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Rereading Nineteen Eighty Four – 7

Chapter 7 begins with a reflection on the ‘proles’.   This is a large portion of the population made up of what we would call the poor or the working class; the masses.

They are ‘free’ in a strange sense.

The stringent rules which apply to those who are Party Members is not enforced upon them.   They can live without much supervision by the Thought Police or others who would demand they meet the ‘Standard’.

They don’t rebel because they obviously see nothing major to rebel against.  They can fight with each other, argue over trivial things.

If they rose up The Party would be destroyed.  But they will never rise up.

The significance of Chapter 7 can be viewed in the Star Trek; Next Generation episode,  Chain of Command (part 2) when Picard is being tortured.   Shown four lights he is told that there are five.

The ability of The Party, in Nineteen Eighty Four is to not merely alter the past but to control the future.  To teach people to mistrust what they see and hear.   To believe, without question, what The Party tells them.

This chapter contains those ‘Alternate Facts’  that were relied on when the American President claimed he had more people at his inauguration than his predecessor.

Don’t trust your eyes, don’t trust history, believe what you are told.

Winston Smith is perceiving this, recalling events of his own past in which he saw and heard certain things which now do not, according to The Party, ever happened.

Winston Smith wonders if he is insane, if he is the only one alive who realises what is happening.

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What do you think?

Written by jaylar

7 Comments

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  1. Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning against the dangers of totalitarian governments. Orwell’s dystopian fiction depicts the language of the unheard and forgotten voices of the middle class– that ought to be spoken and voiced out against the corrupt government that controls, stifles, shuts, dictates, thwarts free-speech and free-thinking.

    The duly elected President, President who won, that you speak of not nicely, is the voice of the middle class in our modern day and age. He will, again speak, unstoppable, as Orwell emphasizes, the true, victorious language of the free people of the free country United States of America.

    45th President-haters have to get over their sense of deep lost to his Presidency by now.

    • The excellent point you make is the fact that people want to be controlled. They want ‘Big Brother’ to tell them 2+ 2 =5.

      You quite articulately explained the mentality of the sheep. ‘Winston Smith’ wonders if he is the only one to see through the lies and deceptions of his government.

      The fact is that the majority wants not to think.

      • Thank you. I’ve never made any comment or conclusion that ‘people want to be controlled’. As much as I refuse to make presumptions on what people think, I refuse to allow totalitarian group-NPCs to tell me how and what to think.

        Like I sad above, Big Brother (totalitarian, a picture of Communist power) is Orwell’s fictional character in his novel published in 1949.

        Probably, the 21st century people, for the last 3 1/2 years have read Orwell’s 1984, and have woken up to the fact that they have a great voice and freedom to rise above against totalitarian government that dangerously holds socialist agenda, and have voted against it.

  2. Orwell foresaw the “post truth” world very clearly. One suspects that some modern politicians read his book and took entirely the wrong lessons from it – namely ways of controlling their populations.

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