1984 Final Essay

Tim Rezendes
English 10 Honors
March 20, 2009
1984 Essay Exam
The All-Powerful Party
In the history of our world there have been numerous totalitarian regimes that have assumed power. All of these various regimes have had strengths and weaknesses that eventually led to an overthrow of the government. In the society of the Party there are no weaknesses and there is no hope of an overthrow. The Party assumes every emotion that is contained in the human body and uses it to their advantage. A Party member is not even safe in his own mind; the only notion of rebellion is located in ones bones, as Winston so cleverly articulated. The Party has an assortment of aspects that they use to control all members; the three most important aspects of control are surveillance, limited membership, and a variety of fear tactics.
The Party uses a far advanced system of surveillance that consists of telescreens, which are televisions that project the message of the Party while recording everything a member says and does, this system keeps every member in line. If a member makes one slip, even an involuntary twitch of the face, the constituent will either be killed or sentenced to twenty five years in a forced labor camp. At one point in the novel, Winston sees a man that has a spontaneous twitch; Winston knew that he would not survive very long.
Yet another system of surveillance that the Party uses is the Thought Police. The Thought Police is a patrol that is undetectable in society but is undeniably universal. Winston emphasizes the power of the Thought Police during this shorts soliloquy.
There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. (Orwell 3).
In the Party government there is no laws; there is only thought crime. Thought crime is carefully scrutinized by the Thought Police so as to eliminate heretics. Winston can only describe thought crime by saying this, “Thought crime does not entail death, thought crime is death” (27). This shows the control that the Party has and it shows the influence that the Thought Police and thought crime have on the daily lives of those within the Party. Yet another aspect of Party control is actual Party membership.
The Party has an elaborate system of accepting new Party members which is taken by all people living in Oceania at age sixteen, this test is analyzed and only the top scorers are let in. The Proletarians who score well on the test are immediately vaporized due to their threat towards the Party. Select Party membership creates a system that is virtually invincible. There are only a handful of people that are allowed to be members, this number is not nearly enough to start any sort of revolution. The only citizens of Oceania that could start a revolution are the Proletarians, these people will not because they are kept in the dark when it comes to the true nature of the Party. This system forms a hierarchical tree with about eighty five percent of the population being Proletarians and only about fifteen percent of people being actual Party members. Winston compares the Proletarians to a horse that could easily shake off the flies that cover it, the flies being the Party. This is indeed true, although, the horse that is the Proletarians is in a deep sleep and there is no sign of an abrupt awakening. This sophisticated system may, in fact, be the most important aspect of control because it gives the Party a legitimate way to inspect all citizens of Oceania without seeming to be overly apprehensive. The Party also uses fear tactics to instill terror in the minds of all members.
The utilization of fear tactics comes standard with almost every totalitarian regime in history. The Party takes fear tactics to a whole new level. The Party has numerous devices that keep Party members in constant fear of their own government. One of these fear tactics is the use of room 101. When a Party member is in a holding cell their greatest fear in the world is room 101. This fear is not consoled at all by the guards; the only thing the guards will ever say about room 101 is room 101. This creates a very intimidating scenario that strikes fear in the inner most recesses of one’s body. The fear that room 101 strikes in the prisoners is expressed by the skull face man when he asserts, “I’ve got a wife and three children. The biggest of them isn’t six years old. You can take the whole lot of them and cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I’ll stand by and watch it. But not room 101” (237). Room 101 is a way of achieving ultimate submission from the Party members, which is of course the ultimate goal.
On a smaller scale, it is human nature to have a fear of death. This fear is enhanced by the Party government. The Party has no shame in killing millions of people as long as they stay in power. The ultimate goal of the Party is to remain in power. With a constant fear of death, nobody in a mentally stable state would disobey. Even people who aspire to be a heretic would not speak out. Those who rebel can be killed just for thinking of rebellion. These fear tactics create stability, although this stability is built under false pretenses, it is stability and power nonetheless; the exact aim of the Party.
The Party employs an unbelievable amount of aspects to achieve decisive control. There are three characteristics of the Party that stand out as paramount, the use of surveillance, a stringent Party acceptance policy, and the use of fear tactics. These aspects exemplify the dystopic society that the Party has created. In a world view, the society of the Party is not much different from our own. There are only a small amount of people in power with most of the citizens oppresses and living in conditions that could easily be avoided. The Parties use of three principal aspects of control has created a society that is unimaginable by today’s standard; these three aspects have made the Party invincible. The Party will never be defeated.