Collective Identity Research Paper

Ed Francoeur

English 3

Mrs. Donaldson

23 March 2017

Individual vs. Collective Identity

1984 is a novel that contains many viewpoints of government control, specifically with a dictatorship. Dictatorships are usually countries that want nothing to do with democracy none the less other countries and are almost always power hungry. Oceania perfectly represents a dictatorship because of its trapped and cut off society from the rest of the world. Oceania, in some ways is very similar to North Korea in their viewpoints on laws, protocols, and beliefs/religion. Oceania is comprised of a large group of people who are scared of being individuals. These people make up the collective identity because they don't want to suffer from the consequences
North Korea is basically a prison the size of a country. Freedom is a privilege not a right like it is here in America. North Korea makes us look like the bad guys, similar to how Oceania has a 2 minute hate period for letting out all their anger against Goldstein. North Korea is not the only country that is similar to Oceania in many ways, Germany during World War II was also very much so a dictatorship. Germany is a way more extreme example of collective identity because of the regime they had during the war and the fact that they attempted to conquer the world. People living in countries that push extreme communistic viewpoints and have a huge collective identity presence have no voice. Oceania has telescreens to display propaganda and uses newspeak to restrict people from any type of freedoms. “Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten (Orwell 52).” These people can't say what they want to, do what they want to, and most of the time they are pressured to do everything exactly like everyone else. This type of dictatorship forces people to do things they normally, would never
The worst part about this is that the people actually believe what the government says and they will do whatever they are told. When Oceania puts in place its laws everyone is forced to follow them even if you are being forced to do things you don't want to do.“The subsequent Parti Quebecois government's attempt to adopt a charter of Quebec values that would have extended the ban on religious symbols to all state employees, gave licence to a xenophobic minority of Quebeckers to act on their discriminatory views” (“Quebec can’t keep politics out of the identity debate”). Quebec’s government tried to suppress minority's specifically muslims, by passing laws/bans that create an atmosphere where their citizens can be somewhat prejudiced toward Muslims just because of their religion. Goldstein isn't even a real person the party made him up to make people believe that he was the root of all their problems. This is similar to how Quebec's government wanted to blame the Muslims even though they didn't do anything and were very discriminatory towards them just because of their