The killing of man’s individuality, of the uniqueness shaped in equal parts by nature, will, and destiny, which has become so self-evident a premise for all human relations that even identical twins inspire a certain uneasiness, creates a horror that vastly overshadows the outrage of the juridical-political person and the despair of the moral person.
––Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
The Spanish war and other events in 1936-1937 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood.
––George Orwell, Why I Write
George Orwell’s experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War provided much of the fodder for his novel 1984 because, like Winston Smith in Oceania, Orwell’s experiences in Spain can be characterized by a gradual process of realization and subsequent progression to disillusionment. Orwell’s novel reflects the discrepancies between totalitarianism in theory versus in practice, the delicate boundary between perception and reality, and, finally control––over the past, over language, and, ultimately, over the human mind. The motivation behind Orwell’s enlisting in the war, and his subsequent arrival in Barcelona still eludes most scholars and Orwellian fanatics. However, it is evident that, upon his initial arrival, he was gazing at the Spanish city through rose-colored glasses. Orwell’s self-proclaimed political naivety coupled with his previous misconceptions about communism lent themselves to a sort of pre-war ignorance. However, after observing the proliferation of misinformation and blatant lies, it became clear to the author that the forces of totalitarianism were much more lethal than he had originally assumed.
George Orwell’s time in Spain, in large part, remains a mystery. Before his untimely death, Orwell instructed his wife, as executor of his estate, not to allow biographies to be written about him. Although there is a lack of biographical information, Orwell’s commentary on publishing practices and general propaganda runs parallel to much of Winston Smith’s sentiments about the Party in Oceania. A crucial similarity between Orwell and his fictional protagonist is the retrospective posture they both seem to assume. “First, Orwell describes Barcelona in positive terms” (Rodden 63). “He was attracted to the revolutionary Republic’s egalitarianism and energized by what he saw––buildings draped with red flags or anarchist red and black flags, walls graffitied with the hammer and sickle, shops and cafes collectivized, churches gutted and their religious images burnt” (Burrowes 28-29). For Orwell, the atmosphere in Barcelona was ripe with revolution and excitement. “But then he qualifies the description––he did not know then what he knows now, and, furthermore, even at the time he was there, he could feel evil, something disturbing and sinister, in the atmosphere” (Rodden 63). For Orwell, the project of writing is one of reexamination. It is impossible to know what one will eventually know. However, one is morally bound to examine new information as it comes to light and to always pursue the truth to the fullest extent to which it can be uncovered. Perspective and perception, in this way, are intimately related to one another. The elation that Orwell had felt reverberating in the streets of Barcelona “had turned to disillusionment and despair by June the following year (…) [where he] witnessed the Soviet-backed Republican government’s crackdown against the revolution” (Burrowes 23). This gradual progression towards disillusionment is only fully realized when one allows new perspectives to inform past experiences. However, as Orwell illustrates through Winston, totalitarianism is staunchly opposed to perspective and, in some respects, the past itself.
Orwell’s understanding of totalitarianism was deeply informed by the failures he witnessed in Spain. Although having been brought up in imperialist Burma, “he came to reject ‘the unthinking imperialism that had been his family’s meal ticket,’ and he saw the exploitation of colonies as an indictment on Britain. His rejection of the aspirations and values of his ‘lower upper middle class’ upbringing was ongoing, but it was his experience in Spain which crystallized his political views and converted him to socialism” (Burrowes 27). During this time, Orwell’s politics were informed by the real material conditions which he saw existing in the revolutionary state. He noted the state’s “economic shortcomings and its inability to make supply and meet demand” (Burrowes 29). One of the more illustrious claims of totalitarian regimes is that all individuals, being inherently equal, ought to have equal access to resources. This lofty principle, in practice, is not often achieved.
In the state of Oceania, it is evident that the citizens are not the beneficiaries of this idealized equity. One of the first descriptions of Oceania that Orwell provides comes in the form of a juxtaposition between the pretense of mechanical power and the lack of pragmatism behind that pretense. As Winston ascends the seven flights of stairs to his apartment, he notes that “it was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours” (Orwell 1). A mere half a page later, Orwell describes the telescreen installed on his wall. An instrument that “could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely” (Orwell 2). Despite the fact that each Oceanic citizen, apart from the proles, are required to have a telescreen in their homes, the Party seems to be unable, or unwilling, to provide the resources necessary to power a simple lift. Herein lies one of the most blatant internal hypocrisies of totalitarian regimes which Winston describes as such:
The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering––a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons––a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting––three hundred million people all with the same face. The reality was decaying, dingy cities, where underfed people shuffled to and fro in leaky shoes, in patched-up nineteenth-century houses that smelt always of cabbage and bad lavatories.” (Orwell 76)
The reality does not match the ideal, nor does it come close to fulfilling its most basic promises.
The realization that totalitarianism in theory falls short of its promises is an echo of Orwell’s deference to perspective. “For Orwell, memory means discipline. (…) The discipline for Orwell is in stating the truth, and, simultaneously, in knowing that truth is always provisional and never complete, its story always to be continued” (Rodden 65). Truth is not about what has been said, nor is it about what is currently being said. Rather, the truth rests at the intersection of reality and perspective. It is for this reason that “totalitarianism is not Orwell’s exclusive target. He is the inveterate adversary of every kind of expression that distorts and conceals truth” (Rodden 191). For Orwell, the distortion or outright fictionalizing of past events constitutes an assault on the individual on a literal level, but also on a deeply spiritual, individualistic level.
Totalitarian regimes do not care for ease of life, nor do they truly care for life at all. Rather, their main objective is total and complete control of their subjects. When the pervasive rhetoric is that all is well and no one is without, this creates the impression that one’s reality is unreliable. Although Winston is well aware of the squalor prevalent in Oceania, he betrays his own mind––his own reality––while observing the proles fighting over a tin saucepan. “Winston watched them disgustedly. And yet, just for a moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats! Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?” (Orwell 72) At this moment, Winston engages in a sort of cognitive dissonance. He knows that the Party’s promises are empty and that their statements of facts are mere forgeries. However, he cannot seem to grasp why the proles do not rise up against the Party’s rule and establish political dominance. The answer, however, is strikingly simple––they do not have the luxury. Political activity requires resources, education and, above all else, time. The proles are concerned with survival, a task so consuming that there is nothing left to give to politics. This is a trademark tool used by totalitarian regimes––to keep a class of people just desperate enough where they will not rebel, but nevertheless sustained by their “primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations” (Orwell 74). In this way, totalitarian regimes do not see their citizens as people, but as replaceable cogs in a larger political machine. Orwell came to this realization in Spain when he was finally convinced that “fascism and communism were both dehumanizing totalitarian systems that so deformed their citizens that overthrowing them became impossible” (Burrowes 31). Strictly controlling access to material resources while espousing plentifulness is, in many ways, the most basic form of control in which a regime may participate.
Winston’s work at the Fiction Department represents a more theoretical, insidious form of control. On a daily basis, Winston is tasked with editing the past. Orwell writes:
The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it. It also follows that though the past is alterable, it never has been altered in any specific instance. For when it has been recreated in whatever shape is needed at the moment, then this new version is the past, and no different past can ever have existed.” (Orwell 219)
It is in this discussion of the mutability of the past that Orwell subtly asserts that totalitarian regimes aim to control reality. It is their goal to instill in the individual a sense of distrust in their own minds. Although Winston knows that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia only a short while ago, that information, for all intents and purposes, exists “only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated” (Orwell 35). The Party views the past as malleable, “and if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed––if all records told the same tale––then the lie passed into history and became truth” (Orwell 35). This view of the past runs directly contrary to Orwell’s perspective that “we cannot settle into any one view” (Rodden 63). For Orwell, the human powers of perception and interpretation are what preserve truth. However, this is an inherently retrospective act. If, in retrospection, the things that one remembers to have happened no longer exist in written history, it is a great deal more difficult to get to the truth of any matter. To alter the past eradicates the possibility of perspective. Once perspective is banished, the controlling force may now focus on manipulating the present.
The control that the Party exerts over the past is further revealed through its total domination of language. “The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of totalitarian states is language. (…) By controlling language, governments and their media are able to instill obedience to the will of the state” (Rodden 186). This is why Orwell’s protagonist, on the first page of his novel, begins a diary. By putting language to thought, Winston participates in a revolution. It is also likely for this reason that “on 9 May Orwell wrote to his then publisher, Victor Gollancz, informing him that he intended to return to England in August and write an exposé of what he had seen earlier in the month; to counteract ‘the stuff appearing in the English papers’, which he considered to be ‘largely the most appalling lies’” (Burrowes 32). For Orwell, this mission was one that was largely motivated by a deep sense of morality. Orwell’s belief was that “we are obliged to tell hard truths: we know what these are and cannot take refuge in uncertainty when the moral demand is for truth” (Rodden 64). Orwell’s essays, Spilling the Spanish Beans and Eye-Witness in Barcelona “were his quick response to redress the lies and the manipulation and the distortion of the events that he had witnessed in Catalonia and were his ’first major assault on communism’” (Burrowes 33). In these essays, Orwell demonstrates the revelatory power of language. However, to speak that which is true one must have the words to do so. Once those words are taken away, the truth becomes more difficult to articulate and, therefore, more difficult to understand.
The Party’s insistence on dwindling down works of literary art and even colloquial vocabulary is evidence of a more clandestine form of control. In a conversation with Syme, who works with Winston at the Fiction Department, Syme says to Winston, “‘We’re destroying words––scores of them, hundred of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone’” (Orwell 52). This moment is particularly striking because of the idea of destruction. Words come in and out of fashion, phrases that were once commonplace in Shakespearean dialogue no longer resonate with the modern ear. Languages undergo changes all by themselves. Syme believes his project to be one of promoting efficiency, but this is not the case. To destroy something carries within it the connotation that the thing being destroyed is, in some way, toxic, bad, dangerous or undesirable. Syme seems to recognize this, in part, when he says, “‘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” (Orwell 53). The real goal of Newspeak, the language which Syme is helping to finalize, is to limit consciousness and independent thought.
Independent thought is the chief enemy of totalitarianism. Because “language repeatedly makes us examine and reassess what we thought we knew and understood,” to control language is to control minds (Rodden 63). One of Winston’s first entries in his diary reads, “thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death” (Orwell 29). Though Winston is referencing the specific criminal act of thoughtcrime, Orwell’s intention is to move his reader towards an understanding of how thought, in all its many manifestations, is received in a totalitarian state. “Simply because of their capacity to think, human beings are suspects by definition, and this suspicion cannot be diverted by exemplary behavior, for the human capacity to think is also a capacity to change one’s mind” (Arendt 430). It is for this reason that independent thought is inconsistent with totalitarian goals. In speaking to his friend Syme, “Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man’s brain that was speaking; it was his larynx. The stuff coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck” (Orwell 56). Syme is a victim of the shrinking “range of consciousness” that is mandated by Newspeak (Orwell 54). To engage in thoughtcrime is to allow one’s mind to extend beyond the boundaries of this new, mandated consciousness.
Once one’s language becomes rigid, one’s ability to experience reality becomes distorted. In speaking about the lack of “reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime,” Syme says, “it’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect” (Orwell 54). This idea that one is able to control one’s reality is reminiscent of the propaganda that Orwell observed in Spain. After some time fighting in the war, Orwell notes that “Barcelona had changed for the worse, the workers’ state worth fighting for was gone, and Barcelona was now shrouded in ‘an atmosphere of suspicion, fear, uncertainty, and veiled hatred’. Orwell felt compelled to reveal increased communist duplicity and left-wing collusion in covering up the truth” (Burrowes 32-33). Duplicitousness implies, among other things, variation. For Orwell, variation is a suspect concept. “Orwell believes that we can and must say what we see, what is there plainly and clearly before our eyes; yet he also emphasizes that often it is extremely hard to see what is before our eyes. As he learned in Barcelona, appearances can deceive us––what is there is apparent, and yet not apparent” (Rodden 64). Thought has two fundamental criteria––observing and interpreting. Once these two criteria have been met, reality comes to fruition. It is the latter of these two criteria which totalitarian regimes seek to eradicate. By controlling interpretation, totalitarian regimes do not control physical reality, but the perception of that reality. Thus, they control the human mind.
In 1984, the Party seeks to control independent thought––the human mind––as a means of self-preservation. That which makes an individual unique is her thoughts, feelings, beliefs and fears. Each of these things informs her individual perspectives on the reality she experiences. Under totalitarian rule, it is precisely this individualistic nature which constitutes danger and the ultimate demise of the controlling party. “What totalitarian ideologies therefore aim at is not the transformation of the outside world or the revolutionizing transmutation of society, but the transformation of human nature itself” (Arendt 458). When individuality is replaced with carefully-constructed ideology, the resulting product is a shell of a human whose ability to think for herself has been destroyed and replaced with fabrications. Orwell’s writing of Winston’s neighbor, Parsons, is an example of this phenomenon. “[Parsons] was a fattish but active man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms––one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended” (Orwell 22). Parsons is the ultimate example of the Party’s objectives being actualized. He is void of independent thought and of individuality. This twofold destruction is essentially a murder––“for to destroy individuality is to destroy spontaneity, man’s power to begin something new out of his own resources, something that cannot be explained on the basis of reactions to environment and events. Nothing then remains but ghastly marionette with human faces” (Arendt 455). Without thought and a sense of self, one ceases to be. Although the physical body may be left unharmed, the internal world of the individual has been obliterated. It is this final, total domination of the human spirit that allows the Party to maintain itself.
A belief in the “superfluousness,” as Hannah Arendt calls it, of the individual is what perpetuates a totalitarian regime’s existence. “The Party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself. Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains the same” (Orwell 215). At its very core, totalitarianism is anti-individual. Its sole motive is to continue its own existence, by any means necessary. By making humanity obsolete, these regimes engage in a “radical evil” which “has emerged in connection with a system in which all men have become equally superfluous. The manipulators of this system believe in their own superfluousness as much as in that of all others, and the totalitarian murderers are all the more dangerous because they do not care if they themselves are alive or dead, if they ever lived or never were born” (Arendt 459). Totalitarianism is concerned with power for the sake of power. “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship” (Orwell 272). Power is the ultimate end which manifests itself “in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing” (Orwell 276). Since this is how the Party deploys its power, it follows that “the death of the individual is not death” and that “the Party is immortal” (Orwell 278). The cyclical nature of totalitarian power––of “radical evil––ensures infiniteness.
George Orwell’s 1984 may be characterized as an essay on control and all of its many consequences. Totalitarian regimes, as the term suggests, want only for total, utter control over the human mind, and, secondarily, the physical body. Although Orwell’s gradual realization of the horrors of communism led him to a place of staunch opposition and disillusionment, his protagonist seems to move in reverse. Orwell’s perspective on the Spanish Civil War compelled a political and moral awakening within. However, at the conclusion of the novel, Winston claims that “he had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother” (Orwell 308). In the end, having had his powers of thought and individuality stolen away, Winston falls prey to the Party. This book remains a poignant commentary on how political structures, of all kinds, employ methods of control and manipulation in order to retain their power. They do not care for revolution, ethics or change. Rather, they seek to dominate the individual––body, mind and spirit––for the sole purpose of maintaining their own “radically evil” existences.
Works Cited
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968.
Burrowes, Darryl Anthony. Historians at War : Cold War Influences on Anglo-American Representations of the Spanish Civil War. Sussex Academic Press, 2019. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1946782&site=ehost-live.
Orwell, George, and Erich Fromm. 1984: a Novel. Plume, 2010.
Rodden, John. George Orwell. Salem Press, 2012. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=500801&site=ehost-live.