Last year, I published an article on the propaganda in George Orwell's Animal Farm. I briefly touched on Nineteen Eighty-Four; of the text, Mario Varricchio writes that ‘in the standardized society depicted, the media upholds conformity, denying individuals their own privacy and personal feelings.’ Varricchio’s commentary implies that the Party forbids individuals expressing their beliefs and that the society has ‘been emptied of a sense of history and of memory of the past. In Airstrip One, the emptiness is filled with a host of propaganda’. The Party, similarly to the pigs of Animal Farm, utilise slogans, a form of the propaganda Varricchio writes of; ‘WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH’ are the Party’s official slogans. Despite each line being a paradox, in which conflict is synonymous with law, order and tranquillity, they are written upon the Ministry of Truth’s building, the organisation concerned with falsifying realities and creating new truths. Orwell in the beginning chapter is expressing that these contradictive statements are factual in this setting, hence their placement on the Ministry of Truth’s construction.
An additional slogan, that appears within the third paragraph of the opening chapter and conforms to Varricchio’s assertion that Orwell’s described society denies individuals having their own opinions, is ‘BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU’. The caption is placed underneath ‘the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall’, ‘one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move’. The Party appeal to fear and use slogans simultaneously in their propaganda here; the slogan implies that Airstrip One is a surveillance state, in which ones actions are constantly observed. The poster however, unlike the telescreen in Winston’s apartment, is not monitoring his actions, and yet Winston finds the picture ominous anyway as a result of the propaganda he has been subjected to. Emmanuel Goldstein writes that Big Brother is ‘infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, all held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration’. He is apparently responsible for every victory the Party has experienced, hence why submission to him is necessary. Whether he is a real person is never stated, though Goldstein writes that ‘we may be reasonably sure he will never die’, suggesting he is a fictional personification of the Party instead. Whilst completing his exercises, Winston attempts to recall ‘what year he has first heard mention of Big Brother’, concluding it ‘must have been some time in the ‘sixties, but it was impossible to be certain’. To the population, the dictatorship has, and always will be, omnipresent. The Party enforces its surveillance through their slogans, both of which are capitalised to emphasise the intensity of their propagated messages.
As previously mentioned, Winston works for the Ministry of Truth, the name of which is a misnomer. The Ministry ‘concerned itself with news, entertainment, education and the fine arts’, all forms of media that have been altered to propagate the Party’s principles. News in particular concerns itself with statistics and past events, their modification conveying the Party’s attempts to print falsehoods as facts and remove the population’s interpretation of events. As Carl Freedman writes, ‘Winston does his work of endless forgery and historical falsification in the Records Department’, Winston’s role similar to that of Squealer the pig, who too censors truth from the rest of the animals. Despite proposing for a time in which ‘thought is free’ and ‘truth exists’ in his diary and believing he is a ‘dead man’ for doing so, Winston alters one of Big Brother’s speeches. At his job, Winston pulled ‘the speakwrite towards him and began dictating in Big Brother’s familiar style’, Orwell’s use of the verb ‘dictating’ connotes the authoritarianism and dictatorship Big Brother is said to project. Orwell also comments on the familiarity of Winston modifying records; despite his hatred of Big Brother, he has been forced to find a routine in creating these falsehoods. Orwell calls Big Brother’s style ‘military and pedantic’, ‘because of a trick of asking questions and then promptly answering them (‘What lessons do we learn from this fact comrades?)’. Similarly, to Squealer, the noun ‘comrades’, which connotes companionship and equality, is utilised, however, the population of Airstrip One are not under the impression that they are held in the same ranks as the Party. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell uses the noun mockingly to create the divide between the Inner Party and the Outer Party and proles, instead of explicitly capitalising on the proles lack of intellect.
Julia’s work in the Fiction Department bares similarities to Winston’s role in the Records Department in that both are complicit in propagating messages. Winston assumes she works on a ‘novel-writing machine’, a contraption presumably created by the Inner Party to not only produce extensive amounts of pamphlets but to prevent anyone from becoming a writer. Julia claims she doesn’t care for reading, believing that ‘books were just a commodity that has to be produced, like jam or bootlaces’. Julia maintains that books are a necessity but simultaneously claims she doesn’t care for reading. Her disinterest stems from lack of interest, she tells Winston ‘I’m not literary, dear’, the propaganda she is subjected to a result of the news Winston edits. Literature, more so than the news, provides entertainment. The escapism and relief literature can provide the intellectually superior can unintentionally propagate principles, hence Julia’s role in modifying the fiction and presenting it as fact for the intellectually superior. Julia’s work conveys the Party’s totalitarian control; they control all modes of media, even novels that large proportions of the population will not read.
Thank you for reading! See you soon,
Karisma xx