ihopehefails
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- Oct 3, 2009
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- #1
In the book, 1984, the main character spends his entire existence avoiding big brother and his henchmen as he struggles to hide his actions as well as his most inner thoughts from them. Eventually he is caught, tortured, and succumbs to big brother's "hug" but like any good story there is always a motive behind the bad guys that makes them seem even more dastardly like wanting to sell homeless children to an international gang of child molesters. That kind motive makes the reader feel for the protagonist and his motives against the bad guys because who would not like to see someone bring such people to justice.
What was the motive behind big brother's henchmen that made them so evil. It was not revealed until the end when they tortured the protagonist into loving big brother and sacrificing all other relationships, including his girlfriends, for that love. What is even more astounding is that the villains made him love big brother when they themselves knew that he did not exist. Even in the end when big brother was not real the protagonist saw him and felt his loving embraced as he faced his final moments in an almost similar way people experience a near death experience of seeing their religion's deity greeting them or people that they were close to such as a deceased grandmother. Perhaps these images of caring sooth our fears just before our brains flicker for one last time and we face the eternal darkness.
What was the motive behind the bad guys in 1984 that made them do so many controlling things to their society and turn it into a totalitarian society and what did big brother symbolize to the masses. Big brother was a symbol of the state since his voice and image was everywhere where the government was and actually became the state itself. Big brother was an average person. He was not extraordinary in the sense of being a being with supernatural powers but projected an absolute power to the people that conveyed that that power or the power of the state can do anything. Even stir their own hearts to impulses that it wanted the people to have.
Since big brother was over them and one of them at the same time he represented a kind of community that resembled a father's stereotypical role in a family. The role included breadwinner and raw authority when any of the children got out of line. He held the family together through force and love at the same time that inspires fear and adoration in the children.
While this can be dismissed as made up fiction of a non-existent society the motives of the writer can not be dismissed. The writer wanted to show what a totalitarian society would look like and picked a fictional one to demonstrate the point but look at what one totalitarian idealogy believed:
This sense of family being extended outside of one's own immediate interest to the nation through the mechanism of the state is setting up society to be run like a close knit family where the government is the father that is both powerful and caring and inspires fear and adoration amung it citizens. It creates a kind of closeness among the citizens that resembles a family unit that other societies could not achieve. The long awaited goal of brotherhood among men was the goal behind all totalitarians where the connective force was the politics (or idea) of the state.
The trade off behind such an idea was the dictatorship that was created as the masses loved there real life big brother and their fellow citizens as if they were a part of a national family. This was why fascism was characterized as hyper-patriotism because any member of a national family would love their national community as if it was their own family.
This could explain why, in so many totalitarian societies, real or imagined, why the masses always had to be in communities and never apart from each other because the goal of these societies was to create a single community of the nation that superceded all other separate communities within the nation.
It may be difficult to see this in our modern world since we have associated totalitarianism with NAZIism so we may not see it happening in our own nations since there is no concentration camps but one must remember that Mussilini did not commit genocide and neither did Franco yet they are considered "fascist" by most historians so fascism is not about control as it is about the creation of a national community.
What was the motive behind big brother's henchmen that made them so evil. It was not revealed until the end when they tortured the protagonist into loving big brother and sacrificing all other relationships, including his girlfriends, for that love. What is even more astounding is that the villains made him love big brother when they themselves knew that he did not exist. Even in the end when big brother was not real the protagonist saw him and felt his loving embraced as he faced his final moments in an almost similar way people experience a near death experience of seeing their religion's deity greeting them or people that they were close to such as a deceased grandmother. Perhaps these images of caring sooth our fears just before our brains flicker for one last time and we face the eternal darkness.
What was the motive behind the bad guys in 1984 that made them do so many controlling things to their society and turn it into a totalitarian society and what did big brother symbolize to the masses. Big brother was a symbol of the state since his voice and image was everywhere where the government was and actually became the state itself. Big brother was an average person. He was not extraordinary in the sense of being a being with supernatural powers but projected an absolute power to the people that conveyed that that power or the power of the state can do anything. Even stir their own hearts to impulses that it wanted the people to have.
Since big brother was over them and one of them at the same time he represented a kind of community that resembled a father's stereotypical role in a family. The role included breadwinner and raw authority when any of the children got out of line. He held the family together through force and love at the same time that inspires fear and adoration in the children.
While this can be dismissed as made up fiction of a non-existent society the motives of the writer can not be dismissed. The writer wanted to show what a totalitarian society would look like and picked a fictional one to demonstrate the point but look at what one totalitarian idealogy believed:
This sense of family being extended outside of one's own immediate interest to the nation through the mechanism of the state is setting up society to be run like a close knit family where the government is the father that is both powerful and caring and inspires fear and adoration amung it citizens. It creates a kind of closeness among the citizens that resembles a family unit that other societies could not achieve. The long awaited goal of brotherhood among men was the goal behind all totalitarians where the connective force was the politics (or idea) of the state.
The trade off behind such an idea was the dictatorship that was created as the masses loved there real life big brother and their fellow citizens as if they were a part of a national family. This was why fascism was characterized as hyper-patriotism because any member of a national family would love their national community as if it was their own family.
This could explain why, in so many totalitarian societies, real or imagined, why the masses always had to be in communities and never apart from each other because the goal of these societies was to create a single community of the nation that superceded all other separate communities within the nation.
It may be difficult to see this in our modern world since we have associated totalitarianism with NAZIism so we may not see it happening in our own nations since there is no concentration camps but one must remember that Mussilini did not commit genocide and neither did Franco yet they are considered "fascist" by most historians so fascism is not about control as it is about the creation of a national community.
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