1984 speech
...es that by manipulating what people think through media (in this case the prince is giving speeches) then the person in power will remain there. This idea also comes across in The Chrysalids as Wyndham uses a different type of media that is through the laws promoted by society (it also links in with another of our sections). Each person in the society of Waknuk tries to enforce the “true image” but as uncle Axel points out “that nobody, nobody knows the true image”. Like the Inner Party tries to control its subjects and take away persons individuality in order to do so, Wyndham also touches upon this idea as the people of Waknuk “try to strangle all life out of life”. Well hopefully that gives you some incite into this section as we now move onto the military. Machiavelli states in The Prince that “the art of war is all that is expected of a ruler”. You might not think this is so, but can I ask you to reflect upon our current situation in the world? Does not war play a major part in influencing the people who are under the power of that person of that time? The various images of men in arms and weapons around the room are used to symbolise the range of things encountered due to war. Orwell develops the idea of continuous warfare in 1984 as it proves easier for the Inner party to control the masses. As is stated in Part 2 Chapter 9, in the book, “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchial Collectivism” by Goldstein, “All that is needed is that a state of war should exist” “the consciousness of being at war… makes handing over of all power to a small caste seem natural”. Furthermore, this continuous warfare policy is used to control the economy, which is another one of our sections in this exhibition, as the consumption of goods and so forth are all put towards the war production making it easier to justify and unable for the masses to detect the lies “consumption goods show that the standard of living has risen by no less than 20 per cent over the past year” and yet Winston points out that his own place of residence is falling apart. Society is once again manipulated by the party to coincide with its policies such as making sex a duty only performed for Big Brother as “sexual privation induced hysteria…transformed into a war-fever and leader-worship”. The continuous war allows the inner party to dominate over the outer party and the proles and continue to be in control as they believe that the party should know how to deal with the war against Eurasia…or is it Eastasia? That is for the party to decide. Wyndham too picks up on this idea as Waknuk created its own continuous war against those people who they outcast from their society as they were seen as “deviations from the true image”, the Fringes. The Sealander woman points out that “They [society of Waknuk] are alert, corporately aware of danger to their species” showing that they are making this war so that they themselves can stay in power through the manipulation of the people. We will now move on to the last section that I am going to show you today and that is the political and social section. Under this section we have included the subject of terror as we here at the exhibition believe that this is part of a social and political aspect of power. Whilst I have not shown you the two sections on economy and religion, they too easily fall under this category as do the other sections as each represents how politics can be used to manipulate society and the interplay between people and power. However, I will focus on terror as I believe it is the most interesting thing that is common in the three texts that each person in power uses. Orwell develops several different forms of terror that is used by the Inner Party, including purges, show trials, and vaporisation. The Inner Party surmises that “it will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph”. This indicates that even though the Inner party will triumph, the world will be full of terror. The party, therefore, creates fear through purges, such as that of Syme “Syme had vanished. Syme has ceased to exist: he had never existed”. However, in order to make sure that the people of Oceania do not treat his death like martyrdom, Syme is effectively vaporized as Winston states “Everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized.” The Inner party use terror to control Oceania as well as cohesively implying doublethink at the same time as people are made to be forgotten. This too is shown by Winston’s example of the show trials being a lie “Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford…had confessed that on that date they had been on Eurasian soil… There i...