Kiran's Utopias and Dystopias Blog

    Late into Part 2, Winston begins reading Emmanuel Goldstein's book, "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism". The book discusses Doublethink, which the book defines as accepting two contradictory facts as true at the same time. This is an insane concept to think about, and seems almost impossible in real life, but the effects of it are great. It perfectly solves all of the problems the Party might've had of keeping the members of the Party in line. The members of the Inner Party who may be perpetuating the war both know the war cannot end and are fervent supporters of the Party's victory in the war. This does mean that the people who use doublethink can't think too deeply into things and form their own conclusions as that destroys the principles of doublethink. While the party doesn't care about this "minor" side-effect, this could have major ramifications for anyone who uses the concept of doublethink in our times. Although it ...

                           In the book, we can see very obviously that the main character and the book itself possess strong anti-communist views. We see the main character stating that he feels there is something wrong, that something is missing. The whole book portrays the communist society in a very negative light, and we are very much supposed to go along with the main character in our dislike of communism, especially since we are part of a capitalist society that is very against communism. However, at least to me, it seems difficult to tell the views this book has on capitalist society. Is all the little jabs at capitalism just what the author believes a communist society would say? Or is there more to it? Do you think this book is against, or for capitalism?

          In Brave New World we see that the entire population has been brainwashed from a baby into believing whatever BNW's society wants them to think. This is extremely similar to what happens in 1984, where the children are essentially brainwashed into believing the platform of The Party. We have children turning in their parents for "thoughtcrimes", which are impossible to prove, and people blindly accepting whatever Big Brother says, even if he said the exact opposite of it a week earlier. It even goes as far as to create a new language so that there isn't a word for things they don't want. And how can people be discontent with something if there isn't even a word for what they want instead. We can think of 1984's society as a less developed version of BNW's, especially since in BNW the war that created this society is long past, but in 1984 it's only been about 30 years. Looking at this, what other similarities do you think will pop up as t...