Nineteen Eighty-Four, a Dystopian Novel about Winston Smith

Nineteen Eighty-Four: INGSOC Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel about the life of a man named Winston Smith. Winston Smith is living under the totalitarian government, the Inner Party, in a land called Oceania. This totalitarian government has ideology called INGSOC, which it uses to obtain complete power. Within this ideology there are the Four Sacred Principles. They are: the mutability of the past, doublethink, newspeak, and the denial of objective reality. All four of these methods are intertwined and are used together, by the Inner Party, to achieve their ideology of INGSOC and to acquire absolute control over the people living in Oceania. The first Sacred Principle that the Inner Party uses to achieve absolute power is the mutability of the past. Mutability of the past is the ability to change the past, at any time, to fit current events. By doing this, current events seem more believable and people become less aware of what is actually happening. The effect this has on the people living in Oceania is that if the past fits current events, then people will be less willing to question what the Inner Party’s motives. The Inner Party uses the slogan “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” The slogan is an important example of the Party’s technique of using false history to break down the psychological independence of its subjects. According to them, control of the past ensures control of the future and they control the present, allowing them to control the past. This control over the future leads them to their ultimate goal of achieving absolute power. The Party creates a past that was a time of misery and slavery from which it claims to have liberated the human race, thus compelling people to work toward the Party’s goals. The second Sacred Principle, doublethink, is another technique used by the Inner Party to accomplish their goals. Doublethink is the act of simultaneously and passionately holding two mutually contradictory beliefs. Doublethink affects the everyday life of the people living in Oceania by causing what the book calls “controlled insanity.” A person, who uses doublethink, deliberately had to forget the contradiction between his two opposing beliefs. After this initial forgetting, the person has to continuously forget that he forgot this contradiction and then forget that forgetting, for all of infinity. This is what causes “controlled insanity.” In the department that Winston works at, doublethink means being able to falsify public records, and then believe in the new history that they, themselves, had just written. In fact, all of the Ministry’s departments are doublethink in themselves. The Ministry of Truth is actually riddled with lies; the Ministry of Love is filled with hate, the Ministry of Peace causes wars, and the Ministry of Plenty rations foods and goods. The same is true for the Inner Party slogans of: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength. This confuses people to the point of believing everything the Inner Party dictates which in turn, leads the Party towards their ambition of absolute power. Newspeak, the third Sacred Principle, is a language used by the Inner Party to control the masses. Newspeak is a fictional language that reduces vocabulary in an attempt to prevent the citizens of Oceania from forming thoughts against the Inner Party’s ideals. The book describes newspeak as “the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year.” By shutting off language, the Inner Party is shutting off the ideal way to form thoughts. Since the people can no longer form thoughts in their usual and normal way, they will form thoughts according to their current language. This causes the masses to fall under this false language, allowing the Inner Party to achieve supreme control. By controlling language, the Inner Party has found another way of manipulating thoughts. Since that language is controlled by the Inner Party, the Inner Party has furthered their objective of controlling the people and maintaining absolute control. The fourth and final Sacred Principle is the denial of objective reality. Objective reality is to adhere strictly to truth and to avoid any form of prejudice, bias, or wishful thinking. By denying this kind of objective reality, then the Inner Party can form any reality they need to. They need this ability because in order to keep the people believing that their ideals are perfect, they need to be able to change reality at any moment. The only way to change reality is to believe that there is no truthful reality to begin with. This is how they deny having an objective reality and by not having an objective reality, reality can be completely biased to take on any form it needs to be. This altering reality allows the Inner Party to force the people of Oceania to believe in this distorted actuality they’ve created. By doing this, the Inner Party furthers their cause of gaining supreme authority. The Four Sacred Principles are ideas used by the Inner Party to achieve absolute power. These Four Sacred Principles are: the mutability of the past, doublethink, newspeak, and the denial of objective reality. By using these Four Sacred Principles, the Inner Party achieves their ideology of INGSOC. INGSOC is the ideology of having complete control over the life in Oceania. The Inner Party’s final goal is to achieve absolute power over the people in Oceania. Under this totalitarian government, the people of Oceania fall into their trap and begin to believe in these Four Sacred Principles. Nineteen Eighty-Four shows us how these Four Sacred Principles must not fall into place; else we will be formed under a totalitarian government just like the people in Oceania were.