George Orwell's 1984 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

George Orwell's 1984 - Essay Example The ideology followed by the government is Ingsoc, or English Socialism, and represents what the socialist revolution has evolved into in the English speaking state of Oceania. The single party government is totalitarian and has a carefully constructed structure to perpetuate its rule. This structure is founded on basic principles of restricting freedom of thought, surveillance of population, perpetual war, and obliteration of history and facts. Strictly enforced class difference is also part of the government’s philosophy of a way to stay in power. Restriction on independent thinking is enforced by creating a new language called Newspeak, devoid of any words or phrases even remotely linked to freedom or independent thought. Everyone in the state is expected to learn and adopt Newspeak and the party’s rationale is that, over time, all vocabulary relating to freedom would be removed from the language and, therefore, thought could be controlled. The party believes that since all crimes and negativity originate initially from a thought, people in the state can be controlled by controlling thought itself1. Another dimension of thought control is the concept of Doublethink. Doublethink allows the government to construct realities by introducing lies which could be told blatantly, believing them to be true. This is done by manipulating distortion of belief where contradictory meanings of words and situations are accepted. The government, depending on its needs, could change the context and use alternate meanings to suit itself at any time. Changing these contexts and creating justifications to lies is done through obliterating or changing history itself. Any references in history which are contrary to desired contexts are removed and, as a consequence, a lie is taken as reality. In Orwell’s words, this was â€Å"controlled insanity† through which the government controlled