1- Identify a warning that George Orwell issues to us via his novel Nineteen Eighty Four – support with a quote

2- Identify a manifestation of his concern in contemporary society – provide evidence

3- Draw a connection between the two – was Orwell right? what did he miss? what are we missing?

The novel ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ written by George Orwell, tells a story of a dark future for the human race. Orwell’s novel predicts of a corrupt government in the future, as well as gives us many warnings that he believes are what will be the downfall of humanity in the years to come. However, George Orwell did not get the timing predictions right as he believed that these problems would come into humanity in 1984, yet he is very accurate with our society today in 2019. These problems in the world that Orwell warned readers about can be seen today in objects such as cellphones, social media and the way we portray ourselves through emotions.

George Orwell creates the idea of ‘Telescreens”, in his novel Nineteen Eighty Four as a way to reflect the control the government has over the common citizen. Telescreens are a device provided by the government which act as a television, security camera and a microphone. The device of the telescreen helps give power to the government through being able to watch the public’s every move and enforce the authority they have. Any ‘thoughtcrimes’ that the government could see through the telescreens resulted in instant vaporisation, no questions asked. Thoughtcrimes are any intellectual actions of a person who holds any politically unacceptable thoughts. “It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away.”

The way Orwell uses the idea of telescreens in his novel, can be seen in the control the government has over the common citizen. In the 21st century we live in today, we are all carrying around our own mini telescreens in our back pocket known as cell phones. There is always the rumor that behind every selfie cam on a laptop or phone, there is an FBI agent watching your every move. But how do we know this isn’t true? Is there any proof that the government is not watching our every move like they did in George Orwell’s novel?

Stingrays are devices set up by the government which mimic a cellphone tower, these can pinpoint the physical location of a phone that is using it. If the government was corrupt as it was in the novel Nineteen Eighty Four, this could be used by them to see any illegal actions that are occurring in our society. This raises the question, ‘Is it morally acceptable for anybody to be able to use these Stingray devices?’ However, in our society, not like the society in Nineteen Eighty Four, we are giving the government the opportunity to control us. With every cell phone purchased, it gives the government the chance to be able to locate us, and as most cell phones have a camera and microphone, there is always a possibility to see what we are doing and hear our conversations. Orwell created this theme in the novel to warn us for the future. Nineteen Eighty Four was written during the time of World War II. This was a point in time where no one could be trusted, as society lived in fear that anyone could be spies for the enemy. In George Orwell’s prediction of what the world would look like in the future, I don’t think he would have guessed that we, the people, would be giving the government such ways as cellphones to control us.

With the technological savvy society that we live in today, you can learn everything you need to know about a person from a few clicks of a facebook page, or taking a few minutes to scroll down someones instagram profile. Welcome to the world of social media. In the novel Nineteen Eighty Four, Orwell uses the saying, “Big Brother is always watching you” as a way to represent the government exercising the complete and utter control in the time of Nineteen Eighty Four, however with the world we live in today, anybody could be big brother. The Novel Nineteen Eighty Four creates the image that Big Brother is a human of higher power, almost like a god. He has a level of power over the citizens which strikes fear into them. With the access of the internet and social media we or anybody could have this same level of power. Anybody can have power over you or someone else, and learn multiple things just by glancing at their social media accounts.

As the majority of us are social media users, we are always concerned about the amount of likes we acquire on each post, how many followers we have, and it is heartbreaking when we lose followers. We do whatever we can do fit the norm and gain more of a social media profile. This reflects an idea in Nineteen Eighty Four, where people, such as Winston, hide their true feelings and opinions on matters so they can stay alive and not be caught by Big Brother. In today’s society we do that with our social media accounts. We do not post what we want to see, we post what others want to see, we post what makes us look better than we truly are. Social media can be manipulated and can be used to create an illusion of who we really are. Just like in Nineteen Eighty Four, Winston creates an image of himself which is not who he truly is, yet he does this to help keep himself alive.

Emotions are expressed everywhere throughout the world. One look at a person can tell you a lot. The way people dress, how they style their hair and even the way they stand are just several different ways humans express emotions. In Nineteen Eighty Four, people are forced to show no emotion and have no say in the way they can represent themselves. “Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.” This quote means that the society in Nineteen Eighty Four is not real, the only place we can truly express who we are is our mind. “It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when in the range of a telescreen, the smallest thing could give you away.”

Many famous celebrities and models use photoshop to portray the way they look in an unrealistic way. Their emotions portray a different person to who they actually are. Collegehumor, a youtube channel created a video to help show that “photoshop creates unrealistic beauty standards”. By doing this they show us that a beautiful blonde girl in a bikini can be photoshopped to look exactly like a slice of pepperoni pizza. As Winston, being a character in the novel Nineteen Eighty Four, he has to confine himself to the norm of others in his society, so as not to bring attention to whom he really is. His first signs of showing who his true personality is was at the time of purchasing himself a diary. This was the first stand Winston took against the innerparty.  Many people have not understood the warning Orwell has given us through his novel. This is because society seems to believe everything they see, which is not always the reality of things once you look beneath the surface.

Nineteen Eighty Four gave us a dark, yet truthful prediction of what the world may turn out to be like in the future. Orwell has given us many warnings through his novel Nineteen Eighty Four, most of which society has failed to acknowledge placing us in the state we are in today.