1984の第一章についてのエッセイ。

Essay on 1984 Erika Yoshida

1984, written in 1949, is the futuristic story about a man whose name is Winston Smith. He is living in London in the year of 1984, but London is no longer the capital of Great Britain. It is now a city of Oceania. There are only three nations within the whole world; the others are Eurasia and Eastasia. Oceania has been constantly at war with one of them for so many years that no one except Winston remembers the history of the nation without a war. The idea of individual freedoms doesn’t exist any more there. Big Brother, the dictator, rules everything through his party, and his face appears everywhere in posters for propaganda, saying “Big Brother Is Watching You.” Under the extreme control of his thought police, people can’t say or write anything against the party. Thought police set a telescreen in every room, not only to monitor people’s every action and sound, but also to provide information about war and order from Big Brother. Although people still talk mostly in standard English, there is an official language called “Newspeak,” which is English in simpler words. Big Brother uses his thought police, telescreen, and Newspeak, to limit people’s mind. It is difficult for us even to imagine what people’s lives would be under such circumstances. Winston not only experiences such a life, but has an acute awareness of just what is going on.

Winston is a 39-year-old employee at the Ministry of Truth. There are Ministries of Peace, Love, Plenty, and Truth in the nation. His job at the Ministry is to rewrite the news to suit the party. He loves his work in some ways as he tries to anticipate what the Party wants him to say in his “revised” documents. The party changes its own records and documents of the nation’s history, as Big Brother’s motto is, “a person who rules the present rules the past and the future.” Anyone who opposes the party is called, literally, a “thought-crime.” He or she is not simply arrested, but is actually vaporized by the thought police. Any record of the individual is completely vanished from the society and the person just disappears from the world. Winston has lost his mother for the thought crime when he was a little boy, and he is sure that he will be vanished as well someday for his memory of the world before the rule of Big Brother. Because he is good at memorizing the facts and he knows the party always changes the past record to fit their policy, he is a dangerous man for the party, which means he is near to being arrested. From his diary we can see how afraid he is to be arrested as a thought crime, “Thoughtcrime does not entail death; thoughtcrime IS death.”

Another reason for accusing him as a thought crime is that he keeps his diary every day, which is strictly prohibited by the party. In his room, there is a blind corner from the telescreen so that he can write a diary. However, if the thought police find it, he will surely be sent to a concentration camp and killed. Telescreen is the most important connection for the party to control its people. Once a day, there is a program called “Two Minutes Hate.” In that program, people see Emmanuel Goldstein, an enemy of the people, on the Telescreen. According to a rumor, he is said to be a former member of the party, but it seems difficult for the readers of 1984 to believe this. It seems more plausible to think that he is a creation of the party to put people’s mind together by making a strong enemy for everybody.

Winston’s friend, Syme is a specialist in the creation of Newspeak, which is supposed to complete by the year 2050. It is based on English, which is now called Oldspeak, but it has fewer words. For example, there are no words such as “excellent” and “splendid” in Newspeak, because “Plusgood” and “doubleplusgood” cover them. Even the word ”bad” doesn’t exist, as “ungood” replaces it. Big Brother has decided to make Newspeak to limit people’s thoughts. If there are no words to express one’s thought, there are no ways to think. Eventually people will forget how to think. That is the aim of creating Newspeak, which will make the thought police unnecessary by making political opposition unimaginable.

We can see how to brainwash people from this story. The dictator always uses propaganda, as Big Brother uses his thought police, telescreen, and the idea of Newspeak. I was born in 1983, the year before this novel’s title year. I am glad that the real world doesn’t look like the one in this story, but I do know that there are many nations under dictatorship right now. From a reading of chapter one of the 1984, I strongly recognize the importance of individual rights. We really need to help people suffering under dictatorship.