Orwell’s society displays a threatening projection of a totalitarian system into the future. Indeed it is a regime very similar to the tyrannies of the 20th century and strongly echoes Stalin Russia or Nazi Germany. The dominant mood inside this repressive system is one of threat and suppression due to the systematic persecution and oppression of non-conformists. As Goldstein explains in his ‘Oligarchical Collectivism’ there have always been three classes: the high, the middle and the low with the middle and the high constantly …showed first 85 words of 1049 total…
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…showed last 85 words of 1049 total…of Truth during Winston’s interrogation. Another example of ‘doublethink’ is the idea of world-conquest which ‘is believed in most firmly by those’ Inner Party members ‘who know it to be impossible’ (1984 p.225). As a general rule the greater the understanding the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane. Hence the somehow paradoxical conclusion that ‘the prevailing mental condition’ in Oceania ‘must be one of controlled insanity’ (1984 p.225). Eventually it is ‘the denial of reality which is the special feature of Ingsoc’ (1984 p.205).
