1984 Practice Essay on Individual & Collective Human Experience

Resource Description

Explore the ways in which your prescribed text represents the individual and collective human experience.

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Intro: Texts provide insights into the human experiences through anomalies, paradoxes and inconsistencies in human behaviour and motivations. This can translate into collective and individual human experiences which is evident throughout 1984 through Orwell’s analysis on society and individuals. Throughout the novel Orwell utilises the juxtaposition of control and rebellion, the adaptation of love and imposition of fear to represent collective and individual experiences. The juxtaposition of control and rebellion creates psychological human experiences of conformity versus individualism by adapting individual character’s actions as well as societies. The adaptation of love highlights the importance to psychological and physical human experiences among individual and those shared with each other. Furthermore, the imposition of fear throughout Oceania propagates a collective conformity that can be seen within individuals throughout 1984. Therefore, through the analysis of Oceania and individual characters Orwell dictates individual and collective human experiences throughout 1984.

The juxtaposition of control and rebellion throughout 1984 imposes a collective human experience and its evolution creates an individual human experience. Throughout Oceania Winston observes the ‘fear, hatred and pain’ and no ‘dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows’. The use of cumulative listing showcases the control that The Party has imposed upon Oceania creating a collective social human experience. Furthermore, the use of emotive language creates an emotional human experience by displaying the lack there of. Moreover, the control of the party ‘trying to kill the sex instinct or… distort it and dirty it’ creates a collective psychological human experience by warping the societal understanding of sex. The plosive ‘d’ alliteration within the quote also displays the individual physical human experiences by causing the absence of it.