There are many other, more subtle ways in which the Party controls the lives of the people in Oceania. These include control of relationships and manipulation of emotions, suppression of individuality and perhaps most importantly the use of force, both seen and unseen. In this essay, I will explore each of these aspects in more detail, as well as some others.
The first way the party controls people’s lives in 1984 is through the monitoring and control of people’s relationships. If Party members wish to marry they have to approach a committee, and they are likely to be refused permission if they have any genuine affection or love for each other, even more so if they have physical desire. Party members are not allowed to marry proles, and although prostitution is technically forbidden it is not an offence punishable by death, but more likely by a few years in a forced labour camp – a relatively mild punishment. Also, most children are members of the spies and the junior anti-sex league, and they are encouraged to spy on their parents and others around them, reporting any suspicious behaviour to the authorities.
A second method by which the Party controls Oceania citizens’ lives in 1984 is by the use of advanced technology, and changing the truth, as Winston does in the Ministry of Truth. The telescreens, as well as constantly churning out pro-Party propaganda, monitor the citizens, so can see all their actions and hear everything they say. This is proved in Part One of the novel during the physical jerks, when Winston stops concentrating for a minute and is shouted at by the voice from the telescreen, saying he is not trying. The advanced technology of the thought police, including vapourisation, is what any thought criminal fears, and the thought police itself is a product of extraordinarily advanced technology – they can monitor the citizens’ thoughts, and you can be arrested for merely thinking something which is not in praise of the Party. In Winston’s workplace, the Ministry of Truth, the memory hole is used to eliminate records which are no longer true, so that the Party’s version of truth cannot be contradicted, and the speakwrite, which Winston also uses at his job in the Ministry of Truth, is also an advanced piece of technology.
A third method of control used by the Party is control of the language, using the Party regulated language “Newspeak”. This is referred to by Syme as “the only language in which the vocabulary gets smaller year by year”. The Party’s aim is to reduce the vocabulary to such an extent that it is impossible for thoughtcrime to be committed, as people will have no words with which to express it. This shows how great the control of the party over the ordinary people is, as they can prevent people from doing what they do not want them to do simply by not giving them the necessary vocabulary to do so.
Other methods of control used by the Party are emotional manipulation and suppression of individuality. There are many compulsory community events, such as the two minute hate, and the non-compulsory public hangings and propaganda films. All party members wear blue overalls, which stops them from expressing themselves through the way that they dress, and this is commented on by Julia later in the novel. As the episode Parsons mentions where his daughter and her friends handed a man over to the patrols for “wearing a funny kind of shoes” shows, even such a seemingly insignificant thing as wearing a different sort of clothes can have you arrested and killed under this regime. Another example of emotional manipulation is again the two minute hate, where the gathered people begin chanting “B-B! B-B!” The mysterious Party figure of Big Brother is constantly used in propaganda, his face is everywhere on posters, and the Party slogan “Big Brother is watching you” shows how the people are scrutinised. The people almost seem to worship Big Brother, again proving the immense control the Party has.
The most common, and unsubtle, method of control that the Party uses is the use of force to control the citizens. There are public hangings of prisoners, and the Ministry of Love is guarded by armed soldiers, who will shoot without warning if you trespass. The public all know that thought criminals will be vapourised, and indeed this happens to Winston’s friend Syme later in the novel, as Winston predicts when he thinks “unquestionably Syme will be vapourised”. This is made all the more horrific because of the fact that Syme commits no actual crime, but is simply vapourised for being too intelligent, as this could endanger the Party’s security – he is clever enough to understand that there could be a better life, the way the Party treats them is not the only possible way of life.
The final of the significant ways the Party uses to control the citizens of Oceania is the use of poor material conditions to keep the citizens’ minds focused on other things than what the Party is doing. As Winston says in Part One of the novel, there is nearly always some crucial object in short supply, such as razor blades, the example we are given in Part One of the novel. The reason for this seems the same as the reason for the argument between the proles about saucepans which is also mentioned – by keeping people focused on small, insignificant parts of day-to-day life you can prevent them from thinking about things the Party would prefer them not to be considering.
In general, I think that in Part One of 1984, George Orwell sets the scene for the rest of the novel by outlining the Party control over everyone’s thoughts and actions, which becomes very significant later in the novel. I think this is very effective, because it mentions some things briefly which will be explained in more detail later in the novel, thus maintaining the reader’s interest and giving them something they can look back to when they read further on. I think that Part One of 1984 is very interesting, as it explores a society which is completely different to ours in Great Britain today, but which is still believable, and indeed almost the same as North Korea in our modern-day society, nearly 60 years after the novel was published for the first time. I think that 1984 is a novel which is significant in modern society, as it shows how serious a regime such as that of Oceania can be, and how damaging an effect it can have on society.
