Friday, April 21, 2017

In Orwell's 1984, what is Ingsoc?

Ingsoc is
short for English Socialism, and the shortening of the word into two basically meaningless
syllables is itself significant. Ingsoc is a word that can mean whatever the Party wants it to
mean at any given moment: it has been severed from its historic roots. This aligns with the
Party goal of creating a state that can rewrite history as it wills because it completely
controls language. As Syme, the Newspeak expert, notes while having lunch with , 


The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.
Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak.

By this, Syme
means Newspeak is the attempt of the Party to simplify the English language so that the average
person will be incapable of all but the most basic kinds of thoughts. This will rid the Party of
thought crimes. Therefore, Ingsoc, at its core, is a political ideology that means to rob human
beings of the capacity for independent thought so the Party can more easily control
them.

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