1984 Personal Response Essay Example

the past as the truth and now this novel as put a wavering in my trust, sending a hint of doubt and fear in everything associated with the past.

The cookies you leave from surfing on the web, the call history log on your phone, the microphone and camera that are the phone in everyone’s pocket, all leads to a sheer lack of privacy. I am not saying that these things are actually being used to create individual profiles of everyone in some secret government agency, but the thought that this is possible is scary. Technology has been a blessing and has saved many a life, yet there are certainly downfalls.

Another aspect to this fear is the possibility of not even knowing if this theoretical agency is watching you or not, since we know they do have the power to do so. As Spiderman put it, “With great power comes great responsibility”, and with the power of technology I am not sure we can always be responsible. Having to bundle up all your emotions inside of you and not express them is a huge punishment in and of itself. Showing no love and having no friends is an awful way of life. The fear here is that the government in the book actually succeeded in allowing people no emotion except towards the government and its enemies.

Love is what fuels the world and without it the world is just a place with no lightness. Ultimately this all leads up to the ending, with 2 + 2 = 5. Mathematical laws of addition would show that the equation of 2 + 2

would equal 4. Yet what is shown by the party’s manipulation is that it is possible to make someone believe that 2 + 2 = 5. By physically and mentally completely breaking people down to an almost breaking point, it is possible to reprogram their thought process to really think it equals five.

This shows that the party at this point has complete control over your brain, thus your thoughts and therefore your actions. No part of your life now is actually your life, merely just your body under the full and utter command of the party. I began this writing response with the discussion of fear, and then of some of the things I feared in the book. Yet the implications of the ending of the book are my utmost fear. It is an almost irrational fear, for the fact that it is so hard to wrap your head around it. In the essence though it is the fear that someone can have total control over your mind.

This was a message George Orwell was trying to share with the world from this novel. To me this is where it gets interesting, for George Orwell lived in what is our past. Even the date of the novel is in our past. The present now is the past now for time has already passed since you read that statement. Yet our past is connected to the present. George Orwell (past) and I (present) are connected through these shared fears, shared fears of what the future holds. Thusly, 1984 connects time itself with the past, present and future being all linked by a timeless

classic.