1984 Vs The Great Dictator

The hand of a dictator, no matter how gentle, will only destroy the world. In 1939, Adolf Hitler used his power to commit mass genocide against the Jewish people out of pure hatred. “Power corrupts; and absolute power, corrupts absolutely” these are the wise words of a man known as John Dalberg-Acton, this simple moral truth is evident throughout our dark history that power is often abused by those in authority and affects those who experience it deeply. As unfortunate as it is, it is my belief that this statement is true. The overwhelming temptation to abuse the weak that totalitarian governments are presented with is just far too much for the corrupt to resist.

Through subjection to propaganda via harsh military control, such a regime possesses the ability to take complete control over all aspects of an individual’s life. Living under such tight restrictions and unconditional control is traumatic at best, usually causing severe and often irreversible psychological damage. The novel Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell and the film The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin evidently portray the abuse of power and the effect that it has on individuals who experience it deeply.

In the novel Nineteen Eighty Four, Big Brother abuses the military power through methods of propaganda which affects the Outer Party individual’s personal life such as Winston, physiologically. The military power held by Big Brother allows the control of Winston’s personal life. It is abused through the form of propaganda and this is seen in the motif “Big brother is watching you”, due to this being constantly present throughout the novel; it creates a sense of persistent military surveillance and fear in Winston’s mind.

When Winston is about to break the law, he says "The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed--would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper--the essential crime that contained all others in itself.” The use of internal monologue suggests that he is afraid and aware of the constant surveillance of military forces such as the thought police. This affects Winston deeply, in a psychological way as it makes him scared and fearful of the consequences of his outcomes in the sense of what he does and what he thinks. Consequently, through witnessing the psychological affect that Big Brother has on Winston through methods of military control via propaganda prove that power is abused by those in a position of authority and affects individuals deeply.

In the film, The Great Dictator, military power is held by Hynkel and is often abused through methods of propaganda which affects Jewish people such as the barber, psychologically by creating a sense of fear; this type of abuse is also seen in Nineteen Eighty Four in the way how Big Brother uses military power via propaganda such as “Big brother is watching you” in order to make the outer party fear breaking the law.

Hynkel employs his military to label every Jew in the ghetto by vandalising property which effectively makes the Jew’s weaker and too scared to rebel; this is evident through the use of long shots which show the widespread graffiti of the word “Jew” in the ghetto, due to this, the barber is deeply affected psychologically by the treatment that he and other Jewish people receive and is afraid because there is nothing that he nor the Jewish people can do about it. In Nineteen Eighty Four, the inner party uses propaganda through military control in the sense of the thought police being a constant, reminded threat in order to make the outer party scared to rebel.

The gestures that the Jewish barber makes when he sees the graffiti throughout the ghetto suggest the sign of him giving up and accepting that there is no way for the Jewish people to rebel against Hynkel. At multiple stages in Nineteen Eighty Four, Winston also doubts whether or not he will be able to successfully rebel against Big Brother, and at times thinks that it is not even possible to do so. Seeing as what the effect that the dictatorship of Tomania has done, it is evident that too much power often leads to abuse and affects individuals who experience it deeply.

To reiterate, it is indeed true that those in a position of authority often abuse power and affect those who experience it. This was shown evidently throughout the text Nineteen Eighty Four where military power held by Big Brother was abused through the methods of propaganda which affected individuals such as Winston in a psychological way. Likewise, in “The Great Dictator” it was also evidently shown that military power was abused through methods of abuse such as propaganda which affected the Jewish barber and Jewish people psychologically. It really does seem that the hand of a dictator, no matter how gentle, will only destroy the world.