Frca 1

Ioana Frca

Professor Erika Mihlycsa

20th Century British Literature

25 January 2017

Language in totalitarian state

George Orwell, the pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, essayist and

critic. He was born on 25 June 1903, in Motihari. He is known for his satirical and dystopian

fiction with such works as Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the most of his works, he

has strong doubts about the government and social order. He was a man of strong opinions who

addresses political themes in his work:

The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I

knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936

has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for

democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period

like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone

writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one

takes and what approach one follows. (Why I write)

He was a very important writer of the 20th century and became an inspiration for many writers,

for example, the term Orwellian is often used in reference to authors who do the same work.

Orwell states in his essay Why I Write that each authors subject matter will be

determined by the age he lives in -- at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our

own -- but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which

he will never completely escape. (Why I write ) and he also talks about four reasons of writing
 Frca 2

such as sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purposes showing the

desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples idea of the kind of society

that they should strive after. (Why I Write).

He also states in another essay, Politics and the English Language, that the society in

which he lives is in decline, so the language is in decline, both language and society are subject

to the same decadence. The decadence of language it is the caused by political and economic

reasons, this decline can be prevented by the writer, by using good English, and it is not

permanent. He argues that the first step toward political regeneration is to think clearly. In his

vision language is not a tool through which the writer expresses his own purposes, but is seen as

a natural growth.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) was published in 1948. The Last Man in Europe was the

original title that Orwell intended to choose, but his publisher disagreed and he finally chooses

1984. There are many theories about the books title that scholars talk about. The common belief

is that he wanted it to be a warning by reflecting contemporary society. He switched around the

year 1948, the year when he wrote the book and appears as a dark mirror to the society in which

he lives. The book is a dystopian novel. Dystopia, as it is defined in the dictionary, is a society

characterized by human misery, as oppression, disease and overcrowding. It tells the story of

Winston Smith and his desire to oppose against the totalitarian regime, which characterizes the

state in which he lives. The story can be told in three parts: the first part shows Winstons hopes,

his personal reason and the background of the novel. The second shows the relationship between

Winston and Julia and in the third part Winston is captured and reprogrammed. Along with

Aldous Huxley's book entitled Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of the most

famous and cited works of dystopian fiction in literature.

 Frca 3

Harold Bloom says in his work: Nineteen Eighty-Four was fundamentally a product of

its authors political experience. (Bloom 12). In other words, Orwells political perceptions and

social characteristics are embodied in Winston Smith, he is a personification of its. The novel

background is very interesting and presents us a view of the future and how the society, ruled by

a rigid totalitarianism, would look like if there will not be any changes. The novel is set in

Oceania and the world which Orwell creates is ruled by a Government which main constitutes

are Big Brother which is an entity that controls the society and four branches:

They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire

apparatus of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned

itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of

Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which

maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible

for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv,

and Miniplenty. (Nineteen Eighty-Four 7)

The first chapter begins with the portrait of Big Brother as it appears on a poster: On

each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It

was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU (Orwell 3). The message has a double meaning, on one

hand, Big Brother protects people and is interested in their fate; on the other hand, this entity

oversees everything. The society described in the novel is similar to the Stalinist Soviet Union

and the Nazi society led by Hitler.

 Frca 4

As the novel is set in a world ruled by the totalitarianism regime, the language becomes a

powerful tool, it was the main tool for propaganda and a way to controlling the population by the

Government. Roberto Ranieri said in his essay Language and Power that:

The device that makes totalitarian domination possible is clearly shown in

the novel as a scheme that operates in order not only to manipulate, but mainly

to define the domain of truth: the Newspeak ... Undeniably, by controlling

language and information through a complex coercive apparatus, the Party

realizes a mind control of its subjects that is total in both extension and

intensity. In extension, because the totality of the subjects is dominated; in

intensity, because any individual thought is totally dominated.

The Newspeak is a fictional language invented by Orwell, is the official language of his fictional

world Oceania. In the Appendix to his novel that is entitled The Principle of Newspeak, Orwell

states that: The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the

world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of

thought impossible. He also emphasizes that Newspeak is divided into three categories

distinguished by the formation of words. These categories are known as the A vocabulary

(contains the most common words in English, their meaning is strictly delimited) the B

vocabulary (also called compound words with political meaning, all the words in this category

are subordinated to the concept of Doublethink), and the C vocabulary (it is composed

exclusively of technical and scientific expressions). Doublethink is used for a better control of

the individual mind and it is defined in Nineteen Eighty-Four as:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while

telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which

 Frca 5

cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them,

to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to

believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of

democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back

into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to

forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself

that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and

then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just

performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of

doublethink. (Nineteen Eight-Four 44)

To conclude, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel that emphasizes the place of the

language in a totalitarian state. This state is Oceania, one of the three powers (Oceania, Eurasia,

Eastasia) that are fighting into a war without a cause. The war is a way to keep alive the peoples

fear, to focus their hatred towards a defined enemy and ultimately to control them. The past is

mystified and language is adjusted with the new values of society. George Orwells 1984 is a

bleak vision of the future that he foresees in 1948 when he wrote the novel.
 Frca 6

Works cited

Orwell, George, Such, Such Were The Joys, "Why I Write, New York, 1953

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ebook Collection www.planetbook.com/ebooks/1984.pdf

Bloom, Harold, Blooms Guides: 1984, Chelsea House, New York, 2004

Ranieri, Roberto. Language and power George Orwells 1984 and Cormac McCarthys The Road

as sources for a critical study on ecclesial discursivity and hermeneutic. Disputatio

philosophica : International journal on philosophy and religion, January 2017, 95-102. Hrcak

Web. 19 Feb. 2017

Orwell, George. Politics and the English Language Resort. 1946. Web. 20 Feb.

2017. http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/dystopia Web. 19 Feb. 2017

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak Web. 19 Feb. 2017

Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Appendix. The Principles of Newspeak. Web. 20 Feb.

2017 https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79n/appendix.html