Chapters 1-3

George Orwell has already painted a terrifying image in my mind of what the world could possibly turn into, if power got into the wrong hands. These first three chapters don't start off lightly either. We are placed into a third person limited standpoint and all we really get to know is what Winston is thinking and what it is that he does. This perspective does allow a closer feeling with what it is to actually live in the society because it allows side comments of the surroundings. The first page starts off making the world seem very derelict. There is dust everywhere; the hallways smell like boiled cabbage, but then through all this, there is the picture of Big Brother. His enormous face, more than a meter wide. He has the face of a man in his forties with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features, that when reading can by synonymous with Adolf Hitler. So already we have an image of a miserable world that has pictures of a leader that resembles a man we all know to have had no sense of human compassion and this is just from the first page. The government is all-powerful, all controlling, but most of all the government is secretive and hidden. The government is not known about, people know there is a 'party' but what they do, nobody that doesn't need to know, knows. The party's figurehead is Big Brother. Whether he exists or not is up to debate, but he is the man that is said to have lead Oceania and make life as 'great' as it is today. They keep the sense of always being around their inhabitants by having telescreens, which are monitors in every room of every house that work as two-way communicators and allow (or so they say) for the party to be always watching you. Their are Big Brother posters everywhere and to keep up with the theme of 'the party is always watching you', his eyes are like the Mona Lisa's, in that they always appear to be watching you. The government has the regular police that regulate laws like every society has, but they also have the thought police. The thought police monitor people to make sure that they aren't committing thought crime which is not punishable by death it IS death. The thought police scare people into not doing anything that could get them taken away and vaporized, as people have called it. Theres a massive uncertainty about everything and nothing is explained but there is enough fear created to have the entire population controlled by fear and hate. Everyone’s life is miserable because they are kept under control and are always scared of the government while being locked out of being informed. Winston can’t remember what life used to be life before the party took over, but he knows that it hasn’t always been this way. He can’t really remember what happened either. The characteristics of a dystopian society are that a lot of people question the motives of the party and have to be exterminated. There are a ton of loose ends that should lead to a lot more questioning but all the questions that arise are quelled by the thought police going around and vaporizing all of those that have thought crimes.