1984 George Orwell Culture Analysis

The next part that Orwell was again on the right path, but was still not totally right about was the controlling of people through culture. "Written by a dying man and based on the work of the Russian author Zamyatin, it is a chilling picture of how the power of the state could come to dominate the lives of individuals through cultural conditioning."(Protherough) This quote shows that one of the ways to control people is by altering their culture. Altering ones culture is not as easy as it is shown in the book. When altering ones culture it is easier to do so after an event that tears apart their ideals. In Germany, before World War I, they had a very militaristic view of their country; there was great pride felt in Germany in their belief of being one of the strongest Europeans super powers and at that time that is what they were. After WWI, when Germany was defeated and forced to pay reparations their ideal was crushed. They were no longer strong like they had been before and people were angry; Hitler then took advantage of these angry people and gave them something to rally behind, he gave them an escape route and many were more than willing to follow him. He used this event to alter the way the entire country felt about themselves and controlled them with far less effort than what would have been required had their ideals not been crushed. In 1984, Orwell states that power comes from tearing apart a persons mind and reassembling it. "Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing."(Orwell, 1984) This quote is directly related to
Orwell said that the book was written with the explicit intention "to alter other people's idea of the kind of society they should strive