Orwell's unerring and painful science fiction satire is regarded as possibly the greatest British novel to have been written in the post-war area. Once an adherent of Russian Revolution, Orwell became bitterly dissillusioned with the reality of Socialism when the Stalinist treatment of truth – that by moulding one's mind, the Party changed reality – leaked to the west. By reversing the last two digits of the year, in which the novel was written, Orwell arrived at a year when his nightmare vision of a state based upon total subjection of its citizens' minds was to become true. Now, Orwell is long dead but his greatest science fiction novel is still alive. There however comes a question whether “1984” is alive as an art of fiction merely or the infernal prophecies of the novel are alive in the reality of today's world.
Regardless of the place where he was, John Winston, the protagonist of “1984” was always observed. Posters with an enormous face – the face of Big Brother gazing upon everyone, tracing his each and every movement - were plastered all over Oceania. The members of the Party were subjected to an unremitting brainwashing – it was not only action against the Big Brother that was punished, it was a thought, no matter how powerless it might be, that was nipped in the bud. The telescreens and microphones were installed in their workplaces, houses and forests, Thoughtpolice patrols were on the beat watching continuouously for any evidence of thoughtcrime. All this was to ensure absolute submission to the Party. Only the proles (proletariat) enjoyed unsubstantial freedom of thought, but “until they become conciouous they will never rebel and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious”. Today, in an apparently free world, the situation is no different. Modern technologies – the Internet, GPS, mobile phones – are everything that is needed to supervise people. When one uses the computer, his every click of the mouse is traced by the ISPs (Internet Service Providers), when one takes a walk to the park, the satellites take pictures of him. More than that, the authorities collect any possible data, such as: bank accounts, the records of hospital treatment, information on employment and income. Recent fruits of software engineering, these are, facebook, myspace and the like, give an opportunity to search for personal information in an infinite database. Bearing all this in mind, one sees that, concerning the supervision of the people, “1984” was a prophecy. Yet, the aim of the party was not supervision solely: the party wanted to control human mind. Is that the case now?
Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia were the three powers of the world in “1984” and there were the
telescreens – the mouth of the Party – which kept informing on ongoing wars, sowing hatred, fear and the eternal love for Big Brother. Today, there are: Europe, Russia, the USA and
the other, the evil world governed by terrorists and there are the media which keep informing on how successful our troops were. In “1984”, any alleged crimethinker ended up in the Ministry of Love which was, in fact, the Ministry of Hate. Today, anyone who is believed to have collaborated with the terrorists can be detained for up to 40 days without charges. To give another example, there have been established detention camps where torture is used as a means of imposing confessions which, in fact, may not be true. The similarities between the world depicted in Orwell's novel and the world of today are evident. In “1984”, the Party employed one more , actually the most powerful, way of shaping human mind – changing the language and consequently changing the thought. This idea is the basic assumption of linguistic determinism, the proponents of which claim, that human cognition is limited by the language. The Party suppressed words which were not in conformity with the Ingsoc and words which might be amiguous had their meanings reshaped. This all was done to ensure that any thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc were literally unthinkable. There is no way of knowing whether or not the rulers of the world of the 21st century are doing the same to our languages.
It might be concluded that “1984” by George Orwell, which is a powerful cry for freedom of thought and expression, was a prophecy which came true. The novel is a work of fiction but the world in which we live is not fiction: this is a real world where people are supervised, controlled, questioned and detained for no reason. Seemingly, there is freedom of thought but people are tacitly brainwashed: their thinking does not reach beyond what is in the media.
