MovieChat Forums > Nineteen Eighty-Four (1985) Discussion > What did the Party want? (possible spoil...

What did the Party want? (possible spoilers)


It is understandable if there was a group of powerful people who created all of this in order to achieve some personal gain. Perhaps something as simple as money. I get it if it is trying to depict a future, perhaps the one we're living in, where everyone is being watched and in a way controlled to serve the interests of a powerful few. But given that the book and the movie highly suggests that Big Brother himself is fictional/dead, who is pulling the strings and why? What do they have to gain?

It was reiterated several times that the idea was to keep the party eternal. The book even stated that nothing was hereditary. i.e. children of inner party members cannot be classed like their parents automatically. Even the inner party members themselves had limitations on what they could and couldn't do. So it begs the question again, why do any of this?

I feel like I've missed something haha. Thoughts?

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Part of the explanation is that the system is self-perpetuating. Once society gets in this state, the surveillance apparatus ensures that nobody has the power to change it, even if everybody hates it.

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In Winston's diary he wrote "I understand how; I do not understand why." When O'Brien is interrogating Winston, O'Brien gives an explanation for the Party's motives by saying:

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"
Like Winston, I have to confess that I don't understand O'Brien's relish for "Power, pure power." What's it all for? No rhyme, no reason, no point. It all sounds very sado-masochistic. Maybe that's what it boiled down to.

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I think your quotation answers your question. Dictators only survive by force. When Gorbachev renounced the methods of Stalin, the Soviet Union and its satellites collapsed.

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The magic of 1984 is there is no dictator, he's not real therefore he cannot die.
North Korea must have read the book and thought it was an operations manual. After Kim Il Sung died, he became the Eternal President.
In many ways North Korea is a self sustaining government regardless of who leads it, because there are too many at the top that want to keep the system the way it is, reform is impossible.

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Eh I have to disagree with you about North Korea. The people at the top know what is reality and what is not.

If a new leader came to power and stupidly chose (in a dictators POV) to change the government to allow for open trade, tourism, or any transparency he would either fail miserably, similar to Gorbachev or change the fundamental government. Even Un's uncle had a different view for the government and that's why he was paraded around during his mock trial and executed. To the average "outer party" or "prole" citizen it showed restitution for a "corrupt" man. It was a grave warning to any military or government member not to mess with the new leader, because he is so ruthless he will murder his own family to stay in power.


North Korea takes its ideology from 1984 and A Brave New World.


North Korea is not a self sustaining government in any sense of the word. It is more similar to a country of citizens kidnapped and held for ransom by an Asian Manson family. However the more ignorant % of the population have Stockholm syndrome and don't even realize it.


The rest of the world is forced to pay up to save those NK "proles" to avoid possible nuclear retaliation & mass genocide through starvation due to economic and societal collapse of NK as we know it.

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I think O'Brien just understands and respects the system as it has been designed... a perpetual trap that endlessly corrals anyone who tries to upend the system back into compliance with and adherence to the system.

Neighbors suspect neighbors, co-workers suspect co-workers, parents suspect their children, and their children suspect their parents, and so forth. Tripwires are laid out into the society in the hopes of tricking anyone who starts to get an idea that could grow into a seed of revolt into turning themselves in as Winston did. And then the possible bond which could lead to a couple who loves each other turning to themselves rather than society is sabotaged through men suspecting women and vice versa, with those who couple up being eventually caught and turned against each other.

The goal was to freeze the endless cycles of society into a lasting regime that could never be escaped, the metaphorical boot stamping on the face forever. A chilling idea for sure. I was going to say I hope it can never be actually installed, but I'll be damned if I don't see significant elements of this system already in place.

Reading the book-within-the-book of The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism is a gloomy experience, especially when viewed in the light of the military industrial complex in the United States and its hellbent intent on diverting resources into wasteful endeavors half a globe away...

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You're makin'... me... beat... up... GRASS!

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O'Brien argues that the system is rebellion-proof and he may be right. But it's possible that the system could simply wipe itself out in a plague or a famine or an ecological disaster brought on by the fact that all the leaders are lying and nobody has a coherent notion of the real state of the society.

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The Party is sadistic and its power is achieved from that. The only thrill it has is the destruction of the human mind, ironically, its rulers cannot enjoy this as they have to destroy their own minds with Doublethink in order to achieve this and not become victims of their own sadism.

The original revolutionaries were all wiped out in the great purges when the Party first took control. The Party is not controlled by the original revolutionaries, they were likely what's known as useful idiots these days.

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That's the theory I've gone with for years, that much like Romeo and Juliet, the system is so deeply ingrained in everyone that it's just kept up because 'that's how it always is'. In Romeo and Juliet nobody can remember why the feud between the Capulets and Montagues is so vile and hate-filled, and at the end of the story, after the deaths, the patriarchs of the family decide to put the feud to bed and make amends.
With '1984', it seems that the characters will keep the fascist government going purely because everyone can suffer through it, and nobody will be able to tear it down when so many people keep holding it up.

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Well, I think you are struggling because you are trying to be too literal. I don't believe Orwell meant 1984 as a prediction but more as a warning. The Party ultimately represents the nature of power. It reminds me of Shakespeare's line (about jealousy, but it still fits): "It is a monster/Begot upon itself, born on itself."

I see Orwell's book as a warning to always be aware of the nature of power because when it gets out of control, it is not easy to reign back in. He is, of course, being extreme to make his point clear.

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I think it says that the purpose of it all is power. That power is not the means to an end. Power is the end in itself.

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Power is the end.


Why do multi-billionaires want more money?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qssvnjj5Moo

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