Newspeak Newspeak vaporized the minds of the citizen of Oceania, who were members of The Party. Imagine being in an environment in which you were not able to think. Imagine being treated like a robot. Imagine having no feelings like a robot, doing only what you are ordered to do, nothing for yourself. Welcome to Oceania, the utopian society of 1984 by George Orwell. In Oceania executive level members of The Party used Newspeak to gain control of the minds of lower level – common – party members.
To gain control of the minds, first The Party diminished thought. For example on Page 45, Winston’s friend Syme says, “We ” re destroying words – scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We ” re cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won’t contain a single word that will be obsolete before the year 2050.” Unlike other languages Newspeak was designed to diminish thought, rather than help expression.
Instead of gaining words, day-by-day Newspeak would lose them. If there is no word for the concept of freedom, how can a person in the party think about freedom? By limiting the language, the party members are limited in their thought. Fewer words make expression difficult. If there is little or no expression of any type the mind is more easily controlled. Newspeak vaporized thought. Now that Newspeak had gotten rid of thought, it became easier to take control of the people.
For example on Page 17 the narrator says that one of the slogans is, “War is Peace.” Having no thought, the party members were brainwashed. They were told that being at war is peace. Even though what they were told was not true, the party members believed it. They believed it because they didn’t know better. There was no word in the Newspeak dictionary that made the party members think even for a second that what they were being told was wrong.
If there is nothing in the Newspeak dictionary that contradicts this statement, the minds of the members will not think. That is why Newspeak loses words day-by-day. Using slogans like this one, the Executive level members of The Party were able to take control of the minds of lower level party members. Having attained control of the lower level members of The Party, “Big Brother” can now force them to work in the joycamp.
Don’t let the word fool you. Joycamp is another word that is used to make you believe that it is a fun place. Even thought the harsh reality is that it is a concentration camp. However since “Big Brother” has control over their minds, they will not question the work in the camps, it will be assumed that hard labor is joyful. When a large group of people has been stripped of their minds they are easily controlled, in this case, by a political party.
When the group of people gets larger and larger, the executive members get more and more power. After a large percentage of the educated country is under the spell of The Party, the executive members will use this power to pressurize more people to join The Party. The executive members can use their powers to even torture members to make them conform to the party. This is what happened in Oceania. If the minds of the lower level part members had not been vaporized, then The Party would not be what it is. The vaporization of the minds removed thought; because of the removal of thought The Party was able to gain control over the lower-level members.
This control led to the power, which was used to make the lower-level members conform to the rules even more. If the minds of the citizens of Oceania, who were members of The Party, had not been vaporized then there would be no dominance of The Party, and there would not be an interesting story.