George Orwell 1984
Sociology 205
George Orwell- 1984 Paper
Freedom is Slavery “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” (1984, Orwell, p 69). In the book, 1984, by George Orwell, Winston –who works at the Ministry of Truth- lives a life where the government controls everything you do, even what you get to think about. The city of Oceania obeys the laws by the Big Brother, or the president. If anyone were to go against what Big Brother says or wants, he/she is to be taken into custody, and “treated” for insanity. George Orwell managed to write a fictional book about our present day society and how the government tells us we are free to do whatever, as long as we abide by the countries laws, which in itself is slavery. George Orwell incorporates the ideas of McDonaldization, where our society possess the qualities of a fast food restaurant. There are four primary components of McDonaldization; efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. Efficiency is choosing the optimal method for completing a task. For our government, this would be a way to get a bill passed the fastest or finding a way to keep the people from doing a thing they feel is out of the question. Calculability is the idea that having a large amount of product delivered in a short amount of time is the same as a high quality product. This is the same as the businesses in our society doing things as fast as they can to get more product out, and jacking up the prices to make a high profit off of these low end products. Predictability means that no matter where a person goes, they will receive the same service and receive the same product every time when interacting with a McDonaldized organization. Lastly, control is standardized and uniform employees. This is like replacing all of our employees with computer based machines, because they are “more efficient”. As you can see, our society is becoming greatly McDonaldized. The government has changed so
George Orwell- 1984 Paper
Freedom is Slavery “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” (1984, Orwell, p 69). In the book, 1984, by George Orwell, Winston –who works at the Ministry of Truth- lives a life where the government controls everything you do, even what you get to think about. The city of Oceania obeys the laws by the Big Brother, or the president. If anyone were to go against what Big Brother says or wants, he/she is to be taken into custody, and “treated” for insanity. George Orwell managed to write a fictional book about our present day society and how the government tells us we are free to do whatever, as long as we abide by the countries laws, which in itself is slavery. George Orwell incorporates the ideas of McDonaldization, where our society possess the qualities of a fast food restaurant. There are four primary components of McDonaldization; efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. Efficiency is choosing the optimal method for completing a task. For our government, this would be a way to get a bill passed the fastest or finding a way to keep the people from doing a thing they feel is out of the question. Calculability is the idea that having a large amount of product delivered in a short amount of time is the same as a high quality product. This is the same as the businesses in our society doing things as fast as they can to get more product out, and jacking up the prices to make a high profit off of these low end products. Predictability means that no matter where a person goes, they will receive the same service and receive the same product every time when interacting with a McDonaldized organization. Lastly, control is standardized and uniform employees. This is like replacing all of our employees with computer based machines, because they are “more efficient”. As you can see, our society is becoming greatly McDonaldized. The government has changed so