Freedom Of Speech In George Orwell's 1984

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Have you ever had to refrain from saying something because it would be considered inappropriate? Have you ever completely dropped a word from your vocabulary, entirely due to the fact that it was not considered “politically correct?” Do you ever feel as if you do not have the specific words to accurately express yourself? Then you probably understand the way the characters in George Orwell’s 1984 were feeling.
In this book, Orwell created a dystopian future where the citizens of “Oceania” were stripped of many freedoms including privacy, unaltered information, education, and marriage. However, perhaps the most shocking and invasive freedom seized from them was the freedom of speech and even thought. The citizens of Oceania were separated into …show more content…
First, it is important to understand that they were deprived of many freedoms. The citizens of Oceania were not allowed to write, own books, or basically show any emotion other than love for the party and hate for the enemy. A major aspect that was stripped from their lives was language. Not only were they unable to say certain words, but the party was working on creating a whole new language - a language that consisted only of approved words. It was stated that the party was “destroying words - scores of them, hundreds of them, every day.” (Orwell page 45). Then, it would be impossible for the citizens to express things the party did not want them to. There would be no words to express that. Syme was a party member that worked on the new dictionary. He said, “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” (Orwell page 46). The party not only desires to remove the freedom of speech from it’s citizens, but it does not want them to even be able to think. As it was put in the novel, “There will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think.” (Orwell page 47). Clearly, a decline in vocabulary leads to a dystopian
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