Big Brother Is Watching

How would you act if you were never alone? If you were constantly under scrutiny, would it change what you do, what you say, or even what you think? George Orwell's novel, 1984, serves as both a satire of life under totalitarianism and a cautionary tale - some of its predictions are eerily similar to today's political environment.

Written in 1949, 1984 is set in the futuristic country of "Oceania". Oceania's four-part government, it is revealed throughout the story, took control some time in the last 40 years, but nothing about the past is perfectly clear. The Ministry of "Truth" makes sure all newspapers and books that contain an account of history contrary to its motives are destroyed, and employs hundreds to rewrite the past. "If all [accepted] the lies which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale," observes the main character, Winston Smith, "then the lie passed into history and became truth" (32). Although Oceania has no official laws, you're "reasonably certain" that most activities remotely opposed the Party would be "punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp" (9). The Ministry of "Love" is the enforcement bureau; it seeks out, tortures, and prosecutes criminals by using thousands of hidden microphones and surveillance cameras. The Ministry of "Plenty" works with the Ministry of Truth in distributing food; it starves the people with strict rationing and then convinces them they're being well fed. The Ministry of "Peace" wages a continuous war against Eurasia… or Eastasia - nobody's sure which; the Party's goal is to mislead and confuse the public until they're convinced their minds are useless and must rely on the Party to tell them what to think. Winston is a Ministry of Truth employee, in charge of rewriting news, who becomes disenchanted with "Big Brother's" government. He finds a kindred spirit, a young woman named Julia, with whom he finds a secret place to be alone. Together, they try to join an underground resistance movement, which turns out to be a complex trap set up by the Thought Police. Brutally tortured in prison, Winston is broken mentally. His shattered mind is molded into that of the model Oceania citizen mind - unquestioning and unthinking.

Oceania is a fictional country, but it successfully mimics Soviet Russia's society in many ways. The "Party", led by the "infallible" and all-seeing "Big Brother" controls the nation. Status in the party equates to status in society. Like in the Soviet Union, where Communist Party members got preferential treatment and government favors, Oceania's the "Inner Party" elites get better rations and are under less scrutiny. The "Outer Party" members are under constant surveillance, and the non-party members (the "proles") are the lowest class. The Communist Party in Russia conducted routine "purges", in which dissidents were rounded up and "purged" from the Party or society. Anyone who was potentially a threat to the rule of the police state was seen as a dissident. Victims of the purges were sentenced to prison, death, or labor in camps. Others just disappeared. The worst of the labor camps, the gulags, were located in the arctic wasteland of Siberia in northeastern Russia. Oceania also conducts purges - Winston explains "people who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply disappeared and were never heard of again. One never had the smallest clue as to what had happened to them" (40). Like in the USSR, there's always a propaganda campaign going on in Oceania. The Communist Party often championed leaders as the "saviors of the people" one day, but when something went wrong, publicly denounced them, painted them as criminals, and stripped them of all status. They had to take the fall for the Party. Thinking about the original leaders of the revolution, once heroes, Winston says, "a few had simply disappeared, while the majority had been executed after spectacular public trials," where they confessed to crimes they couldn't have committed. They were forced to admit "intelligence with the enemy... embezzlement of public funds, the murder of various trusted Party members, intrigues against the leadership of Big Brother... and acts of sabotage causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people" (65). Other forms of propaganda, like posters, state-controlled radio, and speaking tours, which were abundant in the USSR, are also present in Oceania. Posters everywhere remind citizens "Big Brother is watching", and repeat the "doublespeak" slogans of the Party: "WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

1984's popularity has led to the term "Orwellian" being applied overbearing government practices involving surveillance or misleading "doublespeak", evidence that shows how effective its warnings are. Even a reality show about people constantly on camera was called "Big Brother". In the story, all the Outer Party members in Oceania have devices called "telescreens" in their homes, which are like two-way televisions. They broadcast the state-controlled news, propaganda campaigns, 24 hours a day. They're also equipped with microphones and cameras, hooked into Thought Police headquarters. The telescreens can't be turned off, only dimmed and quieted, but nobody knows "whether [they are] being watched at any given moment" (6). Today, privacy advocates fear that the recent trend of installing surveillance cameras in schools, businesses, airports, and at stop-lights are moving the U.S. slowly toward the same situation. Since September 11^th, some nervousness is justified. Oceania was in a non-stop state of war; the United States has been unofficially at war for two years now, with no end in the foreseeable future. Critics point out that many of those "detained" in relation to terror investigations are being treated like prisoners of Big Brother. Is it time to stop and take a look at where some of these practices are taking us?

I enjoyed reading 1984 - it presents a dim future, but its message is that such a future can be avoided. The intentional parallels to the Soviet Union showed how real the threat of statism is. By keeping its lessons in mind, the U.S. and the rest of the world can prevent FREEDOM from being SLAVERY.