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Nineteen Eighty-Four: a Response to Totalitarian Rule

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Nineteen Eighty-Four: a Response to Totalitarian Rule
Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Response to Totalitarian Rule “The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it,” – Adolf Hitler. The concept of totalitarianism is a political system where the government ceases to recognize any limits to its authority, and in turn, successfully regulates every aspect of public and private life of the population. This type of regime is considered extremely undemocratic and fundamentally a dictatorship, where a sole party or leader controls the entire welfare of a nation. The idea of totalitarianism was first developed and practiced in the 1920s by the Italian fascists and the theory soon became popular in the Western political discourse during the Cold War era. The most popular example of this dystopian practice is Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany. The repressive authoritarian governments intended to stay in power through all-encompassing propaganda communicated through the control of mass media, total dominance over the economy and society, mass surveillance of the population and the widespread use of terror to keep the populace in submission and under control. Orwell, being a realistic socialist, viewed the high-handed government as a cultism of people who were solely hungry for power and to whom the welfare of the population ceased to matter. George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is considered a response against the practice of such a tyrannical and oppressive political point of view, where he sought to portray the result within a society if such a domineering regime would succeed. Although considered a futuristic fictional novel, Nineteen Eight-Four not only gives a response to the political endeavors of Orwell’s time but also attempts to display a prediction of the future, in which many aspects of the novel such as the elements of constant warfare and the panoptical practices of Big Brother, are just a few of the particular predictions existent in society today. To begin to understand


Cited: "Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 01 Nov. 2011. . Bennett, John. "Orwell 's 1984: Was Orwell Right?" Institution of Historical Review. Web. . Olson, Bradley, and Zain Shauk. "Hundreds of Cameras Going up Downtown - Houston Chronicle." Houston News, Sports, Business, and Entertainment - The Houston Chronicle at Chron.com - Houston Chronicle. Houston Chronicle, 24 Nov. 2010. Web. 28 Oct. 2011. . Orwell, George. 1984: a Novel. New York, NY: Signet Classic, 2008. Print. Pittock, Malcolm. "George Orwell." Cambridge Quarterly 39.2 (2010): 172-76. Print.
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