Monday, February 18, 2013

Prose Essay "Nineteen Eighty-Four"

AP Prose Essay #1: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four Personal convictions. A moral compass that perpetuates an ideal conception of a conscience. A conscience that is incapable of change, no matter the impending consequences. Throughout George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four the employment of satire and degradation of language operates to criticize socialist principles that result in dystopia, preserving the relativism of truth by using propaganda. Revealing the detraction from moral convictions, Orwell satirizes an ideal conception of the future conceived through revolution. Admitting to O’Brien that he and Julia will do “Anything that [they] are capable of” to undermine the totalitarian regime of the Party, Winston induces his mental degradation, sacrificing morality with the intended purpose of changing the future for the following generations of human beings (Orwell 199). Of course, Orwell explicates how no one is immunized against vice. When given the opportunity, individuals will descend into darkness and recreate dystopia. Unfortunately, this is an unavoidable truth of life and the “complete truthfulness” promoted by the Party is concealed beneath ignorance (Orwell 40). Truth is relative. What determines an objective truth? Individual perception, but, more importantly, whoever remains in power. Immunizing conscience against carnal emotions and impulsive nature, Orwell highlights that detraction from morality can be prevented through the perception of an objective truth. Time, a natural progression of our character through learning experiences, is controlled by the Party in order to manipulate the truth. Although Winston believes to have held “unmistakable evidence of an act of falsification” at one instance in time, O’Brien convinces him that this was a fabricated thought to preserve his conception of Emmanuel Goldstein and the Brotherhood, which would undermine the actions of the Party and change the outcome of the future (Orwell 86). Coming to the realization that the ascendance of the Party corresponded with the disparaging failures of the totalitarian dictatorships preceding it, Winston acknowledges the hopelessness of the pursuit of the truth and chooses to abandon his moral convictions and assimilate into the causes of the Party. Demonstrating the concealment of truth from the public during a time of warfare, Orwell foreshadows the future, a future where the deplorable actions of the government are validated by an invasion of privacy. Conceding that “the middle sixties” were “the period of the great purges in which the original leaders of the Revolution were wiped out once and for all,” Winston becomes an existentialist, questioning the meaning of his existence and becoming disillusioned from the Party’s manipulation of the truth (Orwell 86). This exposure to the deplorable actions of the Party eventually serves as an excuse for Winston to abandon the moral convictions which made him unique in the first place. The creation of Newspeak, and, consequently, “the destruction of words” and colloquial language operates to remove public opinion and the prospect of a revolution (Orwell 59). The Party is an oppressive government, manipulating language to suppress individual conceptions of the future. In this way, the social hierarchy is maintained and the world is devoid of hope. Truth is relative. Truth is determined by the government in power at an instance in time. With the truth obscured beneath ignorance and the destruction of colloquial language, however, there is nothing to promote change. Nothing to influence the future. The world will remain the same, concealed with a darkness created by an oppressive government.

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