Thursday, April 8, 2010

How do the ideologies enforced by the Party in Orwell's 1984 impact the psychological state of the citizens of Oceania?

Despite its rhetoric of progress, the true aim of the Party, as outlined in The Book and communicated to Winston by O'Brien, is to hold power perpetually and keep people ground down. To do this, most of the people must be kept, in the words of The Book, in poverty and ignorance. This is accomplished through never-ending warfare that uses up goods that could otherwise allow people to have a decent standard of living and leisure time to think for themselves. The ideology or belief system that buttresses this says that Big Brother is always right and must be treated with adulation, that the state is all-powerful, and that enemies, internal and external, are endlessly out to undermine the state and must be destroyed through warfare and purges. Under this belief system, a police state and constant surveillance are necessary for survival. The ideology that supports this endless warfare, surveillance, and propaganda leads to the following psychological make-up for a Party member in Oceania:



He should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war.



Until he falls in love with Julia, Winston primarily experiences hatred and fear: hatred of Big Brother, hatred of Julia, hatred of his life, and an enormous fear he will be found out for his thought crimes.


All of the four emotions, including adulation and triumph, are reinforced by the Two Minute hate sessions and the violent films people see. Winston journals about one of his experiences watching a film, in which audiences were conditioned to cheer an enemy mother and child being blown up. These emotions are also reinforced, as Julia understands, by keeping Party members sexually frustrated and then directing their pent-up anger and frustration at the enemy. Party members are also kept isolated from real intimacy so all their emotions are directed toward the party.


The Book lays the expected psychological state clearly:



A Party member is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party.



Proles, the 85 percent of the population that are not Party members, are kept in poverty and extreme ignorance. They will fight over a piece of a horse meat, as The Book puts it. While the Party doesn't care about them or their psychological state because they are not a threat, it is clear from the book's narrative that proles are also encouraged to live in fear and hatred of the enemy. Bombs fall on their dwellings and they go to the same violent films as Winston does. Proles' psychological states are unimportant to the Party, however, as long as they remain hopeless enough never to rebel.

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