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The Party of Evil Genius in Orwell's 1984
Malek J. Zuraikat
1
& Haneen al-Nawasreh
2
1
Department of English, Yarmouk University. Corresponding author.
ORCID: 0000-0003-1948-2671. Email: m.zuraikat@yu.edu.jo
2
Independent Researcher, Jordan. Email: 2018300002@ses.yu.edu.jo
Abstract
This paper explores the strategies of Evil Genius for manipulating people's principles, thoughts, orientations,
and ideologies in favor of promoting the logic of the party of Evil Genius, as found in Orwell's 1984 (1949).
Relying on Descartes's definition of Evil Genius, we argue that the party in 1984 deploys the strategies of
delusional propaganda, memory resetting, and doublethink to convince people of the significance of Big
Brother for their peace and prosperity. The paper examines the party's approach towards Winston, who has
always been suspicious of the party, contending that the party successfully toys with Winston's mental and
emotional perspectives, thus leading him to view his own ego or rationale as his worst enemy. Such a
reading is significant due to potential similarities between Winston's experience of victimization and
people's feeling of being victimized by the party of Evil Genius in the postmodern society.
Keywords
Descartes, Evil Genius, George Orwell, 1984, postmodernism.
Introduction
George Orwell's 1984 tackles the hypothesis of Evil Genius that is incarnated in the leprechaun
party and its representative O'Brien. It displays the role of Evil Genius as a timeless and placeless
entity that obtains the power to transform the real world into illusions and the illusionary into real.
The novel shows how Evil Genius examines people's senses and awareness of the external world
trying to delude them to believe that the world of Evil Genius is the one that makes sense, a
strategy that potentially causes people to suspect everything real. Introducing the people of
Oceania as predominately dominated by an illusion created by a group of psychopaths who turn
people's external world into a dystopian nightmare, the novel emphasizes that Evil Genius may
emerge in form of a deceptive mindset of an evil person who uses his genius cunning to
manipulate people and impact their perception of reality in favor of supporting the ideology and
interests of the party of Evil Genius. This is evident in Orwell's 1984, where the party of Evil Genius
deploys illusionary propaganda, memory resetting, and doublethink to create its own deceptive
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
Vol. 13, No. 3, 2021. 1-13
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.13
First published on October 21, 2021
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