Secret Police The Characteristics of Dictatorship in The Nineteen Eighty-Four

25 Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious. Orwell, 1948: 70 To be good citizens, who obey the rules of the Party, is a must. But, do not get too good, do not get too smart, do not seem to know and understand or cheerful or different, might you be evaporated, not only killed physically, and your tracks will also be omitted from history. There will be no one who ever knew or remember you. Government’s slogan: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU Orwell, 1948: chapter I

4.1 The Characteristics of Dictatorship in The Nineteen Eighty-Four

After the writer read and analyzes all chapters from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the writer found seven characteristics of dictatorship that occurred in the novel. This is following dictatorship that occurred in novel:

4.1.1 Secret Police

In Nineteen Eighty-Four the leader who runs the government has secret police. Secret police is always everywhere and monitor every movement of the citizen. In the novel secret police named Thought Police. Life of citizens is not free because every movement of them was set by the government. an activity simply writing in a diary an act of self-expression is an unpardonable crime. Life is organized, supervised, and directed entirely by the government. Through the presence of the Thought Police and a machine named Telescreen. The writer imagines a kind of Universitas Sumatera Utara 26 CCTV, but it does can detect expressions and gestures people, gestures everyone noticed. People could not do small things that were considered suspicious by the government, because if people do rebellion then they will be arrested by the Thought Police and eliminated. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, named is vaporized. Behind Winston’s back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct —in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. Orwell, 1948: 3 Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death. Orwell, 1948: 28 Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed —would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper — the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you. It was always at night —the arrests invariably happened at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: VAPORIZED was the usual word. Orwell, 1948: 19 Universitas Sumatera Utara 27 H elicopter is always watching to every window of the house’s citizens. Slogan of government that show such things are also present every place in Oceania. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people’s windows. Orwell, 1948: 2 BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran. Orwell, 1948: Chapter I Big Brother was a single dictator figure in the novel Nineteen Eighty - Four by George Orwell. Big brothers face adorns posters across all of Oceania and big screens telescreen in Victory Square the settlements of party members. By government, the people are forced to be born, live, grow, work, aging, and death. There is no struggle, resistance, and other matters beyond the path that has been written by the state.

4.1.2 Changed Language