The Green caldron - University Library

March, 1959
GEORGE
!
Void World-1984
Stephen D. Marciietti
Rhetoric 101, Theme 6
ORWELL, THE AUTHOR OF 1984, IS KNOWN AS A
brilliant political writer whose insight and perception are quite alarming
because of their accuracy and because of the profound messages they
reveal. With this in mind, one can recognize the purpose of 1984, since after
the first few pages, he can feel the presence of something which must be
explained in political and economic terms.
Winston Smith, the book's main character, and the shabby world in
which he lives immediately convey the message that there is definitely something
wrong with the way of life in the year of 1984. So radically wrong
is this way of life that the reader is shocked, startled, appalled. And a realization
of Orwell's purpose is immediate. The reader feels that he must know
why and how such a state of existence could ever result from today's glorified
forms of government—even how our own form of democracy could possibly
deteriorate to a hopelessly totalitarian form of government. This is Orwell's
purpose: to write a novel that is so radical in theme and content that it
demands the full attention of the reader, focuses that attention on the fact
that through our carelessness and unconcerned attitude toward government,
the world of 1984 is not improbable—that we are only a few steps away
from it
The world of 1984 is a pitifully shabby one in which men merely exist,
having ceased to live in the sense that we know life. It is a world of tele-
screens and Thought-Police, of mass frenzied hates and of hysterical adora-
tion of "Big Brother," the personified head of the Party. It is a world in
which intellectual activity has been crushed, leaving the minds of men but
empty shells to be filled with grains of party doctrine whenever and however
the party chooses. No thought exists other than that approved by the party.
"Newspeak," the official language of the party, is a wanton liquidation of
words with the hope that eventually thought itself will be so limited by a
lack of words that it will be impossible to think anything but party doctrine.
There is no reason other than that of "double-think," which causes the terms
"IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH," "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY," and
"WAR IS PEACE" to ring true in the minds of 1984 as do "In God We
Trust" and "E Pluribus Untim" ring true to us. Philosophically it is a
world void of truth and hope, of faith in fellow men and in oneself. Physically
it is a world of poverty and filth, of countless unsatisfied desires.
Life in 1984 is an existence of hunger and want. It is a world of cities
ravished by continual war. Visualize the havoc of post-war Europe in our
time and you have a picture of the physical state of the world in 1984. More-
over, imagine yourself living among the shambles of a war-torn city with
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