How Orwell's 1984 is Relevant to Today's Audience

1984 is a dystopian novel based on the horrors of World War II to create a warning about the fate of humankind. In the novel, 1984, George Orwell crafts a text that can be read and interpreted by two different readers: through the eyes of the people whom he wrote for, the society of 1948, and to the audience of today, the society of 2019, in order to reveal the ominous tendencies: social, technological, and political, that have evolved and are relevant today.

Social ominous tendencies that are prevalent today are highlighted when Orwell incorporates the Oceanic concepts of Newspeak and Doublethink into the text. Newspeak is the oceanic language made by Orwell that decreases the number of words used in a society; a patron of Newspeak says: “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it”. The point of Newspeak is to limit one’s intellect, “narrow the range of thought”, so people can not recognize that there is a problem, like that of Big Brother’s totalitarian control over the 1984 society, since they will not be able to articulate the problem in their mind, due to thought control, and aspect of the social ominous tendency that Orwell employs, or aloud due to the lack of verbiage. Through the reader’s perspective of a 1948 citizen, someone who has encountered wars, Newspeak can be correlated to the short-clipped notes or code systems of wartime that were used to confuse enemies, preventing them from knowing one another’s plans. During this time, messages were shortened or written in code to conceal the enclosed contents inhibiting enemies from being able to comprehend the ‘next move’. Then from the perspective of a citizen from today’s society of 2019, Newspeak could be compared to current day ‘text-slang’, which consists of acronyms and shortened words used in speech or when relaying electronic messages. Like Newspeak, ‘text-slang’ cuts verbiage short and abrupt as means of convenience but it lacks the proper tone necessary for the recipient’s interpretation. In the case of 1984, Orwell likely eradicates language via Newspeak to make an extreme example of how limiting one’s expression of language has a negative impact on society, which is shown through the dynamic character of Winston. This extreme example is meant to make readers evaluate the social implications engrained upon them and the idea itself applies to whom Orwell wrote for: 1948 and to present readers of 2019. Once Orwell has established the premise of Newspeak and its potential implications on society, he goes on to divulge the social ominous tendencies of DoubleThink, an extension of Newspeak. To put DoubleThink into simple terms, Newspeak is apart of the surface culture of the 1984 society, while DoubleThink is involved in the deep culture. To portray this, Orwell writes: “Newspeak…demands a continuous alteration of the past…which is known in Newspeak as doublethink. The alteration of the past is necessary…[so] the Party member, like the proletarian, tolerates present-day conditions partly because he has no standards of comparison….but by far the more important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the party”. To the 1984 society that Orwell crafts, the concept of DoubleThink is used to maintain the authority of Big Brother, “to safeguard the infallibility of the party”. The notion of DoubleThink is not just something of Orwell’s imagination as horrible as it sounds, but a practice that has been used by many throughout history; from long before 1948 to present-day 2019. A 1948 reader might think of Joseph Stalin’s five-year plans to help Russia’s agriculture and industrialization thrive that failed miserably, resulting in great purges to those who questioned his authority leading to Stalin’s “infallibility” and people’s willingness to ‘love’ their leader. Fast forward to 2019, despite criticism, this tactic is still being used by people such as the current United States President Trump. Trump, for example, has claimed that he had the ‘biggest inaugural party ever’ when in fact there was a substantially smaller crowd than at previous presidents’ inaugurations. Later Trump clarified that ‘alternative facts’ about the official count of people who attended his inaugural party were given, since the press only counted who was there in person, leaving out those who viewed it at home on the telescreen. The ‘alternative facts’ were accepted by society and then society moved on to other issues, making President Trump infallible. Orwell foresaw that society would become complacent with negative deep cultural normalities that would manifest into social ominous tendencies and he wanted to warn against them. The difference between the reception of the two audiences of 1948 and 2019 is that 2019’s society has learned from the precedent making them more likely to doubt one’s infallibility. In brief, Orwell chose prevalent topics, such as Newspeak and DoubleThink, that highlighted social ominous tendencies when crafting 1984.

After making readers aware of social ominous tendencies, Orwell employs technological ominous tendencies to make readers aware of the lack of their privacy, a postulation that can be observed by two different readers. In 1984, a telescreen, which is a technological device for entertainment, is always on: watching and listening. As Orwell puts it, “The telescreen…was…placed…where…Winston was able to remain outside of range…so far as sight went. He could be heard, of course, but so long as stayed in his present position he could not be seen”. The action of a telescreen constantly watching and listening to every move of a citizen of 1984 strips them of their privacy, an assumed innate ‘right’. As reading from a 1948 perspective, one might relate to the citizens of 1984 and the telescreen since, during World War II, most people had on a radio that was constantly relaying the progress of the war. Radios were items that kept people informed of the extent of casualties but they were also used against citizens when banned and information withheld or manipulated as means of a dictator maintaining control by taking away the source of a citizen’s knowledge via technological control, invading their private affairs. A 1948 citizen might interpret Orwell’s use of technological control as a warning against how much one might rely on technology since the information given from technology is not always reliable. While technology might not have impeded as much on the privacy of 1948 readers, the reader of 2019 has access to all sorts of technology such as the internet, Siri, baby monitors, or cell phones that take away from one’s privacy since they monitor the environment they are placed in, including who is in the environment. A present-day reader might interpret Orwell’s use of technological control the same: a warning against the extent of which people rely on technology but in the context of 2019, being the extent to which technology has been integrated into society making it almost impossible to imagine a world without it. On top of telescreens, Orwell parades spies who use technology to monitor 1984 citizens. To the 1984 society, “Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. Wherever he may be, asleep or awake, working or resting, in his bath or in bed, he can be inspected without warning and without knowing that he is being inspected”. Orwell uses spies to serve as a collective social network designed to expose Party members’ disloyalty to Big Brother. After reading about the 1984 inner-party spies who mimic the Gestapo,the 1948 reader might think of World War II spies who used radios, a form of technology, to scheme. On the other hand, a 2019 reader might think of how terrible being constantly observed would be while not realizing the lack of their own privacy. Anything can be tracked on the internet nowadays, making it much easier for someone to ‘spy’ on someone else than in 1948. A reader from 2019 is most likely unaware of the lack of privacy they have and might take heed Orwell’s warning against technology.

Finally, in 1984, Orwell also uses ominous political tendencies to convey continuous trends that readers from 1948 or that of today, 2019, can interpret in their own lives. Orwell writes of Oceania’s “four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided: the Ministry of Truth,…the Ministry of Peace,…the Ministry of Love,…and the Ministry of Plenty. The Ministry of Love…was…impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests”. A reader from 1948 might think of the continuous trend of government outlines that structure a government, such as that of the U.S. government. The multiplicity of the “four Ministries” could be interpreted as the three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial while the complexity of the “Ministries” like the “Ministry of Love” might be thought of as the checks and balances on each of the three branches of government. A 1948 reader might also think of the political corruption of governments and how authorities can misuse power to their advantage leaving the greater society to the disadvantage. After reading about 1984’s government, a 2019 reader might compare 1984’s government to the U.S.’s current immigration system since both have ‘hoops’ people have to ‘jump’ through to achieve their goal, an ever-long way of maintaining supremacy. Currently, at the U.S. border of Mexico, President Trump plans to build a wall with “barbed-wire” that would make it arduous to enter the country without meeting rigorous demands. Both readers would probably agree that the 1984 society is unjust but that it does mirror the society of both readers on the account of following a trend of political control. Additionally, Orwell addresses the totalitarian leader of the 1984 society Big Brother who is “infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration”. Readers of 1948 and 2019 would most likely take away that there is a leader who is abusing power to maintain status at the top of the caste system, a political trend to maintain or gain power, but the interpretation is where the two might differ due to the situations in which they could draw relevance to. A reader of 1948 might interpret Big Brother’s Political actions as they might that of Hitler; Hitler started his campaign on good intentions of trying to build a sense of nationality for Germans but along the lines, Hitler abused his power to create a ‘pure’ race of people by the discrimination and death of anyone he deemed inferior; which was morally wrong like Big Brother’s. A 2019 reader, however, might compare Big Brother’s political actions to that of Supreme Leader of North Korea: Kim Jong-un, someone who has maintained a strict dictatorship. From their own interpretations of relevance, both readers can deduct Orwell’s use of Big Brother was to comment on the effect of controlling political leaders.

Over the course of analysis and comparison, it can be seen that Orwell conforms to the dystopian genre by foreshadowing many unfortunate tendencies that can be seen by past and present audiences. In conclusion, Orwell crafts a text that can be read and interpreted through the eyes of the people whom he wrote for, the society of 1948, and to the audience of today, the society of 2019, in order to reveal the ominous tendencies: social, technological, and political, that have evolved and are relevant today.   

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