The Role of Newspeak and Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984

1984, a famous novel by George Orwell, explores the tyrannical nature of a totalitarian
system where the government controls the thoughts and actions of its citizens. Set in a
fictional Oceania, the novel highlights the life of its protagonist and rebel, Winston, and in
general, the state of affairs in a closely guarded country. The ruling government, simply
known as the Party, broadens its power by controlling citizens’ external reality buy
controlling the mind through various strategies such as a limited language and the
overarching reality of an omnipresent Big Brother. The language, Newspeak, aims to narrow
individual range of thought, while the Big Brother aims to annihilate the individual. Together,
these two strategies become powerful weapons that help the government dim people’s
capacity to think. The dictatorship of the Big Brother robs people of their freedom, and to
further ensure strict allegiance to the Party doctrine, people are gradually incapacitated. By
limiting words, Newspeak erases concepts from existence, and therefore a strong association
between words and thought processes emerge. An analysis of Newspeak and the ideology of
the Big Brother helps the Party to manipulate citizens mentally, impose individual
annihilation through the fear of thought crime, and ultimately, maintain power by vaporizing
transgressors.
Oceania uses Newspeak, its “official” language, and Big Brother as tools of control. By
controlling the citizen’s thoughts, the Party can control people’s actions. To demonstrate how
totalitarian regimes use language to restrict ideas, Orwell shows how certain concepts such as
freedom do not exist in Newspeak’s vocabulary. In contemplating the oppressive nature of

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the inner Party, Winston writes boldly “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” and is instantly
crippled with fear: “He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was absurd, since the
writing of those words was not more dangerous that the initial act of opening the diary…” (p.
18). Newspeak presents the people with limited avenues of expression; it essentially loses
words to maintain unified and less expressive thoughts. In the same sense, the existence of
the concept of Big Brother not only keeps Oceania citizens fearful but also aware that they
cannot dare go against the Party. While Newspeak controls people’s thoughts by limiting
their expressive power, Big Brother uses the element of fear to achieve similar outcomes.
Numerous posters of “Big Brother is watching you” are put up across the city. “The black-
mustachio’d face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house in
front immediately opposite, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption sail, while
dark eyes looked deep into Winston’s own” (p. 4). The nature of policing through Newspeak
and the Big Brother highlight the fatal nature of various transgressions against the Party.
One of the most fatal acts of transgression against the Party and Big Brother is
thoughtcrime, and as such people become afraid of even thinking “ungood” thoughts about
the Party’s leadership. Thoughtcrime involves political and personal thoughts that are
unapproved by the Party. Hence, an individual in Oceania does not have to actually commit a
crime in order to be guilty: as long as the thought exists, such an individual is guilty .
Throughout the novel, Winston is aware of his many instances of thoughtcrime and believes
that the Thought Police will eventually catch up with him. Winston writes in his diary that
“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death” (p. 27). This statement shows
the that Winston understands by formulating his thoughts and writing them down meant that
he was already a dead man. At the same time, Winston begins to wonder the kind of
mannerisms or details that would make him noticeable to Big Brother. “Two fingers of his
right hand were inkstained. It was exactly the kind of detail that might betray you” (p. 28). By

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realizing that every minute detail about his behavior, body language, or appearance were
being monitored, Winston hurriedly heads to the bathroom and carefully scrubs the ink away.
In Oceania, Orwell’s construction of an official language, specifically the intensity of
thoughtcrime, necessitates a strong policing department that ultimately vaporizes thought
criminals if caught.
Newspeak is a deeply upheld symbol of patriotism that people who go against it
eventually disappear through ‘vaporization’. In one conversation with Syme, the Newspeak
expert, Winston is sure that Syme will be vaporized. “There was something that he lacked:
discretion, aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity. You could not say that he was unorthodox”
(p. 52) Without a doubt, the open-mindedness nature of Syme and his tendency to speak his
analysis and thoughts of Newspeak out loud makes him a vulnerable target by the Thought
Police. Later on, Syme disappears and Winston understands the cause of disappearance.
According to Sperber, Orwell uses the Big Brother to demonstrate the power of psychological
control by assuring citizens that there are no laws. “In Oceania there is no law. Thoughts and
actions which, when detected, mean certain death are not formally forbidden, and the endless
purges, arrests, tortures, imprisonments, and vaporizations are not inflicted as punishments
for crimes which have actually been committed, but are merely the wiping out of persons
who might perhaps commit a crime at some time in the future” (p. 62). By openly discussing
and criticizing Newspeak, Winston understands that Syme is bound to be vaporized just like
other thought criminals who are captured in transgression against the Party and the Big
Brother.
From the analysis on the extreme tools of control used by Oceania, it is clear that
Newspeak and the idea of the Big Brother are broadly effective in controlling citizens. As
citizens are never aware of when they are being monitored throughout their day-to-day life,
they attempt to put up “faces of optimism” in front of telescreens and go on about their

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activities with few conversations. The author uses the protagonist, Winston, to demonstrate
the inherent fear that citizens live in with regards to committing thoughtcrimes such as
thinking ill of the Big Brother, questioning Big Brother or Newspeak, and the eventual risk of
vaporizations once labelled a thought criminal. Hence, despite their slightly different modes
of operation, both Newspeak and the concept of the Big Brother are used effectively by the
totalitarian government of Oceania to control its citizens.

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Works Cited

Sperber, Murray. “Gazing into the glass paperweight”: The Structure and Psychology of
Orwell’s” 1984.” Modern Fiction Studies 26.2 (1980): 213-226.
Orwell, George. 1984. London: Secker and Warburg, 1949.