Nineteen Eighty Four; Extending the Boundaries of the Imagination.
When the novel Nineteen Eighty Four was written there were no existent computers nor were there any political leaders from which to extract the idea of Big Brother. So not only did George Orwell have to have a broad imagination, but his readers also had to stretch their state of mind outside of their everyday experiences in order to understand what is being said in the book. Although Orwell had personally witnessed the totalitarian governments or Russia and Spain, neither of them had gone to such lengths of sustain their power as did Oceania in his story.
There are concepts in the book that must be looked upon with a wide imagination in order to be understood. Newspeak, Doublethink, Big Brother, telescreens and the thought police are all ideas which extend the imagination with their unusual and original nature. Another example of a revolutionary idea is that in which the past is controlled by the party and can be alterable when necessary, "who controls the past controls the future; who controls the presents controls the past." This is also similar to the idea that reality really only exists in our minds and therefore can be controlled. If in previous reading we have neer thought of reality in this manner, it forces us to think in a completely new way and in turn extends our imagination. There is a part in the novel where a member of the party sucessfully convinces Winston Smith that two and two is not four, but five. "Sometimes Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane." This not only raises frustration in us, but also extends our imagination into the nightmare realm of the anxiety dream. This is something that we would not enjoy in our lives, and Orwell uses this concept to warn us for the future of our own society.
