George Orwell’s 1984 presents the depressing world of Oceania, a totalitarian state that often resembles a technologically advanced Stalinist Russia. The novel constructs the face of an omniscient government through the briefly subversive life of Winston Smith, an average, outer party (middle class) man. Orwell effectively builds the totalitarian state through various pieces of its collective controlling apparatus, with each piece seen and subsequently experienced by Winston. This apparatus can be divided into memory and knowledge, fear and pain, and language and thought; each piece is specifically devised to ensure the utter domination and molding of mankind.

Memory, knowledge of the past, and knowledge of the present are controlled through The Ministry of Truth, which rewrites history, always to the benefit of the party. The repeated line “Who controls the past […]” “[…] controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” (35), exemplifies the power of memory control, which is power over knowledge (memory is stored knowledge, knowledge requires memory), an idea that Orwell emphasizes as paramount to totalitarian control. Orwell indicates the significance of this ideology by allotting it an entire ministry, which is singularly devoted to the ignorance and memory control of its people, whose “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” (4) – the strength of the party.

Of course, the party’s control of memory ultimately extends beyond propaganda and the unspoken falsification of history, because the mind can transcend the controls of the material word, which necessitates more invasive techniques for control of not only the physical world, but also the abstract – the memory of the brain. Fear and pain sculpts that which the party cannot physically rewrite, the mind, and attributed to these two controls is another of the four ministries, The Ministry of Love. Through this piece of the apparatus, Big Brother indirectly reprograms the brain of man, which, in the case of the people of Oceania, can only see through lies and contradictions by use of human memory, because the material past (that outside the human mind) is directly controlled. The Ministry of Love physically represents fear, seen in its terrifying description:

“The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside The Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometer of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.” (4-5).

In the ministry, torture, which in the case of room 101 comes in the form of fear, is used to rewrite the memory of individuals and, ultimately, to reprogram individuals, forcing “‘Reality Control, ’ […]” (35) or “[…] ‘double think.’” (35). Winston knows, eventually, that “2 + 2 = 5” (290), and he also knows that “[…] they could get inside you.” (290). Big Brother uses the fear of torture and the fear of pain to control more than just memory and knowledge. It is also used to control action.

Largely, the fear instilled by the party prevents rebellion in action. The people of Oceania would be unwilling to write in a diary for fear of ending up in The Ministry of Love, if nothing else, but as the party knows, fear is neither a guarantee of obedience, as indicated by Winston’s treachery, nor a method to stop the abstract, the thoughtcrime. In the event of thoughtcrime, pain in conjunction with fear is the only certain control, and because of pain and fear “He [Winston] loved Big Brother.” (297). Even with the power to stop thoughtcrime, the government of Oceania seeks absolute control of thought, to the point of never needing to treat an incident of thoughtcrime by preventing its inception.

Language, the means to control thought, and thought are the two final bits of the third piece of Oceania’s totalitarian control apparatus. Newspeak, a work in progress, is the party’s attempt at the complete elimination of thoughtcrime by forcing the inability to think it. As Syme puts it, “In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it” (52). Orwell fully understands the importance of language for not only expression, an act which Winston rebelliously takes part in through his diary, but also for control. Necessary to any totalitarian regime is the use and manipulation of language. From the slogan “WAR IS PEACE / FREEDOM IS SLAVERY / IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” (27), to the endless propaganda and falsification of history, the party employs language to control, to properly direct the minds of its subjects.

In 1984 Orwell illuminates the significance of this control by developing an extreme, in the form of Newspeak. In its finished form, Newspeak would clearly make 1984 impossible (an act of expression itself), because Winston would be incapable of subversive expression inside or outside of his head. This last control is incomplete. With the completion of Big Brother’s control of language itself, the totalitarian regime will have absolute power in the form of absolute control, rendering its people into mindless drones incapable of the human ability to think freely, forming the hive-like state sought after by the government. Orwell denounces totalitarianism’s ideal by indicating the importance of language in human individuality and human existence (as opposed to the drone existence cherished by Big Brother).

George Orwell’s 1984 effectively creates and portrays the moving parts of the perfect totalitarian machine, which would logically result in perfect dystopia – the goal of the party of Oceania. Humans would become drones and human expression, which allows for individuality, would become extinct – vaporized. Without memory and knowledge, expression is limited. With the threat of fear and pain, expression is suppressed. But, without language and thought, expression is extinct. Orwell conceived this truth by observation and expression of his own. He closely observed history’s Oceania, Stalinist Russian, and he thoughtfully expressed by creating 1984.