Matthew Plummer

Morrow AP English 4
3/20/2018

Planning

Prompt: Injustice, either social or personal, is a common theme in literature. Choose a

play or novel in which this theme is prominent. Write an essay in which you define

clearly the nature of the injustice and discuss the techniques the author employs to elicit

sympathy for its victim or victims.

Specifics:

1. Define the nature of injustice

a. Give an explanation in the context of the novel
2. Discuss techniques that elicit sympathy for the victims of the injustice
a. Give examples of the techniques the author uses and explain
b. Explain the effect this has on the readers

Ideas:

● Class systems in the book are very skewed, money is power.

● Citizens living in constant fear because of the monitoring of their telescreens,

given no sense of privacy or security

● Overall Totalitarianism society
● No freedom whatsoever, even thoughts. Thought police & Thoughtcrime
● Disinformation by the Party to manipulate the citizens
● No outside contact allowed for the citizens of Oceania, furthering the

effectiveness of disinformation
● Winston’s thought process shows that he knows what he does is wrong
● Tragic Ending elicits sympathy
● Winston gets paranoid when his desires shift from the ideology of the party
Matthew Plummer
Morrow AP English 4
3/20/2018

Totally Totalitarian

When someone says “Big Brother” it can mean only one of two things, they are

either referring to an older sibling or “1984” by George Orwell. The popularity of 1984

only gets greater as time goes on as our own society gets closer and closer to the
Dystopian and Totalitarian society shown by Orwell in 1984. Orwell’s Totalitarian society

of Oceania demonstrates how freedom and individuality can be unjustly stripped from

society through the constant monitoring and doctoring of information and even thoughts.

Orwell elicits sympathy from the readers by giving insight into Winston’s thoughts, the

collision between his personal desires and the ideology of the party, and through the

tragic and unrelenting climax of the novel.

The dystopian society in the book has a class system quite similar to ours. In

America, the minority upper class consists of less than 2% of the population yet holds

immense amounts of money and enjoy lives of prosperity and luxury. Meanwhile, the

rest of the population perform manual labor or are given some administrative jobs and

live lives of economic hardship with little to no influence in the government. This almost

perfectly mirrors the Inner and Outer Parties and the Proles in 1984. Without a say in

the government the proles and the outer party are at the will of the wealthy and ruling

Inner Party. Winston is a member of the Outer Party, he works in the ministry of truth but

is still arguably in a worse position than the Proles, he doesn’t have anything to distract

him from his mind-numbing government work of censering and altering documents to

the will of the party. When Winston comes across the report about boot production he

knows that there was not 62 million pairs produced, but rather it was more likely that no

boots had been produced at all. He has to go through situations like this everyday, he

knows the truth but all it does is depress him. The reader can’t help but feel sorry for

Winston, we are shown his thoughts and therefore his emotions. This insight allows the

readers to understand the situation and sympathize for Winston.

This downward spiral of emotions that Winston feels as he strips the truth away
day after day leads him into writing in his diary which is against the wishes of the party.

The Proles and Outer Party are stripped of their most basic freedoms, not only do they

have Telescreens that are monitoring their every movement and sound, but the citizens

even have to fear that the Thoughtpolice might throw them into jail for as little as

thinking the wrong way. This shows the reader how much Winston is being affected, his

personal desires are shifting so far from the ideology of the party that he is driven to the

act of rebellion. He’s scared and paranoid but he does it anyways, because he feel as if

he has to do something to fight back against the social injustices imposed by Big

Brother and the Inner Party. “Winston kept his back to the telescreen. It was safer,

though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing” (1.1.6), this quote shows that

Winston fully understands that what he’s beginning to do is dangerous, but he feels the

need and desire to do it anyways because he can’t just sit idly by and let all his freedom

and individualism be stripped from himself and the rest of the citizens of Oceania.

Through Winston’s relationship with Julia to his diary, Orwell shows the readers how

Winston is trying to fight back both subconsciously and unconsciously against the

Injustice being forced upon him.

However, Orwell goes even a step further with the final book of the novel

showing the collapse of Winston’s free will entirely. Winston is so stripped of his

freedom that he finally accepts that “2 + 2 = 5” or whatever the party wants it to be. "Do

it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off,

strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!" (3.5.24), Winston even betrays Julia, who

he showed more emotion towards than even his own wife. This final defeat is the last

stab into the readers heart. The pain of such an ending, where a character is pushed to
the point of defeat is powerful, this elicits a strong emotion in the reader. It not only

makes the reader truly feel for the Winston and Julia, the victims, but it also gives them

just another reason to hate Big Brother and the Inner Party.

To Conclude, Orwell elicits sympathy from the reader towards the victims of

social injustice in the world of Oceania through his insight into the thoughts of the main

character, the shift and mental decline of the main character and the tragic betrayal at

the close of the novel. 1984 Truly shows what real Injustice is and how overpowering it

can be towards the human spirit.