How Is Privacy Shown In The Book 1984 By George Orwell

In 1984 George Orwell asserts that a government with too much power ends up taking away its citizens’ rights to privacy. A government with this kind of power must keep track of every person and every person’s business in order to stay viable and one step ahead of a possible rebellion. Orwell makes this point with his development of the child spies and omnipresent Telescreens. In 1984, children are reared to obey, love, and protect their country at all costs. They are taught to betray the trust of their own parents and turn them over to officials if there is a question of loyalty or indiscretion. Upon visiting a friend with children Winston muses:
…the Spies…produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it… All their ferocity was turned
outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. (28) Orwell shows this strategic governmental move instills unquestioning obedience in its young citizens.
No one is safe from the government, not even at home. If parents even question the government’s powers, policies, or decisions, their children are the first to turn them in. Winston’s friend Parsons has a daughter who turns him in because he whispered, “Down with Big Brother,” in his sleep. This is an ultimate act of usurping privacy. The Party calls these children heroes. Because parents are “frightened of their own children,” the Party’s young spies can breed distrust, weaken the bonds between parent and child, take away privacy, and help make the Party more powerful. In addition to the child spies, Telescreens are another way the government controls its citizens. Both in homes and on the streets, the government keeps a watchful eye over its people by using cameras in Telescreens that record every move and conversation by every citizen. The Telescreens also feed propaganda that promotes government beliefs and the leader “Big Brother” to its people - all day, every day. The Telescreens are omnipresent and Winston
remarks:
It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a Telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called. (65)
Telescreens give the Party extreme power as they access the lives and minds of Airstrip One citizens. As a result, no one can enjoy a moment of privacy anywhere. People must be careful of what they say, how they act and to whom they speak . The only way Winston is able to achieve some privacy is by sitting in a corner of his room just out of view of the Telescreen. He can’t move and he cannot speak for fear the Party will see and hear what he is doing and thus be charged with a “punishable offensive.” The telescreens and spies might not actually exist in the real world, but they are tools that Orwell uses to describe what could happen when a government becomes too powerful.