Power

"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.

-George Orwell, 1984

In the novel, there are two different, very definite senses of the word 'power'. There is power in the sense of power within the Party and there is power in the sense of having the capability of conscious thought in this strictly regimented society.

From the perspective of having power within the Party, submissiveness and compliance equal power. If one complies with the principle of doublethink and one accepts the Party and Big Brother as the ultimate ruler while still maintaining a certain mid-level intelligence one may rise in Party ranks.

In the other sense of the word, power is scarce. The Inner Party has the most power, mostly because they have the most knowledge of what is happening and why. Members of the outer Party, I would say actually have less power than the proles. Because the proles have significantly less surveillance than The Outer Party, they have the power to rebel against Big Brother if it occurred to them to do so. It would be extremely difficult for a member of The Inner Party to incite a rebellion without being caught by The Thought Police. From this perspective, knowledge and determination are synonymous with power.

Language and Freedom

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?... Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

-George Orwell, 1984, Chapter 5

One of the themes in Orwell's 1984, is the deconstruction of language as a means of controlling the general population. The Party is doing so by creating and refining a language called Newspeak. Newspeak is closely related to English except for its grossly simplified vocabulary. Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year. In the novel, Winston's friend, Syme is working on putting together the 11th edition of the Newspeak dictionary. He talks about every new edition contains fewer and fewer words. They seem to be essentially stripping down the English language to its bare bones, to its most logical form. They're doing this, as Syme puts it "to narrow the range of thought and therefore make thoughtcrime virtually impossible". 


Language is defined as "communication of meaning in any way". Freedom is defined as "the power to exercise choice and make decisions without constraint from within or without". It would be seemingly impossible to exercise choice and make decisions when ones only means of expression has been significantly handicapped. Obviously, language is crucial to the idea of freedom because without it, one does not have the means to express discontent, desire for change, or ones opinion.