Rhetorical Analysis Of 1984 By George Orwell

Good Thing Orwell
The first article, Search Engine Agendas by Gary Anthes is based on how the internet can redirect your political views by giving pleasant or unpleasant, information or news on a platform you’re searching up. The author, Gary Anthes, is a technology writer and editor based in Arlington, Virginia therefore he is able to speak about this topic because of the research he implements into his written article. Right away in the first paragraph, Gary gives a summary of the main ideas of George Orwell’s novel, 1984. One of the ideas presented in 1984 is of the invisible entity that manipulates the truth and perspectives of citizens without their acknowledgement. The author compares this idea to today’s internet because search engines
can cause “that subtle biases in search engine results, introduced deliberately or accidentally, could tip elections unfairly toward one candidate or another, all without the knowledge of voters (Anthes, Gary).” The author goes far as to ask the audience if it is a believable or possible scenario, but researchers Robert Epstein and Ronald E. Robertson, from the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, experimented different search engines by the usage of test subjects and a past election to see if there is biased in the search engine results. The results were that there is some bias with the search engines because some candidates were displayed differently as in being shown more or less than the other. Therefore, “...Unregulated election-related search engine rankings could pose a significant threat to the democratic system of government (Anthes,Gary).” In that sense, every search engine can be their own Big Brother and Party or their own Ministry of Truth.
Another article titled George Orwell in Our Time by Dr. Braja Kishore Sahoo, a lecturer in English, talks about the works of George Orwell. When Dr. Sahoo speaks on the books written by Orwell, he claims,”All four, however, share the same emotional perspective; each, in the end, declares itself as a step on the path that leads to Nineteen Eighty-Four (Sahoo, Braja Kishore, and Sahoo).” It comes to show that Orwell tells his readers that everything that he has experienced could lead to a totalitarian government like in Oceania because his writing is based off of him and his surroundings. The author explains that 1984 gave the “English language the phrase ‘Big Brother’, or ‘Big Brother is watching you’ (Sahoo, Braja Kishore, and Sahoo).” In order to refer to an oppressive government, but it is mainly for the invasion of privacy. Similar to the U.S. after 9/11 and the passing of the Patriot Act in which led to the mass surveillance of the nation by stripping away privacy. “In 1984 Winston noticed how language had become a major weapon of exploitation (Sahoo, Braja Kishore, and Sahoo).” Dr. Sahoo then points out that in the book, the character Winston Smith and the totalitarian government use simplicity and exclude imagination as well as creativity when using language. He ends its by saying that all George Orwell wanted is “a world free from the spectre of totalitarianism and alive to the enlightened ideals of freedom (Sahoo, Braja Kishore, and Sahoo).”
A few months ago, Ron Charles, an editor of The Washington Post's Book World and teaches American literature and critical theory in the Midwest, published Why Orwell’s ‘1984’ Matters so Much Now.
Charles tells the reader that many dystopian books are being purchased once more again with the new administration. As he said, “Like officials from the Ministry of Truth, Conway and White House press secretary Sean Spicer doubled down on Trump’s fanciful contention that his inauguration drew the “largest audience ever,” despite a Web-full of photographic evidence to the contrary (Charles, Ron).” He draws a piece of 1984 with the Ministry of Truth’s job to give out facts or anything that goes against the administration's president. Another parallel made by as he expresses, “The Obama administration did its best to conceal that the National Security Agency is listening to our electronic communications, an eerie parallel to the surveillance described in ‘1984’ (Charles, Ron).” Demonstrating that it does not only range to the new presidency, but to the past ones as well. The writer gives comparisons that are true and obviously knows the book, but he clears it up in the end that luckily we are not in 1984 and that instead our leader is “a supernova of insecurities, tweeting out his insults and threats to increasingly perplexed citizens who still — for the moment, at least — enjoy the right to object in whatever language they choose (Charles,
Ron).”
Another news source recently published on the book 1984, written by John Broich, who is an associate professor, at Case Western Reserve University, and contributed by The Conversation, who are a a nonprofit news organization that brings knowledge from academia to the wider public with selected scholars of expertise on the issue. The article titled 2017 Isn't '1984' – It's Stranger Than Orwell Imagined details that the new presidency has increased sales to the dystopian book. “Back in London during World War II, Orwell saw for himself how a liberal democracy and individuals committed to freedom could find themselves on a path toward Big Brother (Broich, John).” The writer analyzes Orwell’s environment and sees how the his book came to be, but then says,” And while the U.S. arguably might be an oligarchy, power exists somewhere in a scrum including the electorate, constitution, the courts, bureaucracies and, inevitably, money. In other words, unlike in Oceania, both information and power are diffuse in 2017 America (Broich, John).” With that being said, the internet was something Orwell did not see coming because not only can it provide useful information, but ‘alternative facts’ as mention by the writer. He compares smartphones as the telescreens and that the people are Big Brother because of the inability to see through a lie or seek out the lies. He proceeds to state that,”In Orwell's Oceania, there is no freedom to speak facts except those that are official. In 2017 America, at least among many of the powerful minority who selected its president, the more official the fact, the more dubious (Broich, John).”
Recently The New York Times published, Which Dystopian Novel Got It Right: Orwell's '1984' or Huxley's 'Brave New World'?, and discussing about both novels due to the inauguration of Donald Drumpf or Trump some would argue, and the dictatorship in North Korea.
The article does a comparison of “The most obvious connection to Orwell was the new president's repeated insistence that even his most pointless and transparent lies were in fact true, and then his adviser Kellyanne Conway's explanation that these statements were not really falsehoods but, rather, 'alternative facts' ("Which Dystopian Novel Got It Right: Orwell's '1984' or Huxley's 'Brave New World'?.").” This clearly shows that of the Party and Big Brother saying that they know the truths because they say so, and the Times goes as to say about the simple language used by Drumpf. But dismisses 1984 as being right because of the detail of the book being anti-capitalism and the U.S. is considered Corporate America. The New York Times then addresses a letter from the author Huxley, who wrote Brave New World, told Orwell “that he really didn't think all that torture and jackbooting was necessary to subdue a population, and that he believed his own book offered a better solution ("Which Dystopian Novel Got It Right: Orwell's '1984' or Huxley's 'Brave New World'?.").” The difference of both authors as explained by the article, is that Huxley wrote about a government that pleases their citizens in order to have complete
control over them while Orwell wrote that the government uses torture for control. The article seems to fall in favor of Brave New World because of the state the U.S. is currently in and considers 1984 as a North Korea type of situation because of the dictatorship.
Overall, the articles tells me that 1984 holds some truth in today’s society, but it is not necessarily completely right. Even so, the book will always remain relevant when power is misused towards the people by governments.