Literature under control

a critical perspective on the novel 1984

Abstract

This study examines the role of literature in totalitarian contexts through George Orwell’s novel 1984, investigating how the novel portrays literature and language as simultaneous instruments of domination and resistance. The analysis is grounded in the understanding of the novel as an aesthetic form that emerged in modernity, characterized by the division between the subject and the world, and explores how this rupture is embodied in the trajectory of the protagonist, Winston Smith, whose subjectivity remains in constant conflict with the oppressive reality imposed by the Party. The research also examines the discursive mechanisms present in the novel, such as Socing, Doublethink, and Newspeak, demonstrating how linguistic control contributes to the fabrication of subjectivities, the manipulation of memory, and the naturalization of submission. The findings indicate that literature, even under ideological threat and instrumentalization, retains its critical potential by exposing the contradictions of modernity and challenging structures of power. The study concludes that 1984 reaffirms the novel as a privileged form for narrating the historical experience of oppression, while emphasizing literature as a space of symbolic resistance, preservation of memory, and the development of critical consciousness.