Constant War

I'm still not completely certain on the role that the continuous wars play in this society. If alliances between the three big countries (continents? states?) mentioned in the book shift so often, it doesn't seem like the wars could possibly have a real cause worth fighting for. The Party could see them as a way to promote nationalism, making people more likely to accept shortages or the rule of Big Brother. At the same time, it feels weird that the Party is willing to let areas of the city be bombed regularly and spend so much of their *seemingly* very limited resources. It seems like there could be other ways of stirring up nationalism without constant violence, for example focusing on internal enemies of the state.

It's also interesting to think about whether these two other societies even actually exist. We do hear a few stories about people fighting on the front lines or dying in battle, so it seems like they're fighting someone. At the same time The Party makes up everything around them, fitting both the past and present to fit their agenda. Do they not have the power and resources to make up these enemies if a constant war is so important to their goals? And even if they're real, are they similar to the society described in 1984?  It makes sense that they would also be run by some sort of totalitarian regime, since I can't think of another way they could justify constantly fighting their neighbors without a real reason. It seems weird that nobody, including Winston, seems to ask questions about the world outside of their society. Then again he wouldn't really be able to voice these questions, at the risk of the attention from the Thought Police, but he doesn't even seem to think about them.

In the end the details of these other societies don't really affect the premise of this book, just that the Party is invested in fighting someone, whether real or imaginary. However more information could provide clues as to how this governing body was set up in the first place - was there some revolution or event that spread the same across continents? Or did totalitarian governments develop separately all over the world somehow? 

Comments

  1. BronwynFebruary 12, 2021 at 7:34 AM

    I think this is a really interesting question. If the other countries don't actually exist it would also imply that the party is bombing their own cities which honestly wouldn't be that surprising. The party could easily fake this war and I agree that it could be a way to promote nationalism through instilling fear of the "outside" world as way to keep people loyal.

    ReplyDelete
  2. L. MoffittFebruary 12, 2021 at 7:40 AM

    Good question! The two other societies may not exist for all Winston knows -- it may just be propaganda and a war machine.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

B.B. & The Internet

      A lot of people have mentioned the similarity between Big Brother and technology today. Although I agree that it seems like companies today have a lot more data than I'd like to admit, and they could probably be capable of tracking people in the same way that Big Brother does, their motivation feels fundamentally different. The spying in 1984, in my opinion, isn't bad just by nature, but because it's used to stifle any dissent - whether in the form of spoken word or even just thought. The worry today is that many companies provide free services in exchange for people's data. As far as I understand this data is used to target people with ads as well as study & profit off of social trends. This seems benevolent - it's used for the companies benefit and has nothing to do with controlling people. They profit off of people's viewing patterns sure but they don't change them.     At the same time, I understand that a lot of people's criticisms with th...
Read more

BNW & 1984

For most of 1984 I thought that the main goal of both societies was stability. Of course they achieved this in different ways - while in Brave New World stability is achieved by keeping people happy, in 1984 it's achieved by keeping everyone under the absolute power of Big Brother. But then we get to read O'Brien's long explanation about the real point of the party and how it was actually just set up to hold onto pure power.  At least that's the gist I got from his spiel - although I don't know if I caught everything O'Brien was saying, most of it seemed to revolve around power and how anyone that says they want power for any other means than just having power is fooling themselves. This marks a pretty big difference between the two books. While Brave New World is a story about a utopia that doesn't work in practice, 1984 is a story about a totalitarian government that went too far to satisfy it's need for power and control. This means the warnings the a...
Read more

Leaving the Neighborhood

I found the family's reaction to Keith leaving the neighborhood pretty interesting.  I think it shows something about the situation that they're in. Lauren's dad did get really mad after Keith left and they tried to look for him and everything, however it just didn't seem like they made as big of a deal about their child disappearing as I would expect, but maybe that's just from the frame of our society. Also the father dying didn't seem like that big of a shock either. That makes a lot of sense, considering there's people constantly dying and disappearing from their neighborhood. It probably kind of infiltrates your life and changes the way you think about people in your life and death. What were Lauren's dad and Cory expecting from their children? Did they want them to just stay in the neighborhood and maybe take over their jobs? Marry, have babies, etc.? Or did they think the world would go back to how it used to be? Or, more probably, were they just ...
Read more