The Power OF oNe Man

Obey! That is my command. Obey! Do not question my word. Obey! Or you shall be punished...Those are words that would make us, the people from the 21st century, sick and rebellious, but only if they were not pronounced in the correct way.  

But oh! Surprise, there is a way of having the people, the mass of voters and non-thinkers, quite and calm, even when saying those horrendous words, and that is by supplying us enough information about any topic that detours our attention from what is happening in the real world. That’s why we can find news about everything; sports, gossip, movies, elections, politics, economy and many more, but all those websites, papers and T.V programs cover only a small percentage of what is really going on in, for example, the political and economical side, we hear about a little struggle here and there a disagreement between this party and the other over there, a collusion now and then, but what else? Nothing, what is done with our taxes? What is happening with the banks? Not the workers, but the institutions, how many ISAPRES are colluded to change the prices of their plans? Etc...As we can see there is a big gap that we in fact are omitting, and as explained in the work of Shabir, Farooq, Amin, and Chaudhry, there is a far more important gap of knowledge and it is the use of mass media: “News programmers reflect the interests of the society’s major power groups---corporations

and the wealthy. The media are themselves controlled by major corporate entities and the primary sponsors of programming are corporate advertisers. Television commercials encourage a materialistic consumer mentality, regardless of necessity, safety, or effectiveness

of products. Advertising creates a consumer culture in that it defines individuals’ needs and

then entices people to fulfill them by purchasing goods and services, an activity that is the

lifeblood of capitalism” (page 481).

It may seem as a big paragraph of nonsense but after reading 1984, V for Vendetta and Bartleby, The Scrivener: A story of Wall-street I found a pattern that left me feeling uneasy about many of the characteristics of our society. The connection that I could find there was the power of a single man, indeed is the fear that a single man can make a whole movement, nation, class feel when he does not behave as he is expected to, as the regimen establishes as the proper manner of behaviour.

Now, if you have read the three books, you should know that there is one character that does not fit this description, or so I thought when I finished reading Melville’s story, but after many considerations, and some other comparisons between the protagonists with the other two books, I realized that Bartleby was obviously the same as the other characters, the point was, that Herman Melville, “had a way of writing that at first glance makes you overlook the strange ways of Bartley and feel the same that the lawyer, that is; disoriented and inclined to feel pity for him and forgive Bartleby’s manners, My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion” ( Melville, 1999, page 14).

So, this three protagonists have some traits that relates them one another, for example, they create chaos and make a rigid structure collapse, by being aware that there are things in the system that are failing and that need to be changed, in the case of Winston in 1984, he is preoccupied by how the history is changed and is aware that THE war that is currently going on between Oceania and the other country has not been always like that. I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting may we'll bring the war within measurable distance of its end. Here is the newsflash----'  Bad news coming, thought Winston...description of the annihilation of a Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners, came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty. Winston belched again...The telescreen--perhaps to celebrate the victory, perhaps to drown the memory of the lost  chocolate--crashed into 'Oceania, 'tis for thee'. You

were supposed to stand to attention. However, in his present position he was invisible (Orwell, 2001, page 21).

They doubt the system, in different degrees and express it in different ways, V knows that the system will collapse if part of the facade is exposed to the people, and so he leaves Head with no other option than changing the voice of Fate, even though they know that the reason of Fate being so successful and so useful is that is precisely his voice, the voice of no one else but him, and so as they are forced to replace him because of what V did, the people knows that something is wrong, as we can see in the stripes of the graphic novel (Moore, 1989).  They also deceive the system, even if it’s just an illusion. They try to make others aware of these mistakes, and here is where Winston plays his most formidable role, or at least that's the part that we see, since all his journey to discover the Brotherhood and become a part of it, since he is tired of the Party was a lie, one created by the party in order for him to fall and be arrested.

However we can also see the levels of involvement in which they are and how it affects their future. These levels differ in great amount, since V is the one who shows more his distress with the system and is the one who fights against it, quoting famous artists and exposing himself to the danger knowing that he needs to do it in order for the mass of people to react, to wake and realize that they cannot be frightened by the Head, the Voice, the Eyes or the Fingers, that they need to fight against them and win, because is not the people who should fear their government, but the government who should fear their people. (Moore, 1984). Then we have Winston, who is at first ruled by the fear of being discovered by the thought police, who deals with changing the past and being conscious of those changes, of remembering, and that was the beginning of his own destruction, He, overcoming his fears, little by little, and encouraged by the “existence” of a Brotherhood, committed several acts of rebellion, acts not only thoughts, and as he did it, his destiny was sealed, the Big Brother is watching you . And finally we have, my favorite, Bartleby, whose name took me an eternity to learn, he is, without a doubt the one character that is allowed to collapse the system, and what is more and even a little bit sad, is that he is the only one that is not capable of making any change in the collective way of seeing reality

However there are certain doubts that I have in terms of this character, since he seems to be uninterested in everything happening around him, he gets a job, and works efficiently at it, but he is full of “I would prefer not to” excuse, and as time passes, that becomes his motto, he does not even eat and we do not know the reason of it, since we are reading the story from the point of view of his employer: “I AM a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would see man interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate divers histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener of the strangest I ever saw or heard of” ( Melville 1999, page 2). The only thing that we know for sure about this man, Bartleby, is that he cannot be corrupted, or moved without his will, since the lawyer tries by every possible mean to throw him out of his office, paying him, threatening, offering another job, etc, and Bartleby never gave in: At the expiration of that period, I peeped behind the screen, and lo! Bartleby was there.

I buttoned up my coat,balanced myself; advanced slowly towards him, touched his shoulder, and said, “The time has come; you must quit this place; I am sorry for you; here is money; but you must go.”

“I would prefer not,” he replied, with his back still towards me.

“You must.”

He remained silent.

Now I had an unbounded confidence in this man’s common honesty. He had

frequently restored to me sixpences and shillings carelessly dropped upon the

floor, for I am apt to be very reckless in such shirt-button affairs. The proceeding

then which followed will not be deemed extraordinary.

“Bartleby,” said I, “I owe you twelve dollars on account; here are thirty-two;

the odd twenty are yours.—Will you take it?” and I handed the bills towards him.

But he made no motion ( Melville, 1999, page 18).

Now, what I want to show with this post, is that we may see the difference of character between these three stories, but they are not just similarities, and it is not a random event that we had to read them for the same evaluation. I wanna focus on how it is not a group of people who starts unfolding the truth behind a regime, but one person, just one little head was enough in all three books to start a chaotic chain of events, in which there was never a happy ending.

Much thought has been given to Melville's story and how the relationship between employer and employee share a natural capitalist relationship, what is more, the pure reaction of Bartleby of refusing to eat, generates a whole new meaning of his stance as an oppositional part of the system, in the essay written by Naomi C. Reed called “The Specter of Wall Street: ‘‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’’ and the Language of Commodities” she tackles this topic and states:

Of course Bartleby refuses to do his job as a copyist, but his refusals go far beyond that, taken to their most extreme in his refusal to eat. While haunting the office, Bartleby lives only on ginger nuts. By the end of the story, when Bartleby has been imprisoned in the prophetically named Tombs, the grub-man asks of the lawyer: ‘‘‘His dinner is ready. Won’t he dine to-day, either? Or does he live without dining?’ ‘Lives without dining,’ said [the lawyer], and closed the eyes’’ (45). Gillian Brown diagnoses Bartleby’s refusal to eat as anorexia, which she suggests is a ‘‘radical refusal to partake of, and participate in, the world,’’ concluding that ‘‘anorexia secures the agoraphobic division of self from world, home from market.’’ Brown ultimately reads Bartleby’s behavior as ‘‘a repudiation of the market-place and an expression of self-control  (page 252)

I will not keep on going on about only the books, because the point that I am trying to make is how power or more specifically the power that is held by a superior entity can be destroyed by just a single man, and the 3 books reflect that, in 1984, we have the authorities preventing Winston to expose the truth, preventing him by the end to even think, in V for Vendetta, we have the authorities fearing what he may do next, fearing that he is way beyond them, because he has been watching them, he knows the truth and he knows what they are and how they work, and they, have no control over his actions, and no control over the actions of the people who has just been awoken for a long nightmare, who in fact is just starting, finally in “Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story Of Wall-street”, Bartleby who is our true protagonist creates such a fuss by being a ghostly appearance in the building that there cannot be any kind of work done, and he even creates a sense of guilt in the lawyer for not knowing how to help the poor man, who is most of the time silent and refuses to eat, and be an human being.

As to conclude this entry I would like to state that as defined by Lasswell and Kaplan (2013). “Def. A group is an organized aggregate. An association is a highly organized group, a demigroup one with a lower degree of organization. An aggregate of person mechanically cooperating with one another does not constitute a group, nor is a group constituted merely by the sharing of reciprocal perspectives” (page 34). We can find in this definition why these 3 characters could not behave in the way that they were expected to, they were isolated parts of the society, the did not belong to their jobs, or to the places assigned to them, and I am not talking about wanting more as in becoming richer, but they wanted to have opportunities and to let the people know that there was more than just obeying Big Brother, or the Head, or even the Lawyer, there was more and the ones that were alienated were the only ones that were watching for a safe distance what was happening. So are you going to follow the rules or are you going to see the big picture?

Thanks for reading.

References

Reed, N. C. (2004). The Specter of Wall Street:" Bartleby, the Scrivener" and the Language of      Commodities. American Literature, 76(2), 247-273.

Shabir, G., Farooq, U., Amin, R. U., & Chaudhry, A. W. (2013). Mass media, culture & society    with the perspective of globalization, modernization and global culture. Asian journal of    social  sciences & humanities, 2(3), 479-484.

Lasswell, H. D., & Kaplan, A. (2013). Power and society: A framework for political inquiry.        London: Transaction Publishers.

Melville, H. (1999). Bartleby the scrivener. Plain Label Books.

Moore, A. (1989). V for Vendetta. (Vol. 7). New York: DC comics.

Orwell, G. (2001). 1984. New York: Penguin readers.

How far are we from 1984?

A few years ago the Wikileaks web site realize sensitive and controversial material that upset a lot of people, making the editor-in-chief of the website Julian Assange had to face an investigation by the government of the United States that still continues. The information that it was realized had to do U.S. military and diplomatic documents and Assange finally found political asylum by Ecuador.

This fact raise the debate of how is not the money that controls the world but the information. How governments and companies are trying to hide the truth from the citizens, exactly how it happens in the novel by Orwell’s 1984.

Making a quit plot overview, 1984 it is about the nation of Oceania in which a ruling Party controls everything and everyone. One of the citizens Winston Smith writes a personal diary in which he express how much he dislikes the control of the party, because he is not allowed to express his individuality.

The Party has as a leader the Big Brother, and the opposition to the Party it is called the Brotherhood. Of course the Party tries to make everyone thinks they are the good ones and this is why they change historical records, they can see what every citizen is doing in every moment, they force people to always watch their televisions and never turn them off, and they try to eliminate any sign of rebellion by creating a new language that doesn’t allow thoughtcrime.

The change in the character spirit begins with his prohibit relationship with his co worker. They have an affair, and then they try to join the Brotherhood but they fall into the tramp of  O’Brien and the Party take him to torture.

After they make Winston go to his worst phobia they finally break him. He ends up having no feelings for Julia (his co worker) and loving the leader of the Party.

The aim of the Party is to eliminate every glimpse of individuality a person can have so they can perpetuate in the power.

They make people believe facts that never happen like Oceania has always been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia.

Governments controlling and hiding the truth? It only happens in books right?

In our era of assumed “free information” we can choose what to believe, where to read it, or not read it at all. Every Time a big scandal blows up making our dearest leaders of the world looking like criminals people tend to take sides. Just like what happens with the wikileaks scandal.

-He’s lying.- He’s telling the truth.- Everything's a conspiracy.- They are trying to scare us.-

But one thing that we can all learn from 1984 is that identifying “them” and “us” is confusing and also dangerous. So in the year 2015 how far are we from 1984?

We are nearly as far from the year 1984 as George Orwell was when he wrote the book in 1948(...) The book introduces many interesting ideas including “telescreens”, “thoughtcrime” and “newspeak”.  While the forces that Orwell wrote about have not been the driver for these concepts to come to reality, much of their essence may well have slipped into our society without us noticing. (Hillard, 2013).

More than that we are slowly being brainwashed by campaigns that try to appeal to our feelings and emotions but are just a different face of “they” trying to look like one of “us”.

See for example the viral video Kony 2012

Now see the truth behind Kony 2012.

What to believe then? Should be better if I just sit in my room and watch the Simpsons all day? At least I'm safe.

What is the truth behind all this information?

There is such thing as the truth?

It could be said that all these examples are far away from our nation.

Even Though Wikileaks did realize some juicy gossip about our President, and Kony was kind of a deal here I have more examples to say that we are not as far as we thought from 1984.

See the case of Copa America, our biggest victory in years on what is the most important thing in our culture besides complaining, FOOTBALL.

There were months dedicated to the event, it was what everyone talked about, the news, the shows, even the stand up comedians talk about it. We only had time for football, we only had head for football, even if you hate football you spend time telling all your Facebook friends how much you hate it.

But surprise surprise! There was other issues besides the ball fever, like the teachers and students strike. Now we care about it because we are going to have classes in Christmas, but back then all the information was about our Roja.

Football is the classic example of brainwashing population, using the game as a distraction of bad decisions from the government. Making people believe that a game is more important that their education, because if people actually care about it then would be impossible to brainwashed them.

The Party might act in a subtle way our governments are not that clever but they are in fact clever enough to realise information in order to obtain what they want.

I think that “they” trying to control the media, and making “us” believe, feel or even buy whatever “they” want is the same aim that O’Brien did with Winston, but who can tell that O’Brien wasn’t a Winston himself? that Winston was from the moment he declare his love for the Big Brother a O’Brien?

So who are “they” and which one are “us”?

It seems to me that we are not that far away from 1984.

References.

Hillard, R. (2013). Living as far from 1984 as Orwell.

Orwell, G. (1983). 1984. New York: Plume.

They'll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air.

George Orwell wrote one of my favourite novels of all time Animal Farm and also one of the most remarkables novels of all time 1984.

The concept of creating a perfect society, an utopia is a recurrent topic in both novels.

First Animal Farm takes the idea of animal rebelling against the farmer, and creating his own system of rules.

Sadly their initial seven commandments change while they try to face the new order, making some animals more equals than others and repeating the story only with different leaders.

On the other hand 1984 is about a society that is under the control of the Party, an authoritarian government that can see what every citizen is doing and controls what they must think and believe.

Winston lives under the control of the Party and hates it. He writes in his diary what he truly thinks which is a crime a later on he has a relationship with a girl called Julia, and no surprises relationships are also prohibit. Eventually he wants that everybody feels what is like not being under the control of the Party, so he tries to join forces with O’ Brien. But O’Brien is part of the Party and not part of the Brotherhood as he claims and he takes Winston and Julia to torture them and brainwash them.

O'Brien explains that the Party needs to control everything that might lead to a rebellion, including love. That is why he tortures Winston to make him forget Julia, and love the Big Brother.

Because even the history of the country of 1984 is controlled the motivation of the Party, what lead to Oceania to live under this situation is never revealed.

On the contrary in the Animal Farm the reasons of the animals to take the control are explained.

So the inevitable thought when both novels are analyzed is how can a system that came from such a noble cause end up being so corrupt.

Manipulation, corruption, making a fair cause something so terrible and horrible is what happens when societies try to create an Utopia.

The problem with the creation of this system is accepting that are some parameters to perfection, that perfection comes from a kind of universal truth, that whether it is good or bad.

But Universal History has demonstrated that even though history is written by winners, there are always two sides of every story.

What happen with the human the animals kick out of the farm? Did he suffer? Someone take care of him? It was not important because the animals were writing the story.

What if the Brotherhood were the bad guys first? What if the Party save the nation first and then got corrupted?

Nobody will give us the answer, not in the farm, not in 1984, not today.

The only answer to understand and accept whatever reality we live in is to enlightenment ourselves.

Kant (1784) wrote that Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! 'Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the motto of enlightenment.

Using our reason is understanding that even the most pure thought comes from very deep contrast, and the same thing happens with causes.

Think about Democracy and what it should be and what it is today, think about the Montesquieu and the separation of powers, even Communism with all the cons that has it is a beautiful idea.

The power of believing in an idea is what makes both novels so scary and transcendent, because we know that convictions can be so strong that are able to change the World.

The same idea is taken in the “Myth of the Cave”, The Matrix and The Hunger Games. The power of controlling what people watch and believe and even making them feel like they have a choice is what scares of our humanity. Every fictional universe has a degree of truth.

Even more in 1984 the same idea is taken when it is explain that the Party wants a new language that leaves out every glimpse of rebellion. “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought” this referring that language is such a powerful weapon that can built reality. First we think, then we say and then we do. If the word does not exist we cannot think about it and we will never do anything about it.

All of this explains the failure of the systems, trying to control everything, trying to create the universal truth is destroying whatever humanity we have.

Because we are as human beings full of contradictions, and we try to make the best of it.

In the same words of Kant always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

Manipulation is the first form of violence, and the worst because most of the time it is hard to recognize it. Who ever is in the power is going to split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air (Bowie, 1973) and it is up to everyone of us in our individuality not letting them.

The solution to the fever of believing in an Utopia is to read, study and never forget what had already happen.

Even to inspire ourselves with hope that we are able to get better, to find a better way, to accept that despite our willingness to be corrupted our willingness to be free is bigger, and maybe someday we will find the right way without hurting anybody.

References. 

 Kant, I. (1781) Critique of pure reason.

Orwell, G. (1983). 1984. New York: Plume.

Orwell, G. (1945). Animal Farm. England: Plume.

Language: A tool to control people

In the George Orwell’s novel 1984 the control of people is complete. Nobody can do anything behind the Party’s back which represents a totalitarian regime. Big Brother can see everything and he is the owner of the truth. The ministers are responsible for keeping weak, poor, fearful and solitary people. Propaganda only goes in one direction, demonizing anyone who pursues ideals contrary to the Party. Even language –or Newspeak in the context of 1984- makes more difficult the development of a free thought that is because language is more and more limited.

As we know language is a powerful tool that allows us communication and with that communication we can be able of organizing as humanity in order to build societies. However, language not always can be used in a positive way but also in a negative one. As Owell (2001) explains language “…like any other tool… can be abused, used not to build but to destroy, not to communicate but to confuse, not to clarify but to obscure, not to lead but mislead” (p. 136, 139)

That is precisely the main purpose of Newspeak, the language created by the Party in 1984. In other words, this new way of communication tries to destroy the free thought and confuse people in order to avoid the rebellion of them.

Newspeak: A tool of social control

Newspeak is an effective tool in the dystopic reality proposed by Orwell, because according to him language determines thought. He believes that is impossible to think something without the precise words for that purpose. In the novel, it is possible to clearly identify the aim of Newspeak through the words of Syme, an expert in that field because he was a philologist, specialist in Newspeak and he was working in the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. Syme tries to convince Winston that this new language really works.

“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller” (Orwell, 1983)

We can see that Newspeak is being implemented in a progressive way trying to replace the old way of communication which has much more words, is more complex and allows the possibility of thinking in a more free way, something that the party tries to avoid at all costs.

The power of euphemisms

The way of thinking is not only delimited by the number of words –which are constantly being reduced- or by the nature of these decontextualized words that have just one meaning, but also by the use of words which works with the principles that governs publicity generating a good impression in people. These words are known as euphemisms and they modify the perception of some concepts. “A euphemism is used as an alternative to a dispreferred expression, in
order to avoid possible loss of face either one’s own face or, through giving offense, that of the audience, or of some third party” (Allan & Burridge,1991, p.11)

One example of a euphemism used in 1984 is the concept of Big Brother which is used to refer to this omniscient and omnipresent being that was created with the aim of instilling fear. However, the concept Big Brother generates a false closeness to this figure. Other examples are the names of the ministries: The Ministry of Love, Peace, Plenty and Truth which functions are opposite to the names of each ministry. For example, the Ministry of Peace is in charge of keeping Oceania in a permanent war and the Ministry of Truth manipulates the truth and lies to people.

The usage of euphemisms in totalitarian regimes is very common, as in the case of the Alan Moore and Davis Lloyd’s graphic novel V for Vendetta. In this novel the oppressive system is formed by five intelligence departments which have names related with the five senses:  the Ears (in charge of listen private conversations), the Eye (which function are the spy-cameras), the Nose (formed by investigators), the Fingers (formed by the oppressive police) and the Mouth (radio station in charge of spreading the slogans of the regime). 

   

The curious thing here is that both Orwell and Moore were able to predict something that is happening now. Nowadays euphemisms are essential tools to persuade people in topics that generate rejection like deaths, wars, abuses of power, etc. In this way, in both politics and advertising the use of euphemisms is almost an obligation. Orwell in his essay Politics and the English Language (2001) explains the function of euphemisms in politics.

 “In our time… political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible… Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemisms, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness…
…Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder expectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. (p. 136, 139)

There are many examples of euphemisms applied in politics, but most of them have as function downplaying certain facts like murders or changing the roles of victimizers to victims. For example, in Nazi Germany it was used some euphemisms like final solution to refer to an extermination or special treatment to talk about execution in gas chambers. Nowadays some examples of euphemisms are collateral damage instead of accidental deaths, put to sleep instead of euthanize, departed instead of died, etc.

From Newspeak to Doublethink

Returning to the Orwell’s novel, Newspeak is the instrument or bridge that uses the Party to generate in people what they call Doublethink, which is defined in 1984 through the fictional book The Theory and Practice of oligarchical Collectivism, written by the largest Party regime dissident Emmanuel Goldstein:

“DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them… The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt” (Orwell, 1983).

This practically conscious and voluntary mechanism of mental control is applied by the Party in permanent way. Even it is possible to distinguish it in the slogan of the Party “WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” and also, as we seen before, in the ministries which names are opposite to what they promote.

Rebellion through language

As we can notice language is a sort of modeler of the thought and in the Orwell’s dystopic novel we can appreciate how the Party takes control of it as a strategy of taking control of people’s ideas. However, the few people who try to fight against it, as in the case of Winston, cling to the old language which allow them to express with more freedom because it is a more sophisticated and complex way of communication.

This point can also be compared with the graphic novel V for Vendetta, in which a more sophisticated language used by the protagonist is a tool to show a more free thought. In this case, V uses a more complex way of communication which has been acquired through an enormous knowledge provided by the prohibited books that he has in his secret gallery. For that reason, it is no difficult to find in the novel some quotes of classical literature’s masterpieces which through the protagonist have the role of confronting the culture with the ignorance as if both represent good and evil. One example of these famous quotes is when we can see V for the first time, who while is saving Every Hammond quotes a part of Macbeth, one of the most famous plays written by William Shakespeare.   

 “…And fortune, on his damned quarrel, smiling, showed like a rebel’s whore…But all’s too weak for brave Macbeth… Well he deserves that name…Disdaining fortune with his brandished steel which smoked with bloody execution…” (Moore & Lloyd, 1988).

In this novel, the same principle as in 1984 is applied by the totalitarian regime, and it is the idea of denying the access to the truth or different truths that can be found in the books that do not share the same ideology of the regime that domains the society. Taking this into consideration, V represents freedom or free thought at its very best, and in a way Winston tries to defend the same ideology, because he dares to write contrary ideas to the Party and he reveals against rules that prohibit love. However, despite the similarities in this aspect, both characters are different because the context and their stories diverge. On the one hand, V fights against the government with violence motivated by revenge and on the other hand Winston not completely convinced tries to find a truth that seems to be hidden.

Final considerations

It seems to be that George Orwell when wrote 1984 wanted to give us a warning in order to avoid being a person like Winston Smith in a modern totalitarian society. However, for many people this novel has been used as a recipe to control the masses. That theory can explain why there are so many coincidences between what Orwell proposed in his dystopic reality and what is happening now.

Nowadays the manipulation of information is as evident as in 1984; the use of euphemisms in politics and publicity is an obligation; and the Doublethink confuses us avoiding seeing the reality. This world shows us a president who has sent thousands of soldiers as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize; the press shows us the terrorism as a criminal action as an argument to kill people; and the advertising generates in people false needs in order to sell some products.

It seems to be that the dystopia is a reality; we are watched, controlled and the Big Brother tells us what we have to do. The big bother in this reality is the money and as in the end of the novel it is all right, everything is all right, the struggle was finished. We have won the victory over ourselves. We love the money.

Bibliography

Allan, K., & Burridge, K. (1991). Euphemism & dysphemism: Language used as shield and weapon. Oxford University Press, USA.

DOMÍNGUEZ, P. J. C. (2005). Some theses on euphemisms and dysphemisms. Zeszyt, Studia Anglica Resoviensia, 25.

Lutz, W. (1989). Beyond Nineteen Eighty-Four: Doublespeak in a Post-Orwellian Age. National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 Kenyon Rd., Urbana, IL 61801 (Stock No. 02859-3020; $12.95 member, $15.95 nonmember)..

Moore, A. & Lloyd, D. (1988). V for Vendetta. DC Comics.

Orwell, G. (1983). 1984. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Orwell, G. (2001). Politics and the English language. Блесок-литература и други уметности, (21).