I dont write about the future, I try to prevent it. Ray Bradbury. Discuss how the dystopian novel 1984 is constructed in order to prevent a possible future.

evil image of the Party in our heads. He was scared of a totalitarian government, so he wrote 1984 to warn people about what the world would look like if there was a totalitarian government in charge. He based the look of the Party off the German Nazi Party and the Russian Communists at the time. WW2 had just finished as he started to write this novel, a protest novel in a way to show and tell the world about a totalitarian government. Throughout the novel we find out that the Party is the leader of one of the three super-states, Oceania. They are a Party that have complete control over everything people do. They can manipulate people into believing lies that they make up as the truth. ‘“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.”’ This shows what the Party’s ambitions are. They are only interested in power and that is the only way that they will be able to stay in charge of Oceania. If they lose their power then people will see that it will be their chance to overthrow them. In the novel, O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party, describes to Winston what the Party believes and wants the future to look like. ‘“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”’ This shows exactly what the Party wants the future to look like. The last sentence’s language is very powerful and gives us a very clear picture as to what the future would look like. More a metaphorical picture though. The idea of a face being trampled on is very horrific. The addition of the word forever at the end, just makes the line even spookier and adds to the whole mood of the paragraph. We can relate this to the outer Party members and the proles who to the Party are worthless and are figures of which the Party look sown upon and hate. The boot is the Party so society is being squashed, beaten and hated on by the Party. We can also sense that this paragraph is what Orwell was scared of. Something stamping on the faces of society in the near or later future. Orwell wanted to warn the people in the present and the future of this, and try to prevent it. A society of which has no opinion related to anything and is forced into doing the same thing every day, an emotionless society. Orwell was scared of the fast-paced change in the society he lived in, and because of this, he was worried that a party (like the Party in 1984) would use the rapidly changing society to their advantage. This is how language in 1984 makes us picture the world in the future and makes want to repel and avoid it.