Throughout history governments have evolved in their laws and ruling tactics. It has also changed the way literature has been portrayed to the readers. This essay is based on Totalitarian government. Totalitarianism is a form of government that whereabouts the fact that the ruler and government is an absolute control over the state. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini are some of the dictators that had total control over the people and state. This essay will include the ways in which the movie V for Vendetta and George Orwell’s book 1984 portrays totalitarianism in their use of language, and mistakes made in the past. The first totalitarian government that is going to be spoken about is V for Vendetta. V for Vendetta was a movie …show more content…
The setting of the movie looks very dystopian like because the streets are dark, gloomy and deserted. There also seems to be a lack of human life on the streets as all the people lock themselves up in their houses. Also through the movie, the government goes through a lot of problems that leads them towards a scandalous state. The scandalous state of the government tells us that the government is about to come to end and be defeated by the one who claims himself to be the hero known as V. The qualities of totalitarianism depicted in the movie are secret police, fear, violence, lack of trust, dictatorship and propaganda. Secret police is shown to us in movie when Evey leaves her apartment after curfew. The secret police patrol the city at night to eliminate the citizens who don’t follow the high chancellors orders. Using fear in a totalitarian state is crucial for it’s society. Secret police spread fear, as people are afraid of doing things they aren’t supposed to do. Violence is shown in the film as people who neutralize the government are tortured by the government and sooner or later killed. They are killed as the government thinks that people who do wrong should not be given a second chance as they might redo their wrongs again. Propaganda is illustrated in the film, as there are many posters in the movie that quotes “Strength through unity, Unity through faith”.
Violence is one the biggest theme in the book Night. It has a lot of violence throughout the book. Violence is used to control other people just like the Germans who used violence to force the Jews into concentration camps. Violence is used to menace and threaten people to control them. Overall, violence is so extreme and so excessive that many characters have a hard time believing it could possibly be real.
The theme of brutality it’s introduce to the reader on the early chapters of the book, and it is exposed throughout the rest of the books. Brutality is a very important theme on this book because it shows how bad humans can be to each other. There are several examples of brutality through this book but the first big one happened when moshe the bottle gets back from his exile and he describes to atrocities the gestapo did to the jews, in the words of Moishe the Beadle “Without passion or haste, they shot their prisoners, who were to approach the trench one by one... infants were tossed into the air and use as targets for the machine gun. ”(6).
Dystopian texts espouse a variety of didactic messages that depend significantly upon both the context and zeitgeist of the time in which they were created. Differences can be found when comparing the techniques and perspectives the authors have chosen to represent their contextual concerns to audiences. Together both Fritz Lang’s silent black and white film ‘Metropolis’ 1927 and George Orwell’s novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (*referred to as 1984) 1948, confront and provoke audiences to consider the impact that (abusive power + unquestionable control= insert question statement) can have not only on the characters in these two texts, but also on the cultural and political lives of the reader and viewer. By subjugating & dehumanising the lower classes, dictators are
When V saved Evey after she peppered spray one of the detectives in the broadcasting building, Evey wakes in fear, realizing what she did was wrong. V replied saying that “ is that what you really think or what they want you to think?”. This scene depicts evidently how the mass media, controlled by the authority spreads the dominant group’s ideology which leads to false consciousness. Thus, the ideology that does not belong to the society but has been unconsciously accepted as its own shows Marxism’s false
Hannah Arendt one of the most influential scholars who defines Nazism as totalitarianism and describes totalitarianism as a novel form of government and domination (Arendt, 1953 : 303). Arendt explains how totalitarianism operates to transform the society into a total domination as follows, Wherever it rose to power, it developed entirely new political institutions and destroyed all social, legal and political institutions and destroyed all social, legal and political traditions of the country... totalitarian government always transformed classes into masses, supplanted the party system, not by one-party dictatorships, but by a mass movement, shifted the center of power from the army to the police, and established a foreign policy openly directed towards world domination (Arendt, 1953 : 303). Thus, according to Arendt, totalitarianism is “a chaotic, non-utilitarian, manically dynamic movement of destruction” (Canovan, 1999 : 26).
This lets them demonstrate how the government has control to destroy society by killing innocent citizens. From the above, we can see how the government can control a population by stoning people to death, putting restraints on citizens, and even using bombs just out of cruelty. It is essential to recognize that dystopias are important to understanding for our society and government because it goes to show that if we don’t take action or speak out to our government, the government can take us over. On a final note, we can relate these stories to real life because some of these situations, like the nuclear bombing, have actually occurred in our
Living through the first half of the twentieth century, George Orwell watched the rise of totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Soviet Union. Fighting in Spain, he witnessed the brutalities of the fascists and Stalinists first hand. His experiences awakened him to the evils of a totalitarian government. In his novel 1984, Orwell paints a dark and pessimistic vision of the future where society is completely controlled by a totalitarian government. He uses symbolism and the character’s developments to show the nature of total power in a government and the extremes it will go through to retain that power by repressing individual freedom and the truth.
The novel’s use of totalitarian government is relevant in today’s government use of
“Throughout time, literature has been used as an instrument to revolt against social and political issues” This quote explains how literature has been used through out all these years and how it used violent action against an established government issues. A successful totalitarian government is when they have total control and access of the citizens and their social and personal life. Freedom is non existing if ruled under a totalitarian government. They rule through fear and only target on a specific religion and belief.
In ‘1984’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, the destruction of the individual is due to a combination of the destruction of independence, language and totalitarian monopolistic control. Complete collectivism, despite separate political beliefs, is presented throughout dictatorial societal jurisdiction as being the predominant way to maintain eternal power. The regimes seek to control individuals and therefore engage in continuing reconnaissance or surveillance of the populace. The mind is the most individual source of power to any person and totalitarianism aims to create complete orthodoxy by controlling and manipulating the mind. Both Orwell in ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ and Atwood in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ are examples of how dystopian literature presents
In the novel, the government makes use of their absolute authority in order to dehumanize and
In 1984, George Orwell depicts a dystopian society pervaded by government control and the obsolescence of human emotion and society. Winston is forced to confront the reality of a totalitarian rule where the residents of Oceania are manipulated to ensure absolute government control and servitude of the people. The theme of totalitarianism and dystopia is employed in 1984 to grant absolute power to the government and ensure the deference of the people through the proliferation of propaganda, the repudiation of privacy and freedom, and the eradication of human thought and values. The repudiation of privacy and independent thought and the ubiquity of government surveillance is employed to secure absolute power to the government over the populace
What is it like to live under the control of totalitarian government? The state will control every aspect of the individual’s life, meaning that people will not have any individual freedom and will be controlled by the authority of the government. Totalitarian governments do not accept any self-led activities, either those performed by individual or group of people. Totalitarian regimes often maintain their authorities through secret police, spread of propaganda through medias and prohibits open criticism against the government. Both mental and physical threats are simultaneously performed in order to maintain the control over the society through fear.
Totalitarianism is frequently depicted by the political savants as a mix of belief system and tyranny which comprises in perceiving limits on the forces of individual natives in taking choice. Unexpectedly vote based system does
Totalitarianism in 1984 and the Real World The concept of a totalitarian society is a major theme throughout the novel 1984. This theme of totalitarianism can also be applied to the world today. The definition of totalitarianism, a concept used by some political scientists, is a state which holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible. Totalitarianism can be related between the novel 1984 and current events in the real world. George Orwell incorporated the theme of totalitarianism into his novel 1984 to display the ever changing world around him during the time it was written.