The social criticism in george orwell'S 1984

4.3 The Totalitarian Effects to the Characters 
The totalitarian government of the Party in the 1984 novel, in addition, its 
impact on the Oceania community, the system of government also greatly 
influences the individual lives of the characters in the novel. In the following 
discussion, the writer will explore some of the totalitarian effects on some 
characters in the 1984 novel. 
4.3.1 Winston Smith 
Winston, the main character in 1984 novel, heis also the Party worker most 
affected by the Party's injustices in his individual life. As an outside party worker, 
Winston does not get a normal life as he shall. Every step, action and everything 
that concerns and overseen by the Party through a telescreen. 
The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that 
Winston made, above the of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, 
moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the 
metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of 
course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given 
moment (Orwell, 1961: 3). 
Telescreen also remains Winston of all the Party duties, he is supposed to be 
working on. 

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Winston dialled ―back numbers‖ on the telescreen and called for the 
appropriate issue of the Time, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after 
only a few minute‘s delay. The messages he had received referred to articles 
or news items which for one reason another it was thought necessary to 
alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify (Orwell, 1961:38). 
As a Party Worker in the Ministry of Truth, Winston either likes to or does 
not, he still keeps rewriting every Party story and fixing up any of the Times' 
erroneous News errors, and after correcting the news that Winston is required to 
remove evidence of previous Party errors. 
For example, it appeared from the Times of the seventeenth of March that 
Big Brother, in his speech of the previous day, had predicted that the South 
Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly 
be launched in North Africa (Orwell, 1961:38). 
Or again, the Times of the nineteenth of December had published the official 
forecast of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth 
quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three Year 
Plan. Today‘s issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it 
appeared that the forecast were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston‘s 
job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later 
ones (Orwell, 1961:39). 
As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise 
(a ―categorical pledge‖ were the official words) that there would be no 
reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was 
aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grams to twenty at 
the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the 
original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the 
ration at some time in April (Orwell, 1961:39). 
As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his 
speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of the Times and pushed 
them into the pneumatic tube. Then, scions, he crumpled up the original 
message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the 
memory hole to be devoured by the flames (Orwell, 1961:39). 

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59 
During his duties at the Ministry of Truth, of course Winston knows a little 
more about the lies that the Party hides in the Oceania community at all times. 
By the third day his eyes ached unbearably and his spectacles needed 
wiping every few minutes. It was like struggling with some crushing 
physical task, something which one had the right to refuse and which one 
was nevertheless neurotically anxious to accomplish (Orwell, 1961:183). 
In so far as he had time to remember it, he was not troubled by the fact that 
every word he murmured into the speakwrite, every stroke of his ink pencil, 
was a deliberate lie. He was as anxious as anyone else in the Department 
that the forgery should be perfect (Orwell, 196:183). 
Thus, the instinct of the rebel Winston emerges over the course of time. He 
begins to think that he will commit an offence against the Party, as well as to 
record the lie in a diary. 
The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal 
(nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it 
was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by 
twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp (Orwell, 1961:6). 
In a diary of Winston, hewrites his hatred of Big Brother, though he 
believes that the Thought policewill arrest him and most likely Winston will be 
wiped out but he cannot deny that he is actually against the rules of the Party. 
Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained 
from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or 
whether he did not go on with, made no difference. The Thought Police 
would get him just the same. He had committed would still have 
committed, even if he had never set pen to paper the essential crime that 
contained all others in itself (Orwell, 1961:19). 

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It makes no difference to Winston, when he decides to buy the diary and 
write DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, he is ready with all future consequences 
for his offences. Having thoughts contrary to Big Brother is just as dead.