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Big Brother In George Orwell's Panopticon

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When people are in a constant state of fear they are subjected to following orders and obey every instruction given to them. As cities become increasingly larger and prisons are constantly filling up, policing and monitoring has become more difficult to handle. Also, even the innocent locations of common suburbia experience these conditions Numerous concepts trying to address this problem have been published In George Orwell’s popular novel 1984 there is constant mention of an entity that instills fear among the people despite there never being a physical presence of this entity. This entity, known as Big Brother, is said to be always monitoring everybody at anytime. Although his presence is always felt, there is never any knowing whether or not he is physically there. The concept of constant fear is the most efficient way to create order among your …show more content…

This is similarly with Jeremy Bentham’s concept of the Panopticon prison system. The concept of the design is to allow all (pan) inmates of an institution to be observed (opticon) by a single watchman without the inmates being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. This concept has been used in a number of prisons around the North America which include, but are not limited to Statesville penitentiary and Presidio Modelo Prison. Despite Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon having no direct correlation to that of George Orwell’s Big brother figure, both are very similar and provide common characteristics of constant monitoring and the unknown presence. First and foremost, the most noticeable commonality between these two are the features of constant surveillance. In the novel 1984 main character, Winston Smith, along with all the other citizens of London live in a forever state of despair knowing that their city is always monitored. Particularly in London, every

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