Vaporization In George Orwell's 1984

Imagine a whole person’s existence erased. Picture years’ worth of memories, feelings, and thoughts vaporized from everyone’s minds. Visualize a new world, now with one less person that supposedly never existed. This idea of vaporization, or complete destruction of an entire person from living memory, is a significant part of George Orwell’s novel 1984. In the novel, a dystopian society exists where people are convicted of having their own free thoughts and opinions. The main character, Winston Smith, is convicted of several of these thoughtcrimes against the government, and is tortured to near insanity by the reigning government figure, the Party. After his torture for these crimes, Winston is released back into the world with a seemingly changed attitude towards the Party to live out the rest of his days with a sinecure to keep him occupied. It is assumed that Winston gets to live the rest of his life, but it is also heavily implied that he in fact will be terminated sooner or later. Through several pieces of evidence in the book, it is likely that Winston will be vaporized. From Winston’s own thoughts and dialogue with other characters, it is strongly assumed that he will be killed at some point. Winston thinks about being shot by someone from the Party as his fate, as he knows “they shot you from behind, always in the back of the head” (279). The certainty in Winston’s tone shows that he knows for a fact that he
He will meet the same fate as countless other people, with their very identities stolen from them and destroyed. His name will be wiped from all historical records, and people will cease to believe he ever existed at all. AS a result, Orwell’s concept of vaporization goes to show what society would be reduced to if one did not have the basic human right to form his or her own thoughts and