1984 vs Today

George Orwell’s 1984, written in 1948, was a book that very much foreshadowed what was going happen in 1984. Although, the novel was suppose to be a warning the society, unfortunately, many people either cannot or are unwilling to see what is going on in their sight. However, many things that took place in 1984 are similarly used by today’s society. In 1984, news plays a huge part in characters’ lives, as media does today in our society. The news in 1984 is written in newspeak on small pieces of paper and old news is destroyed and updated, that everyone agrees with the party, so that they appear to always be right. This is convincing the people in to a possibility of trusting Big Brother and believing everything Party says. The Party has also changed the ways news is written, in to their own language, into ‘newspeak’. This involved “eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings.” Once the population’s vocabulary is controlled, you can control and limit the number of things that a person can express and define. Today’s world media is used in somewhat similar ways. Media used to convince people into conforming to what is seen as ‘socially acceptable’ or what is fashionable at the time. There is also a bit of editing involved in media today, as there was in 1984. The people who are news editors are actually those who pick what is acceptable to write in the newspaper; purposely picking what information they want us to know. Language is also changed a lot. For example, different slang words that came into fashion but also by the government. There are new dictionaries made adding new words that government want us to use, for example ‘whateves, po-po, boomburb’ all these word had been added to Oxford Dictionary. These words are only used for texting but this is a topic, which the government wants us to be thinking and talking about. It had been propelled in to our minds so we can use it in everyday conversations. It’s often seen on T.V. and newspapers, as well as people often using these words in their everyday conversations. Media and news have plays a great part in socializing us. T.V. and magazines basically decide what we should wear, as the show e.g. fashion and sizes. Big brother tired to take away the people’s personal identity by taking away their language and show them what to believe in. I believe this still continues to happen today and media is to be blamed. In conclusion, Media plays a big role in our life and how we should live in today’s world. George Orwell wrote 1984 to warn the world but we at that time we were unable to understand his massage. He wrote this book in 1948 to show how 1984 would be and warn people. However, people have not changed anything. Today, 2013 still have some similarly in things that 1984 did.