could … put his thoughts in order” (147). This realization exposes how “fatally his own freedom as a creative individual has been perverted.” In the natural course of a person’s life, one explores ways to best express oneself, and perhaps if Winston had had the opportunity to build the strength of his critical thinking, he could have written as eloquently as Goldstein. But the Party has made it nearly impossible for Winston or any member of the society to grasp and enhance their abilities of expression. Keeping the mind, a tool for expression, dull is essential for keeping the Party the only entity being listened to.
Another way that the Party attempts to dismantle the self-contrived identity is by using torture and relief to impose new beliefs and ideas. When O’Brien asks Winston if he wishes for him to “persuade him to see five fingers” while he is holding four “or to really see them,” Winston truthfully says he wants to see them. This response immediately drives O’Brien to inflict more pain from the needle, as if he is punishing Winston for holding on to his previous knowledge of numbers. The exposure of personal opinions and prior knowledge is followed by pain in order for the conscious mind to reject the thoughts preceding torture. For the Party, punishment for introspective truth is ideal since it involves the abandonment of past and its outdated ideas and an understanding of new ideas the Party has created. While the body feels more pain, the mind commands itself to attach itself only to the concepts that relief will grant. When Winston looks at the fingers, he remembers beliefs and learned lessons he acquired prior to the party’s rise; however, he is not on the correct path to persuasion if he needs to actually see the fingers. The numbers must lose their significance in order for Winston to be persuaded that what he sees is five and not four. The only time O’Brien grants Winston the relief of the morphine shot is when Winston is unable to find his answer because of the overwhelming pain. Winston is “weaving in and out” of consciousness, making it “impossible to count the fingers” (Orwell 251). Not being able to determine whether there are four or five fingers gives room for O’Brien to teach the individual a new idea: To be cleaned of all prior ideas and have a steady hold on doublethink is the goal. For the citizen, the relief from the needle reinforces that, although there was previous knowledge of the numbers’ identity, this understanding must be muted, and the numbers must lose their meaning. Abbot Gleason makes the clear distinction that although the Party encourages its members to make their own judgements, they are never to “think and judge in a manner that conflicts with what the Party wants them to think and judge” (74). It is a matter of looking at the world through a lens the Party has created. There is no more room for past knowledge, independent thought, or personal beliefs. The citizens of Oceania will be punished until their natural beliefs are abandoned.
Every method to destroy the individual and replace it with the concept of the Party will persist and continue forever, thus making the Party everlasting. The discourse between O’Brien and Winston reveals the Party’s aims for the future. O’Brien shares that they are “already breaking down the habits of thought” and will destroy “all competing pleasures,” such as natural procreation, children, science, literature, art, and love. “There will be no love except the love of Big Brother,” and the only image that could possibly represent the future would be a giant boot stamping on a human face forever (Orwell 267). All of these “pleasures” themselves can place markers of remembrance on history, forever creating a legacy for generations to look at. But they all compete with the idea of the Party since some will paint their reality with one pleasure more than another will. The Party wants absolute attention and legacy; the idea is to remove all other distractions and focus entirely on Big Brother. John Atkins observes that it is “perfection of power” that the Party desires and that there would be “no victory to martyrise men who maintained their defiance to the end” (251). The citizens of Oceania must be “squeezed empty and filled with the Party’s essence.” Removing certain aspects of human nature that arise with the power of one’s own mind, such as contemplation and reason, gives the opportunity for the Party to be the only existing entity. No individual’s death matters; there is technically no death, for the Party lives on. In order for Ingsoc to infiltrate the rules and beliefs of all citizens of Oceania, the Party has created a power that is “neither universal nor exercised as a productive system” to help categorize where the authority lies. Instead, “Power becomes the State; the State is power” (Tyner 141). For the State to have complete power over its citizens, everything and everyone must be “squeezed empty.”
In 1984, George Orwell shows that the basis of any living species is survival. It is a fight to be able to live longer, and for humans especially, to be remembered. The Party’s goals and actions exemplify the value of basic survival. J. R. Hammond notes that every detail in Orwell’s vision of the world “ministers to the terrible logic in the police state,” “a world in which the individual has no place, a society where every aspect of life is subordinated to the state” (170). It is institutionally created for the permanent survival of Big Brother and the Party. Furthermore, the Party understands that death is inescapable but that the idea of survival is greater than death. Is there a way for survival to overcome physical death or, even in some cases, coexist? Indeed, a man can die today but live on for a hundred more years in the memories and beliefs of those in future generations. O’Brien justifies the Party to Winston by explaining it has established a mindset that challenges the idea that human nature is fixed, and if it is ever summoned, Human Nature will be “outraged by what we do and turn against us” (Orwell 269). Instead the Party itself creates human nature because “men are infinitely malleable.” They can be deterred from the idea that the Party is only a part of humanity and be moved towards the idea that “Humanity is the Party.” Others that are outside of the Ingsoc are helpless, irrelevant and like the animals. By creating this alternate course of the human experience, the Party is able to secure its existence and survival.
Looking at 1984 through a narrow lens disconnected from the essence of fantasy and reality is almost impossible; Orwell has created a book that “once read, becomes a part of the mental furniture of the reader” (Hammond 183). On some level, one can incorporate the ideas of 1984 into contemporary societies. Orwell’s book becomes more relatable as time passes, and many today reference the book to correlate the world of 1984 with our present reality. For example, as the telescreens always watching the citizens of Oceania are similar to our technology today being notorious for its watchful eye, the misuse of technology in Orwell’s novel and modern-day society are clear. Orwell’s novel is not only a warning, but it also represents the world we live in. Although Winston ultimately loves Big Brother, the novel demonstrates the power a certain group can have on an individual and society. Overall, the story of 1984 requires us to reflect upon our complacency with that which forcefully demands our attention and to understand the importance of creating our own thoughts and individuality. More importantly, we must also recognize the potential loss of our identities in the face of these powerful external forces.
Works Cited
Atkins, John. George Orwell: A Literary Study. Calder & Boyars, 1971.
Brunsdale, M Mitzi. Student Companion to George Orwell. Greenwood Press, 2000.
Carter, Michael. George Orwell and the Problem of Authentic Existence. Barnes & Noble Books,1986.
Gleason, Abbot. “Puritanism and Power Politics during the Cold War: George Orwell and Historical Objectivity.” On Nineteen Eighty-Four: Orwell and Our Future, edited by Abbot Gleason, Jack Goldsmith, and Martha C. Nussbaum, Princeton UP, 2005, pp. 73-85.
Hammond, J. R. A George Orwell Companion. The Macmillan Press, 1982.
Orwell, George. 1984. New American Library, Signet Classics, 1977.
Tyner, James. “Self and Space, Resistance and Discipline: A Foucauldian Reading of George Orwell’s 1984.” Social & Cultural Geography, vol. 5, no. 1, Mar. 2004, pp. 129-149. EBSCOhost, oaktonlibrary.oakton.edu:2048/login?url=https://oaktonlibrary.oakton.edu:2057/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url,cookie,uid&db=a9h&AN=13309895&site=ehost-live.
[1] The Oxford English Dictionary, “power” 1. a. “Ability to act or affect something strongly; physical or mental strength; might; vigour, energy; effectiveness.”