Dystopian Journal # 2

Option # 2 -
Orwell criticizes the use of propaganda in society through comparing it to the Totalitarian societies of his time. The society is constantly oppressed by the use of propaganda, and through this, Orwell shows us the problems with society. George Orwell uses propaganda throughout the book as a symbol for the darkness that lies behind the ideals of the Party and Big Brother. The writing around the propaganda has an ominous tone when he writes about the usage of propaganda by the party. A prime example of this is when he is thinking of the face of Big Brother constantly surrounding him, “Even from the coin the eyes pursued you. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrapping of a cigarette packet~ everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you” (Orwell 26). This shows us Winston’s feeling towards the propaganda supporting Big Brother everywhere. Since he feels oppressed by the eyes of Big Brother, we can clearly see that Orwell feels that this kind of propaganda is not optimum for societal growth. He shows us through Winston that the use of propaganda to keep people acting correctly and to oppress is damaging to society.
Orwell also shows us that propaganda in the form of language is hurtful to a healthy society. He uses throughout the book references to a language called “Newspeak”. This is the idea that Big Brother came up with to oppress the English language. He created Newspeak to cut out superfluous words from the English dictionary, disallowing people from expressing themselves as well as they could using standard English. One instance of this is during a conversation Winston has with Symes, a co-worker that is working on writing the newest edition of the Newspeak dictionary, “Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good,’ what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning. Or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still” (Orwell 46). The changing of language classifies as propaganda as well due to the fact that it is also the distribution of information used to change the attitudes or, in this case, the ability to express oneself. Orwell describes this changing of language as a terrible thing by using Winston’s negative view of it to demonstrate to the reader that it is disgusting to change how people speak. Especially since this particular language is being created simply to stop people from being able to think of words that would compromise the ideas of the Party.

Word Count. 425