Argumentative Essay
Inflicted Pain Imagery in George Orwell’s 1984
George Orwell’s 1984 is viewed as a response to totalitarianism and communist regimes. In portraying the Party as all controlling and all powerful, he constructs the idea that democratic ideals are better than the crushing, violent ones. In this dystopian society of strict authority, Orwell uses imagery of inflicted pain to portray the degrading, agonizing, and fearful experience the individual encounters under the control of the Party.
It is first important to understand that Orwell used both the mind and the body to portray the extent of control the Party has over the conditioned individuals. In an article by Naomi Jacobs, she states that “though the mind may be corrupted or contaminated by societal constraints, a fantasy has survived that the body can retain its purity and serve as a reservoir of natural virtue, a motivating force for action against totalitarian control” (4). What Jacobs is pointing out is that there has been a certain ideal that perhaps the body holds hope for citizens under totalitarian control if the mind doesn’t. However, in 1984 this quite literally becomes a “fantasy” (ibid) as we see numerous images and language choices that show the body as being tortured and beaten to such extremes that it breaks. No longer “pure” (ibid) or void of any outright tampering by the Party, the body doesn’t serve as a means to rebel against the government any longer but more as a means of further control as the threat of pain and torture looms over everyone.
In order to fashion the experience of an individual in the Party as agonizing, Orwell uses personification to characterize the telescreens as tools to bully citizens. The narrator states that “day and night the telescreens bruised your ears with statistics” (74). In portraying the telescreen's constant use as “bruising,” it is immediately conveyed that they are harmful. In this instance the personification of the screens is being used in the same way as someone who beats another person. It is purposeful, planned, and leaves lasting physical but also psychological marks. The constant contact with, and surveillance by, the telescreens leaves Winston feeling beaten down and more likely to submit to the Party’s wishes because of the constant berratment of information. By explaining that the telescreens “bruised” (ibid) the ears of Party members, Orwell is effectively personifying the telescreens in a way that characterizes them as bullies who beat other people. They are used as an extension of the system that controls every aspect of an individual's life through the infliction of pain and use of force.
Using vivid imagery of violence, George Orwell further fashions how the Party controls the individual through self-demoralization. At the end of the novel, Winston realizes that to belong to the Party “it was a question of degrading himself, mutilating himself” (281). In using the grotesque image of Winston “mutilating himself” (ibid), Orwell points out that in order to belong to the Party, to survive, one must inflict damage on their own mind that makes the workings of their brain unrecognizable and even disfigured. The forced changing of their own minds is in fact “degrading” (ibid) as there is no space for people to have their own thoughts. Rather, individual thoughts become those of the Party or fear of physical pain if they don’t inflict the physiological pain of rewiring their brains. Through devices such as Crimestop and Doublethink, the Party has created a way to control the masses without having to always physically be there to show them who is in control.
These tactics, Doublethink especially, are ingenious devices that the Party uses to control the thoughts of every individual and instill fear of thinking against the party. As Patrick Anson points out “if Oceanians participate in the delusions propagated by the Party, thereby entering into a state of controlled paranoia, refusal to participate leads to a secondary, dissident form of paranoia: that of Winston Smith” (360). Anson fashions the shared “delusions” (ibid) of Party members as one aspect of “controlled paranoia” (ibid). It is clear that the thoughts forced on individuals by the party aren’t factual, but the effect is gained control by the Party and mental pain inflicted upon members through the constant fear of physical torture and even death. Further, Anson characterizes the Party’s tactics as having a second effect: the paranoia felt by individuals whose thoughts rebel against the Party. They too have to live in constant fear of being caught, tortured, and more than likely killed in time. Therefore, the Party is able to inflict pain upon individuals just with the idea that there is torture awaiting them if they don’t tear apart their minds to follow Doublethink.
The Party members are not the only ones struggling in this fear filled society as Orwell uses metaphor to portray the prole’s abuse as another degrading process and effective means of control. It is observed that “the proles, normally apathetic about the war, were being lashed into one of their periodical frenzies of patriotism” (149). In using the metaphor of the proles being “lashed” (ibid), the Party is constructed as forcing people into acts against their will in the vivid idea of their being whipped into complying. It can be imagined that being whipped is painful and humiliating, and yet the Party continues to force its individuals into “frenzies of patriotism” even if it may be as harmful as whipping is physically. The Party forces even the lowest members of society to endure intense and draining emotions against their will in order to maintain control over even the seemingly least important aspects of society.
To assert the idea of Party control even more, George Orwell uses symbolism to characterize the mindset of the Party and long to be suffered abuse of the individual. O’Brien explains that “if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face- forever” (267). To “stamp” (ibid) on something in this instance is like that of a child squashing an ant on the sidewalk. The boot symbolizes the Party, implying that it is in control of the lives of individuals because they can squash and kill anyone at any time. Further, it shows that the Party views humanity as something that is as meaningless as an ant is to a child. They will contrinue to inflict pain and terror to keep the ones alive in check, and if they stray they will be squished. This violent symbolism portrays the individuals in society as less than the Party and its high members because they are set up as small and able to be crushed. Not only does this fashion the working of the Party as fear-mongering, abusive, and anti-individual, it also characterizes the way the Party thinks of itself as a God of sorts. Being able to “stamp” (ibid) on humanity and either mame or kill individuals constructs the Party as viewing itself as all controlling and all powerful over human beings.
To conclude, 1984 is constructed using inflicted pain imagery to characterize the means in which the Party controls individuals on many levels, including the body and the mind. Naomi Jacobs makes an interesting observation that “the body itself must be the locus of Utopian or dystopian transformation, whether that transformation is to be brought about by liberating the body or by more effectively subduing it” (3). By examining the treatment of the body, and the mind, one can determine if a text is dystopian or utopian. All dystopias and utopias have elements of control, but when it limits and submits the individual in such severe and abusive ways as Orwell portrays with pain imagery, it is clearly a dystopian society.
Works Cited
Anson, Patrick. “‘The object of power is power’: tautology, paranoia, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Textual Practice, vol. 34, no. 3, Taylor & Francis, Rutledge, 2020, pp. 357-378.
Jacobs, Naomi. “Dissent, Assent, and the Body in Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Utopian Studies, vol. 18, no. 1, Penn State University Press, 2007, pp. 3–20, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20719844.
Orwell, George. 1984. Afterword by Erich Fromm, Signet Classics, 1961.