Question #7 - 1984

What is the major theme of this novel? Why is this theme important to a teenager living in 2007?

The major theme of this novel is "A totalitarian government can destroy and change how people think." In the novel, Big Brother makes everyone follow and love his ideals. He achieves this by using the Thought Police to track down people who have anti-governmental thoughts. Once a rebel is caught, he/she is taken to the Ministry of Love. Once there, the rebel goes through several different tortures, which ultimately lead up to the final torturing in Room 101, which holds whatever that specific person fears the most. By the time the torturing and "fixing" is complete, the rebel's anti-governmental thoughts have been destroyed, and, instead, have been replaced with obedience to Big Brother. This is what happens to Winston, the protagonist of the novel.

This theme is very important to a teenager living in 2007. As teenagers, we are constantly under pressure by the media to look right, act right, and be accepted by our peers. This is very similar to what goes on in the novel. The citizens of Oceania are forced to follow the rules and principals of the Party, while under pressure to not be caught by the Thought Police for even thinking something negative about Big Brother or the Party. If a teenage girl happens to look healthy, rather than the look of someone who has wasted away, she is considered fat. The media tells this girl that unless she looks like a skeleton, she is as fat as a pig. Some people might say that the media cannot change how a person thinks about themselves, but they can. This healthy girl might hear the message of the media so many times, that she actually starts believing that she is fat. Soon, because the girl does not want to be labeled as fat, she starts to take desperate measures, such as starving herself.

The media may not look like the totalitarian government described in this novel, but it, just like the Party and Big Brother, does have the power to destroy and change how people think. Everyday, girls and guys who are perfectly normal starve themselves to look thinner, because they truly believe they are fat; teenagers start smoking because the model who smokes on television is the vision of beauty, and they truly believe smoking makes them look cool. The media is destroying and changing the minds of teenagers across the world; it's happening right now. As teenagers, we must tell ourselves what the media says is not true, and find happiness in things that go deeper than the skin.