Examples Of Manipulation In 1984

The Party's Psychological Manipulation

Throughout the novel "1984" written by George Orwell, the party is able to maintain power over the citizens through psychological manipulation. The party's strategies were very effective in keeping them in power. In the novel we see them deploy surveillance, doublethink, and newspeak as tactics to manipulate the population and eliminate the freedom to think for themselves. The first example of psychological manipulation in the novel is surveillance. Surveillance is crucial for the party, in order to control the masses. The party uses many different ideas to keep an eye on the citizens. The main types of Surveillance used are the telescreens, thought police, hidden microphones and the junior spies.
No longer could a citizen feel like they were alone and able to think against the party. The party controlled them even in their free time by telecreens, as citizens even feared nervous twitches being picked up and acted upon by the party. "It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide" (65). This quotation from Winston shows how the party used telescreens to control the minds of their people into being scared and fearing being caught for the slightest bit of thoughtcrime. Another form of surveillance used to manipulate citizens was the junior spies. The party turned people's adoration and pity for kids into fear and hatred. "The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police" (27). This quotation is proof of the party manipulating the population. The party transfers their blame for watching everyone onto
This unlike any other language continually decreases the number of words each year. "It's a beautiful thing, the Destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word, which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself" (81). The advantage of Newspeak for the government is eliminating words that could be used in thoughtcrime. The party can control every civilians mind by choosing only a few selective words that they can say. "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten" (82). This quotation from Syme shows the strategy of the party. It shows how they are altering peoples minds in order to eliminate thoughtcrime. Newspeak is just one more example of the party using psychological manipulation to control their