Saturday, March 28, 2009

Doublethink

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancel out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.” (35)

The language complexity that Orwell uses here shows how difficult the world of doublethink is and lends to the theme of control that is present in 1984. It has become nearly impossible for people like Winston, who enjoy thinking freely, to do so. The Party controls everything, and can see everything. When someone commits a thoughtcrime, the Party is instantly aware, exerts its control, and punishes the person in one way or another.

**Note: This is the longest sentence I have ever seen.

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