The Alterable Timeline

“Who controls the present controls the past” page 248. For The Party to keep their control over the miserable masses they have taken control over everything, even history itself. They have eliminated or altered historic documents, important events, and The Party this has forever changed history. For all the people of Oceania know The Party created airplanes and your common variety atomic bomb (which is what The Party actually told its citizens). The Party does not allow anyone to keep personal photographs or documents so no one can have a reliable memory and history itself becomes very distorted. By doing so, The Party can feed these lies to the public and everyone is willing to swallow them. Just as they control the present, The Party controls all sources of information and changes history drastically to justify their actions. According to The Party, Capitalists put The Party to shame when it came to oppression as Winston says in page 90 “These Capitalists - they and a few lawyers and priests and so forth who lived on them – were the lords of the Earth. Everything existed to their benefit. You – the ordinary people, the workers – were their slaves. They could ship you off to Canada like cattle. They could sleep with your daughters if they chose. They could order you to be flogged with something called a cat -o'-nine-tails. You had to take your cap off when you passed them. Every Capitalist went about with a gang of lackeys.” Of course, this is completely incorrect but The Party has to set a standard for the people of Oceania to compare their lives to. That's why The Party made it seem that before The Party came it was horrible for the common man, just so the people will be content with their already horrible lives.

Humans need not apply

The Party despises humanity, in every shape or form, true humanity is always squashed. Although The Party has done a very good job at reshaping families into their own liking and has wiped out the “traditional” marriage. The Party has instituted their own arranged marriages where neither person of the couple remotely like each other but are together just to make future Party members. Yet even the act of procreating new members is forbidden to all of the Party members and only a few are exempt from this rule. The most basic of instincts is being stamped out like any other crime, The Party has outlawed sex and they are very reluctant to even let married members have sex. This stigma of sex comes from the belief that The Party doesn't want people, it wants automatons. Any sexual is liberating and gives the the lucky few the feeling of being alive, this cannot be allowed in the eyes of Big Brother. The Party are even taking steps to completely abolish sex, in page 267 “The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now.” This law of celibacy has worked very well and has in many ways turned the citizens of Oceania into automatons.

True Totalitarianism

Oceania, is a true totalitarian state. By every meaning of totalitarian standards, Oceania meets and surpasses all of the totalitarian principles. As the citizens of Oceania know all too well, they are not a part of the system, they are the system. Whereas in Animal Farm the reader sees the transition into a totalitarian state but sees that the rule of the pigs is not as heavy as that of the Party in 1984. In Oceania , The Party is everything. It is absolute and is every shape or form a menace that has not only injured mankind but has also tarnished his future and his past. To break the will and to stamp out the spirit of all people, The Party has made sure to have broken all bonds and have made sure that the only bond a person has is to The Party. There are no family bonds, children spy on their parents and report them to the police, there are no friends, everyone is too paranoid to leave themselves vulnerable to have any, there are no couples or lovers because no one can marry only in the exception where The Party decides who you marry. In page 65 Winston refers back to The Party's marriage arrangements “All marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose and – though the principle was never clearly stated- permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another”.By doing this no one trusts no one, they are all too afraid if to let their true feelings be known , because everyone hates The Party but no one has the courage to stand up to it. No one has the will to fight, this lack of rebellion is what gives The Party absolute power, The Party has intimidated everyone so profoundly that the very idea of speaking out is reprehensible.

Winston's Home

Winston Smith, a thirty-nine year old member of the Outer Party, is going home from work. The building he enters is his apartment building and it is a decrepit and worn out Victorian structure. As Winston enters his apartment, the reader is shown how Winston and everyone else in the Outer Party is deprived from any luxuries or leisurely delights. All Winston has for furniture is a mat for a bed, a single table and a cabinet to hold his Victory Gin (which tastes awful), a mandatory telescreen, and a forbidden journal. By just having this journal within his apartment, Winston is guilty of a number crimes but Winston is so desperate for any feeling he is willing to risk death just to have something to speak his mind. To even speak ill of the The Party and its doings is punishable by death and to take this further Winston wrote in page 18 “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER”. By writing this, Winston has just signed his own execution but knowing that he was able to speak his mind gave Winston all the satisfaction he needed. The journal, although it is only a temporary sanctuary, is only one of two places where Winston can have privacy. The other place being his mind but even the privacy of his own head is being pried into by The Party. That “telescreen” is just like a television but in reverse, you don't watch the telescreen, the telescreen watches you. The telescreen is a finely tuned machine that can effectively read your heart rate, your breathing patterns and even your facial expressions. If a person does anything that is considered “strange”, as in speaking in your sleep or have some physiological reaction to The Party's propaganda then the police will be there immediately to question you. Not many come back from these questionings and those who are not immediately killed spared long enough for them to admit their crimes to lie of a courtroom and then publicly executed. With the constant surveillance, it is apparent that all of the Outer Party members are despairing for any relief but knowing they have no place to turn to their spirits are broken and they have lost all hope. Its exactly what The Party wants.

The Party's Foothold

1984 is everything that democracy stands for. The appalling and brutal foothold “The Party” has on the citizens of “Oceania” or what was London. This domineering group of oppressors has split their nation into three groups. The “Inner Party” is at the top of the chain and they receive all the luxuries and pleasures that Oceania has to offer, then come “Party Members”, the middle class of this negative utopia. This class does all the administrative work and they are the backbone of Oceania, and the last and certainly the least comes the “Proles”. The Proles are the lowest of the low, in this society they are at the same level as animals as in page 72 says “Proles and animals are free” but ironically, they are the only class that is given any real freedom. The Proles inhabit the deteriorating slums of Oceania but they avoid the constant oppression because “The Party” rarely puts up cameras or have any police patrol the area. Although “The Party” usually ignores the Proles, the have complete control of everything else, literally, from the time the people go to sleep, to the time they wake up, to whom you marry, and they have the last say when it comes to sex. “The Party” has taken such extensive measures to control everyone that they have banned sex, “The Party” has created a branch of young adults who are celibate but who force celibacy on all others, this branch is called “The Junior Anti-Sex League”. This league was created to bar everyone from sex because in the eyes of “The Party” sex is only meant for creating more Party members, besides that sex has no other use. With such extreme tactics, “The Party” has managed to become absolute, and to “The Party” there is no such thing as freedom.