Power and Freedom 1- Sacrificing Privacy

Question 1

Part 1

Orwell and Funder stress the immediacy of the …

Answer 1

Orwell and Funder stress the immediacy of the State to sacrifice the private lives of citizens as an effective means of control and power.

Orwell’s protagonist, ‘Winston’ lives constantly under the eye of Big Brother, never knowing if he is “being watched at any given moment” by the pervasive figure.

Conscious of the possibility that any act of disloyalty will result in Winston becoming a “dead man,” he is unable to express any emotion besides that of “quiet optimism” to satisfy the Party’s strict regulations.

Question 2

Part 2

To even write in a journal is a “decisive act” for …

Answer 2

To even write in a journal is a “decisive act” for Winston, knowing that the exposure of any thoughts that may undermine the Party can definitely risk his life.

Society has been “systematically” conditioned into this perpetual state of paranoia and fear, an intentional operation to suppress any desire to resist.

Comparatively, Funder’s exploration of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) emphasises the rule of the Stasi whose job it is to “know everything about everyone,” subjecting Germans to a similar incapacity for privacy

Question 3

Part 3

Characters in Funder’s text are prevented from

Answer 3

Characters in Funder’s text are prevented from being open and vulnerable, however must become guarded and disconnected from society.

As Miriam Weber recounts, with an absence of trust between those bound by their oppression, comes a society in which “everyone suspected everyone else” of being a traitor.

Question 4

Part 4

This degree of mistrust…

Answer 4

This degree of mistrust becomes the GDR’s “foundation of social existence”.

Both regimes exercised severe surveillance to quell any form of revolution, and subsequently, repressed any freedoms.