Lesley Vargas

March 9, 2017

English IV

Argument Essay

Prompt: ManyofyouhavearguedthatOrwellwrote1984asa

warning.Yourtaskistoarguewhetherthisnovelisstillrelevantto

readersin2017.Youmustciteevidencefromthenovelaswellasfromourother

textsandyoumustciteevidencefromatleast2crediblenewssourcesto

makeyourpoint!

Orwellwasextremelysuccessfulinmakinghispointclearinhisbook1984.

Heexplicitlymentionshowcorrupttheirgovernment(theparty)wasandhow

theycontrolledtheirpeopleanditwasthePartyswayofprotectingthem.The

relevanceofthisbookinthisessaywillbeshownthroughoutthemedia,social

power,andhowwearelimitedtowhatweknow.

This novel in particular is very relevant to readers in 2017. The wealthy people in

our society today, also known as the 1% , control and limit what we know and how we

view our own society. They limit our knowledge by only showing us what they want us to

believe and what they want us to see. In

http://www.blacklistednews.com/media_now_openly_admitting_the_government_control

s_the_news/26077/0/38/38/y/m.html they show an image that mentions, Government

Censorship protecting you from reality this quote connects to the text because in 1984,

Big Brother is protecting his people and wants to be in control of every situation. On

page 209 it states The Party is not a class in the old sense of a word,it does not aim to

transmitting power to its own children, as such; and if there were no other way of

keeping the ablest people at the top, it would be perfectly prepared to recruit an entire

new generation from the ranks of the proletariat. ( Orwell ) This is initiating that The

Party would rather have people from the working class to take their positions rather than

their own children because they did not want arguments to come in between them. The

Party wanted to be sure that whomever the position was given to, they manipulating

everyone else just as a Party member would do so. They wanted to keep their society

being manipulated just as we are today.

Along with media control, another way in which we would relate to 1984 is the

constant surveillance. Social media, for example facebook, is well known not only as a

form of communication but a form of surveillance. In https://nsa.gov1.info/data/ it states

Every day, people leave a digital trail of electronic breadcrumbs as they go about their

daily routine. They go to work using electronic fare cards; drive through intersections

with traffic cameras; walk down the street passed security cameras;surf the internet;

text or call their friends: on and on. This source is allowing us to see how our daily

routines are monitored without us being aware. As for in 1984, it is for every Big

Brother is watching you poster and every surveillance camera to monitor and keep

track of everyones lives. A perfect example of the book to relate to our current

surveillance today would be the time that Winston and Julia had been being watched all
the time they met in the place they believed to be safe. In pages 221-222 it states,

You are the dead repeated the iron voice. To run for life to get out of the house

before it was too late-- no such though occurred to them. Unthinkable to disobey the

iron voice from the wall. There was a snap as though a catch had been turned back,

and a crash of breaking glass. The picture had fallen to the floor, uncovering the

telescreen behind it. Combining these sources, you are able to realize that we have

always lived in a society with no privacy, we will continue to live this way because it has

become the norm in our society to have part of our lives public to more than just our

friends and family.

In conclusion, George Orwells novel, 1984 is very relevant to readers in 2017

due to our standard way of living in our society. Orwell gives a warning in his book

about surveillance and privacy and today we have seen more of the governments way

of controlling us, monitoring, and limiting our access to complete knowledge of our

society today.