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Nineteen Eighty-Four was written by a major contributor to anticommunist
literature around the World War II period, and is one of the greatest stories of
an anti-utopian society ever. Nineteen Eighty-Four was not written solely as an
entertaining piece of literature or as a dream of what the future could be like,
it was written as a warning of what could happen as a result of communism and
totalitarianism. This was not necessarily a widely popular vision of the future
at the time of publication, but it was certainly considered a possibility by
many people. The popular vision of the future, if analyzed as from a character
in the book's point of view, sometimes changes, depending on the character. The
mass of people, the proletarians, have a single vision of what the future is.
However, Winston, and others who have had the same experience as him, have a
different view of the future after leaving the Ministry of Love. Their were many
different visions of the future at the time when Nineteen Eighty-Four was
written. Some people believed that the world superpowers would conquer the weak
nations of the world and democracy would rule everything. Some believed that the
world would stay as it was in 1948, as many individual nations, and somewhere in
the future we would drive cars through the air and live on the moon. Others
feared that communism, totalitarianism, and socialism would spread throughout
the world, and that everyone would suffer under these undesirable economic and
political structures. It was on this basis that Nineteen Eighty-Four was
written. George Orwell's idea of a totalitarian society is frighteningly
realistic, and could easily have been construed as a possibility of what the
world might have been like in 1984. In the 19th century many different visions
of the future have entertained our society, been marketed, and teased the minds
of millions. Television shows such as the Jetsons and countless movies like Star
Wars, Logan's Run, Back to the Future, and many others have greatly influenced
how we as a society view and have viewed the future. The recurring ideas we seem
to have are of flying cars, robots that do our chores, faster modes of
transportation; basically anything that will make our lives easier. One of the
most evident examples of this today is the remote control. By using the remote
control no one has to get up to change the channel, therefore using less energy
and making life that much easier. By making everything easier it is believed by
many that they will be happier with less things to do, but in actuality it will
eventually stamp out existence. This same idea is present in Nineteen
Eighty-Four, starting with the concept of Newspeak. Newspeak is a concise
edition of the English language in which some words are combined and many words
are cut out in order to enhance the ease of speaking. Syme, one of Winston's
friends said in the novel, Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to
narrow the range of thought? . . . Every concept that can ever be needed will be
expressed by exactly one word . . . all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and
forgotten. The obvious idea presented by this statement is that humankind is
lazy and that Newspeak will make it easier for humans to communicate. However,
there is a much deeper meaning behind Newspeak and why it was created. By
eliminating words from people's vocabularies, their ability to revolt against
the Party or to express their feelings about the Party is therefore eliminated
as well. The Party will therefore be everlasting once, all real knowledge of
Oldspeak will have disappeared. as Syme said. The Party is able to control the
vision of the future and the future itself by controlling the past. It hires
people like Winston to make sure that everything that has ever happened agrees
exactly with what the Party said or predicted.
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