Repression of Thought

Ross Schonberg

Ms. Gubanich

English

October 22, 2015

Repression of Thoughts

            In the book 1984 a totalitarian government rules the people. The government, who’s ruled by a shady figure named Big Brother, controls almost everything the people do. It is so oppressive that the party is able to control what they can say, what they can think, what they can do, and how they can feel. If you are to do anything thing that the government does not allow then you would be taken away by the Thought Police (and tortured till you love the party again). The book shows many important themes of how a society is run and how the people act when under a certain type of government. I feel that the strongest theme that is shown throughout the novel is the repression of thought.

            Since in the book the people are not allowed to have any original thought, that basically means that they have a limited vocabulary (which the party is really trying to accomplish). The logic behind this is actually very true, because when we feel a certain way we want to express how we feel, so we have thought about how we feel, and then we would attach a word to that thought and that would explain to other people how we feel about something. But since the government has ruled that it is illegal to use thoughts then no one is able to revolt against the party by using powerful words. An example of this being explained in the book is when Winston is sitting in a cafeteria and he is talking to another party member, named Syme, who works on changing the Newspeak Dictionary. Syme says to Winston “Don’t you see the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it”(52).  Also in the beginning of the book Winston writes in a journal, which he is not allowed to have in the first place, because then he would be writing down his thoughts. As Winston is writing in the journal he starts to write DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, because he hates that he is not able to express how he thinks. So even later on in the story, even after he has been with Julia, he gets to feel things (thoughts) that he had never felt before, which was very strange to, and he knew the risk of him being caught thinking.

            As you can tell the repression of thought is a major theme involved in 1984, as it has shaped the way people do everything. Unfortunately for Winston the government’s laws restrain him and he is sadly (spoiler alert) captured by Big Brother for having original thoughts (and having sex). This is one of the party’s main ways of instilling fear into the people, so that they obey. In conclusion, the government felt that if no one can think of anything to say, then one would say anything at all, thus giving them all of the power to make the people do or not do, say or not say anything they want.