Both Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Hunger Games trilogy are marked by the manipulation of mind and body. In Orwell’s novel, this manipulation is immediately made evident in Part One, when Winston arrives at work and participates in Oceania’s routine “Two Minutes Hate.” The novel reads,
Here, in a span of only two minutes, the Party has exerted its absolute power and transformed man into beast—“her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish,” “his powerful chest [was] swelling and quivering,” “the dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out ‘Swine!’ Swine! Swine!’” As exhibited in this scene, the inhabitants of Orwell’s dystopian state have little control over their actions. Through constant propaganda and the manipulation of mind, the Party is able to assume the role of God and actively…show more content… When toddlers acquire language, a new world of possibility unfolds at once before them. Language grants human beings the ability to express emotions, idiosyncrasies, and desires. With a rich vocabulary in his possession, man is able to both recognize and speak out against abuse. And so, what better way to entrap man than to deprive him of his most elementary weapon? How can one express a desire for freedom when the very word has never entered his vernacular? “Newspeak,” writes William Lutz in Beyond Nineteen Eighty-Four, “prevents disorder, dissent, rebellion, and even independent thought. The thoughts, inspirations, and ideas that could lead to disorder are controlled, even eliminated, through the control of language.” As stated in the appendix of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the purpose of Newspeak is “not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.” By revising and shrinking the human lexicon, the government can do the same to the minds of its
