The Effects of Totalitarianism on a Fictional Society
             In 1984 George Orwell shows how totalitarianism controls people's lives through propaganda and technology, history without any truth, and fear for their lives. Orwell's intention was to invoke resistance to the totalitarian society he was writing about. It is strange, however, that despite the unappealing control of that kind of society displayed in the book, Russia throughout history has tried that form of government. Critic Phillip Rahv states, "Big Brother, the supreme dictator of Oceania, is obviously modeled on Stalin, both in his physical features and in his literary style" (182). Orwell is recognizing the similarities between his fictional society and that of Russia when he compares Big Brother to Stalin. The essential point of 1984 according to Lionel Trilling is "...the danger of the ultimate and absolute power which mind can develop when it frees itself from conditions, from the bondage of things and history" (143). The way the totalitarian government shows power in this novel is extraordinary. In every part of the book dealing with totalitarianism Orwell gives explicit detail in how the Party controls every part of the peoples lives. In the book the character O'Brien says, "The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of the others; we are interested solely in power" (Orwell 194). Throughout the novel, Big Brother played a large role in controlling the society.
             The society shown in the book uses the supreme ruler, Big Brother, for propaganda. There are huge posters of Big Brother all over the town with eyes that seem to follow wherever the people go. Orwell describes the posters decorating a building:
             At one end of it a colored poster had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a meter wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a ...