How is 1984 terrifying?

used theses camps to punish people during the second world war, as Orwell and other people living in 1949 experienced. The idea was daunting as this kind of dictatorship experienced in “nineteen eighty-four” was reality and had happened in some form to the people in 1949. To these people, they had seen it happen and thus making nineteen eighty-four very believable. The ideas of Stalin and Hitler are shown many times in the novel. In the novel, it says that, every morning the people woke up to do a series of exercises. They were called “Physical jerks” that each party member had to do without showing dismay, annoyance or tiredness. This was to keep them at physical peak. To keep them in training. This was something Hitler did with the ‘Hitler Youth.´ The people had to make sure that they did not show any emotion on their face as the Telescreen was always watching them. The Telescreen was summed up, with this statement,‘People could not let their thoughts wander in front of [the Telescreen] as their facial features may not be perfectly under control.´ Every party member had a Telescreen in their homes, which could tap in at anytime and monitor their movements, but apart from the Telescreen, the people were always being warned that Big Brother was always watching them in many different ways. The novel describes how ‘There were posters on every corner reminding citizens that Big Brother was always watching them.´ The Thought Police and Police Patrol also made sure people never forgot that fact. There were ‘helicopters skimming down on between the roofs, a sign of the police patrol snooping into people´s window.´ At one point Orwell describes the streets as colourless except for the posters of Big Brother. Big Brother was everywhere so no one could escape.     Another terrifying aspect in the novel, was the loss of relationships. Big Brother eradicated all relationships between friends, lovers and family members. The loss of relationships between friends is shown in the fact that people were not allowed to love each other, only Big Brother. This brings in the relationships between Winston and O´Brien. At first, they seem to have taken to each other, but in the end we find out that O´Brien double-crossed Winston and that he couldn´t trust someone he thought was his friend. The party did not want people to trust or have feelings for one another. A perfect example is, in the ministry of love, where a chinless man dropped a piece of bread for a starving fellow inmate. The man (who dropped the bread) was immediately punished, by being beaten until he bled. A normal person, in the ‘starving inmate´s position´ would have felt indebted to the man, as he was punished for trying to feed him, but moments after guards came in to take the inmate who was given the bread immediately betrayed the man who gave him the bread. Telling the guards to take him (chinless) to room 101 instead. This would have surely pleased Big Brother, as the eradication of friendship would be the party´s main goal. When the request was not replied, the man pleaded that they rather slit throat of his wife and all his children than send him to room 101. This man was betraying his own family members. This would have pleased Big Brother.People came to the conclusion that one could not trust anybody in fear that they would report them to the thought police, where one would be vaporised. This was true when dealing with people´s families. In the ministry of love when Winston meets Parson who tells him how his daughter betrayed him when she heard him talking of overthrowing the party in his sleep. Other families were destroyed by the loss of respect between parents and children. People were refusing to obey their parents, as Big Brother encouraged them to do. The relationships between lovers were also controlled by the party, as they annihilate all the pleasures and desires of having sex and even promote artificial insemination. The party did not like sex as when two people share the experience they begin to love each other. The party then begins to put negative thought behind the idea of sex. This is illustrated during the two minutes that Winston describes Julia as “sexless”. During the relationship, Julia and Winston have to meet in secret. When they meet in secret from directions passed to each other on a note, so the prying eyes of the Telescreen do not catch them. This is particularly scary as nowadays, love is seen as a beautiful thing, not a secret affair.     The last and final terrifying aspect of “nineteen eighty-four”, is the idea of all the power that Big Brother holds. Big Brother is a dictator with so much power that he is able to make people love him and fear him all at the same time. He controls them. The most dangerous thing about it is that Orwell does not really tell us whether or not Big Brother exists as he is Hitler, Stalin and Lenin all rolled into one, this time unstoppable, making it more real to readers as these are real people. Orwell believed that there would be a communist leader that would practise capitalism and still rule. This is exactly what Big Brother did. Orwell blends the terrifying aspects that the people experienced of communism and capitalism in his portrayal of Big brother´s totalitarianism. Orwell describes the situation of the people in great detail when he wrote the description of the lives led by the people. Although the conditions were very poor, The party convinced people conditions fourty years ago, conditions were worse and that Big Brother was improving things. ‘Day and night, the Telescreen bruised people´s ears with news and information of how [people] were better off than people fourty years ago.´ Because of all this propaganda making Big Brother seem like a God, Big Brother was able to scare people into hating the people that were a threat to the party. People like Goldstein. This was the reason of the two minutes hate. The two-minute hate was another example of the lack of individuality. Every party member was forced to take part. During the two minutes hate, people were watched for signs of “Unorthodox behaviour. ” In the event, Winston sees Julia. He then has fantasies about her. These fantasies, although full of hateful thoughts, illustrate the passion he feels for her, but the fact that he thinks of being with her in these horrible scenarios, shows the way that Big Brother is able to control feelings. What I mean is when one person lusts after another, they have fantasies of being together in a place they would describe as paradise. They do not want to rape them in horrific scenes. The amount of passion he feels for Julia makes him want to be with her, but because he can´t, he has built up anger and hatred inside him. The picture of Goldstein shown in these two minutes, conjures up hate for the people. This is important, as people like Goldstein and his followers, the proles, were the biggest threat to the party. The people saw the proles as outcasts and propaganda made the people hate them. This is similar to the propaganda Hitler used against the Jews in the late 1930´s, so the people are able to relate. It was easy for Big Brother to make the people do this, as the people could not remember what life was like without a ruler (like Big Brother) to tell them what to do. Big Brother eliminated the past by destroying records and rewrote it. People, especially party members could not have memories. They were completely under Big Brother´s control. In conclusion there are many terrifying aspects, but none more terrifying than the other is. Each is terrifying in it´s own way and all point to the fact that most of these things did, could have, and could still happen. Orwell realised this and that inspired him to write an ‘account of the future´ which is what “nineteen eighty-four” was to him and others living in 1949. Although terrifying now, these things would have been more terrifying in 1949, because, the things Orwell described had happened to them in some form. For example, the threats of labour camps, them being told that the Jews (Goldstein) were the enemy, capitalist dictatorship. So this book would have been the terrifying reality to the people of that time. At the time this novel was written, the Russian revolution and World War II was the reality and these things were happening in Russia. So in answer to the question, this novel would have been much more terrifying in 1949, because to them this book was real life.