In 1984, It is a time in which there are many wars between countries, politics is always ahead in these wars, which governs and of course the people who follow it. In the book just happens what happened at that time and the protagonist tells what is happening and how it is happening. My theme is about religion and how people followed who preached. in 1984 the “God” called Big Brother was the one who commanded the most in the whole town and the people had to follow his rules and everything he said, if otherwise you could get into trouble or be punished by the god himself. 1984 is an account of a party which emulates religion in its invasion and control of peoples’ personal lives.
In most societies of the past, simple economy was the main motivation for class division and political systems. Those in power controlled the money, those with a means of providing for the economy or gaining money were in a position of greater power than those who did not. Winston does not like the older brother, but he has nothing against the cry “God is power”. What the Big Brother Totalitarian State wants to achieve is an absolute power over everything that the members of the Party feel and think, not only what they do and is to control the people. The author wants to convey to the western society of the danger of communism. The Party undermines family structure by feeding children slogans and propaganda, inducing them to their own parents to the Thought Police if they showed any sign of disloyalty. The totalitarian Big Brother state is, in fact, the kind of government that Satan wanted to achieve. It is a state where people are not allowed to have negative thoughts about the Party and are forced to love Big Brother, where people are forced through torture to associate any negative thought about the regime with suffering, and therefore they self-censor themselves and become slavish drones. For me it is a perfect description of how society changes and how its morality changes in personality and in the way of being.
“Big Brother” he is the leading symbol of the party, and the party itself is said to have sprung from him and be led by him. He is in the most literal sense of the Godhead of the people within the party. The people fear him, a fact indicated by the posters everywhere stating, “Big Brother is watching.” yet that fear is tempered. Big Brother wants to become the new god of power of all Oceania. Every man has to be himself not forced and free without being vindicated in the way of how to behave. The only way Winston can be saved is through believing in God and his absolute morality. The true Christianity is the opposite of this reality and relies completely on free will. Freedom are exactly the same desires that all human beings have because we were born with these desires. Winston act like a loyal Party member of big brother but he is not, he wants to change his thoughts and feelings so he begins actually started to love Big Brother. Winston becomes a total slave, cheering for the regime and losing his ability to love anything except Big Brother.
He meets a girl named Julia and starts to get rid of her, in which he does anything to be with her without anyone from work or Big Brother seeing them together because they cannot be together. He wants to talk to people from his own party who are against him but he cannot because he does not want to have any problem with anyone else with the big one and the moments that Winston feels alone in the background is not only because he has God next to him. Winston tries to do anything to be next to Julia but she does not want him to do anything because it would kill him for skipping the rules or revolutionizing against the Big Brother. Because in religion everything made violence, beliefs and especially radicalism towards the same person with obsessions in which Winston did not want that kind of thing in society and that especially the Big Brother is persecuting him all the time at any time.
In these times, there were groups of religions called sects, which were groups of religions where instead of talking about religion they spoke about Greek ideologies, commandments, things you should not do, who is your new god. But deep down what they do is wash your head of nonsense to drive you crazy. So, Big Brother is called a sect in which all follow, they like it as it is, and as governor things do so people shout their name they start applauding. Big Brother did not want people to work for him I have something, I mean a couple being together or having something two people. What Winston and Julia were doing was dangerous for them in their personal lives and in their work life. They were seen secretly if Big Brother notices or no general sees them. They wanted to put in a group of people who were against Big Brother or that they are against having a couple that works in the same place that you work
“Do you believe in God, Winston?”
“Do not.”
“Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?”
“I do not know. The spirit of Man. ”
“Do you consider yourself a man?”
“And it is.”
“If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are alone? You are outside history, you are nonexistent. “
This quote means that Winston does not believe in God for what he also wants to say in another word that he hates Big Brother, the colonel asks him what it is that destroys us humans does not know what to answer because deep down he knows that He has no one to pray with or in the future when something happens to him. Think that the human spirit is the only thing in the world or who will be by your side. So, the general gives an example of him is the last man on earth and at some point, he will have to extinguish where he will go with who knows if the soul is left there, Winston is silent to not know anything about religion and not trust in a God.
People who do not believe in a god do not know what it is to pray for asking for things to help you, or to do sacraments or penances. Big Brother only did bad things to you if you did not do the right thing he punished you and mistreated you so the people were tortured and mistreated all the time so they would not skip the normal ones and not be punished.
The face of Big Brother is used to promote the ideal man, one who is tall and muscular living in a perfect world. Big Brother represents Stalin, Lenin, and Hitler. All three were totalitarian figures who frightened all as the world saw the horror of their powers. Posters of these men were hung all over their countries to give the effect that you could not escape their presence. Hence the term in 1984, “Big Brother is Watching”.
“War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength “
These words are the official slogans of the Party, and are inscribed in massive letters on the white pyramid of the Ministry of Truth, introduction to the idea of doublethink. “War Is Peace” because having a common enemy keeps the people of Oceania united. “Freedom Is Slavery” according to the Party, the man who is independent is doomed to fail. “Slavery Is Freedom,” the man subjected to the collective will is free from danger and want. “Ignorance Is Strength” the inability of the people to recognize these contradictions cements the power of the authoritarian regime.
“Who controls the past controls? Who controls the present controls the past” The slogan is an important example of the Party’s technique of using false history to break down the psychological independence of its subjects. Control of the past security control of the future because of the past and future conditions, where the set of conditions would justify or encourage future goals: if the past was idyllic, then people will act to re-create it; if the past was nightmarish, then people will act to prevent such circumstances from recurring. The Party creates a past that was a time of misery and slavery from which it claims to have liberated the human race, thus compelling people to work towards the Party’s goals.
In conclusions, 1984 is a dangerous party with the intention of controlling people of their own personality and changing them to be different and to act in a different way than they usually are. They go through the streets with fear knowing that Big Brother is controlling them at all hours and knowing that they are the majority of low class and that influences a lot in this type of times. If they are of average class they go with care but knowing that with money you can fix things. Winston was a low middle-class person who had his work within the party with strict rules and big brother was his biggest enemy. Orwell’s attack was not against religion, but against the repression of freedom and deprivation of individual choice on the part of religion or state. The ability to without would simply be denied us. Without would not be available. Submission is a human tactic, and 1984 shows us to what lengths the “natural man” will go. It was a society without any freedom knowing that in the future they will not get anything by being that way in that type of religion and that policy, being mistreated and threatened most of the time in order to be a good society to set an example to their greatest enemies that together can conquer the world. Winston knows perfectly that living in this way will not have anything in the future and if you want to get something like a woman in your life, a good job and live happily, you will not achieve anything by revolutionizing or changing things by talking to society. 1984 was a time when the whole world was changing between wars, society, politics, industry and the way to be more innovative and modern society. The part of religion is the one that is least developed at that time because it was radicalism or not follow God and on the other hand is following God but being mistreated, threatened and tortured by the people around you or people who work for the Big Brother. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
The individual only has power in so far as he has ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: “Freedom is Slavery”. Has it ever happened to you that it is reversible Slavery is freedom. Alone, free, the human being is always defeated. It must be so because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter external reality, as you would call it is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute. Party members cleave unto the Party and the society the Party creates – they commit ego death, and realize their “true selves” via this religious-function of the Party apparatus