1984 Quotes

“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” Book 1, Chapter 7 In the novel, 1984, Winston recognizes in his diary that the Party and the Thought Police never consider the Proles dangerous. Winston acknowledges that Proles outnumber both the Thought Police and the Party in general making them a potential threat to the Party. The Party also underestimates the Proles’ ability to pose a threat to the Party. The Proles also are not subjected to Party indoctrination allowing Proles to have the option if they want telescreens or not giving them a large extent of freedom from the interference of the Thought Police, because the Thought Police are always monitoring the comrades at all times unless it is in the dark. At the same time, the Proles are too patriotic and ignorant to look at the big picture of the Party. The Proles are too ignorant to realize the larger evils of the Party because the Proles are easily manipulated “all that was required was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations." Germans in the Hitler era were too patriotic to Hitler because they thought of him and his Nazis as Gods. Before Hitler became into power Germany was suffering extreme debt similar to the Proles. The Jewish people were being taken and never heard of again similar to the rebellious comrades. The Germans were easily manipulated by the food and the “services” that Hitler and his Nazis provided for them exactly like the Proles in 1984. The German citizens easily outnumbered the Nazis but they were too ignorant and naïve to see the larger picture of the real evil that the Nazis were creating in the concentration camps. The Germans were oblivious to looking at the bigger picture of the Nazis’ real evil even when the concentration camps were down the street, in their backyard, or even in plain sight of everyone. The Germans ignored the evil similar to the Proles in the novel.
“Oceania has no capital, and its titular head is a person whose whereabouts nobody knows.” Book 1 Chapter 9

Except that Newspeak its official language, the Party is not centralized in any way. Its rulers are not held together by blood-ties but by a common doctrine. It is true that our society is stratified on what at first sight appear to be hereditary lines. There is far movement between the different groups than happened under capitalism or even in the pre-industrial age. Between the two branches of the Party there is a certain amount of interchange, but only so much as will ensure that weaklings are excluded from the Inner Party and that ambitious members of the Outer Party are made harmless by allowing them to rise. Proletarians, in practice, are not allowed to graduate into the Party. The most gifted among them, who might possibly become nuclei of discontent, are simply marked down by the Thought Police and eliminated. But this state of affairs is not necessarily permanent, nor is it a matter of principle. The Party is not a class in the old sense of the word. It does not aim at transmitting power to its own children, as such; and if there were no other way of keeping the ablest people at the top, it would be perfectly prepared to recruit an entire new generation from the ranks of the proletariat. Throughout the novel, Winston mentions how comrades function doing only the material that they were taught. The people go through the motions during their life in fear that if they think, speak, anything the wrong way they will be vapor.