1984 - Part 1 - The setting of the dystopia

1984 was written in 1949 by George Orwell. In the book, by 1984 people live in a dystopia. (Sorry if this isn't very organized and seems a little confusing, I'm mostly trying to organize my thoughts about the book)

The first part of the book mostly presents the world in which the main character, Winston Smith, lives in. The government is control by a group called 'The Party.' The leader, or at least figure head, is called 'Big Brother.' There are many posters that say 'Big Brother Is Watching You' that Winston sees in his daily life, and the posters are correct. Rather at home, at work, or even in the bathroom, Winston and his fellow party members are pretty much always watched, by these things called telescreens (think of it as camera that is angled to see as much as possible, with a pretty good microphone on it). The telescreens can also be used basically as a telephone, however they can never be turned off, and the Party could be watching yours at any given time.

As I said, Winston works for the party. He is one of the many people who changed written history. He says that he doesn't know what each of his other co-workers do all day, but he is fairly sure he isn't the only one changing what's been written about the past. He sits in his cubical, and gets orders to change what was written in a book, newspaper, magazine, or any form of written record, so that it says what the party wants it to say now. An example of this would be that one day the chocolate rations were changed from 30 grams a day to 20 grams a day. However, previously the party had stated that chocolate rations won't be lowered during that quarter. So someone had to go in and change the news to say that the rations had been raised to 20 grams, only two or three days after the change. One thing I've noticed is that Winston mostly gets told to change minor things in Time magazine.

I just find how much control this Party has over it's people to be almost scary. There's even a group called the ThoughtPolice; yes, you can be punished (even killed) for thinking the wrong things, it's called a ThoughtCrime. Even language is trying to be controlled; there are two ways in which people speak English in the book, OldSpeak and NewSpeak. OldSpeak is the form of English we speak. NewSpeak has many words cut out of it (like 'bad' isn't a word in it, you say 'ungood' if something is bad), and some words are understood to be a good thing when referring to the Party or Big Brother or the country's allies, and are understood to be a bad thing when referring to the enemy. The purpose of NewSpeak seems to be to make it impossible to think about the Party or Big Brother being a bad thing. During the time the book is at, the Party is trying to "improve" NewSpeak, and when they're finished, OldSpeak will one day die out (I'm guessing by force). The party effects how children grow up and how they become; many parents have been turned in to the ThoughtPolice by their own children according to Winston. I'm not sure if this is completely allowed on this site, but the party has even taken the pleasure out of being in bed with your partner (it's ONLY for having children, who grow up to become party members); I'm not going to go into detail, but it has to do with conditioning the way the women think.

I have avoid saying things like 'everyone' because there is a group that isn't so controlled by the Party. They are seen as not as capable as members of the party. The group is called the proles. They live in slightly worse conditions, and get bombed sometimes, but they have a free market and freedoms. They don't have telescreens, or any type of police.

Personally, I would rather live with the proles; the Party members aren't even allowed to keep a journal. While the party members do have better living conditions, it isn't by very much. I'm not going to go into detail, but party members like Winston don't live in all that great of conditions.

In class, my teacher lecture us about what a utopia, an anti-utopia, and a dystopia are. However, my teacher doesn't always just come out and say things when he lectures. Utopia basically translates to "no place" and "prefect place" at the same time. An anti-utopia is what happens when a utopia goes wrong, a non-prefect (or sucky) place. I'm still not sure about what a dystopia is. However, I remember that during his lecture, I thought to myself that the point of the book might be to serve as the opposite of a self fulling prophecy. There's probably a name for that, but I don't know of it (other than maybe the word 'warning').