Ignorance is strength is another discouragement from the pursuit of new information. The Party would rather keep its people ignorant to everything that is not within their realm of Airstrip One, for if the people became self-aware, as Winston did, they start to seek information about the past and become discontented with the Party. The slogan is a way for the Party to tell people that strength comes with Party propaganda, the Party wants its citizens to believe what they say and never question its validity.
6. Tragedy is impossible in 1984 because in order to have a tragedy, a person needs to have human emotions and empathy. This is impossible in Oceania because the Party has stripped the people of their humanity. Tragedy requires deep emotion or love, but that is not possible in this society because it simply does not exist anymore. The Party has stripped all people of those emotions through the dehumanizing processes of doublethink, giving people meaningless jobs, and keeping them extremely busy, from an impossible workday to community functions after that, there is not much time to develop the deeper …show more content…
One of the most important, and most mentioned, symbols in 1984 is Big Brother himself. For the most part, Big Brother is a symbol of the Party, in its public manifestation. Big Brother is the reason for the Party, he is like the king, or president, except for the small issue that the existence of a king or president can be proved and the existence of Big Brother cannot. One one hand, Big Brother is suggested to be a reassurance to the people, as his name suggests a family member, a benevolent,warm source of love, yet he is also an open threat, one cannot escape him. Big Brother is also a symbol of how little the people actually know about the Party, they do not know how the Party is run, who is in charge of it, or how those officials live. Going back to the fact that the existence of Big Brother cannot be proven, evidence for this is apparent when Winston thinks that Big Brother emerged in the 1960’s, but Party records date his influence back to the 1930’s; O’Brien also makes a comment about Big Brother never dying. An actual human being will die. Eventually, if Big Brother never dies, the existence of the “man upstairs,” begins to be