The Discipline Article

The article Discipline & Punish was not only very interesting, but also made me think. I mean breaking up a town into sections with each its own “commander” if you will, all because of the fear of something they don’t know, such as the Plague, and allowing themselves to succumb to their own fright and allow constant monitoring. And then to have a big area in which you are confined to isolation with the fear of being watched consistently but never really knowing it. This article focuses on two very different ways of controlling a population that have the same result. One focuses more on mass hysteria singling out the “lepers” of the society and individualizing for a negative effect, while at the same time instilling fear of not only the unknown but also fear of individualization or of being “abnormal.” The other focuses on the isolated person who is instilled with a fear of Big Brother, to the point of actual observation becoming unnecessary, all for the same result of complete control of the human person, both tactics are used in the novel 1984.The constant observation and investigation into a person’s psyche, in 1984, the unknown being Big Brother, and the control coming from a piece of machinery called the telecast, never actually knowing when its watching you but knowing that it is. Individual thought is gone, and now, “War is peace, Freedom is slavery, and Ignorance is strength” (Orwell, p. 4). People follow that saying without questioning it for the fear of being vaporized.

In reading both the article and the novel, I found it very fascinating how simple and complex the ways of controlling people were. Making prisons resemble schools, hospitals, and factories, and even turning the homes into prisons so it becomes like a suffocation of the soul with nowhere to go. It made me think of today’s world and how easily we can be watched and how easily we conform to technological devices and never once considering the reality that maybe “Big brother is watching is,” maybe for a fear of its actuality or a fear of being singled out of the masses.