“The solid world exists, its laws do not change.”

Cultural Revolution in Orwell’s 1984

and America’s 2014

By Mitchell Kalpakgian, Ph.D.

In Orwell’s novel Winston Smith, the protagonist, finds himself living in an inhuman world he cannot recognize as normal or natural. 

Aware of life in London before the Revolution and now experiencing the chilling new world of Big Brother and the Party in Oceania, Winston feels alienated, enslaved, and dehumanized. He has vague fond memories of the past he recalls from his childhood, but his current life as a government employee in the Ministry of Truth bears no resemblance to his earlier life. 

The threat of Thought Crime and Thought Police has deprived him of basic freedoms and human rights like freedom of speech and the right to marry. 

A new world order has revolutionized old traditions and dramatically changed the status of human life: “He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster.” 

The Cultural Revolution in 1984 has transformed society through three major assaults: the attack on the family by the manipulation of marriage, the destruction of the past by propaganda, and the disintegration of truth by verbal engineering. 

Political, cultural, and sexual revolutions—both then in 1984 and now in 2014—all utilize the techniques that operate in Winston’s world.

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