1984: A Pre-Floydian Slip?
By Jaime Torley
In the novel 1984, George Orwell creates a futuristic society. In this bleak future, ideals
like love, loyalty and even free will are abolished. In the movie Pink Floyd: The Wall, the
audience is introduced to the character of the rock star, Pink Floyd and his trials and tribulations.
At first glance, these stories seem completely different. However through brainwashing,
conformity and the main characters themselves, one can see that these stories are actually quite
similar.
In today’s modern world, humans would ideally believe that brainwashing is merely a
word, something that does not even affect them. However, it is a common occurrence, and it was
even more abundant in both 1984 and Pink Floyd: The Wall. Outer Party member Winston Smith
was imprisoned for planning against the Big Brother. In all actuality, the only crime Winston
committed was being an individual. He was tortured into following the belief structure of Big
Brother. When his aggressor, former friend O’Brien, asks him what major power Oceania was at
war with. Winston replies “When I was arrested, Oceania was at war with Eastasia” (323).
O’Brien then asks if Oceania was always at war with Eastasia. Winston knew that the
government often changed enemies and allies quite often. He told O’Brien that a week before his
arrest, Oceania was not at war with Eastasia. That was not the answer O’Brien was looking for. It
was true that the government would change who they were at war with, but lower class citizens
were told that they had always been enemies with whatever power they were currently fighting.
Winston would often wonder if there was a war, or if the government lied about that too. In Pink
Floyd: The Wall, it seems Pink has thoughts similar to Winston.
Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
Did you ever wonder why we had
To run for shelter when the promise of a brave new world
unfurled beneath the clear blue sky? (Pink Floyd “Goodbye Blue Sky”)
He asks if anyone saw the ‘frightened ones’ or ‘falling bombs’. Did they even exist? Pink is
doubtful about this. And the ‘brave new world’ was symbolic of “...the positive effects of World
War II. Hitler and his fascist regime will be obliterated, thus allowing the world to become a safe
haven for all peoples. Yet no matter how intentional, there is a sinister ring to the very line
recalling Aldous Huxley’s 1931 novel Brave New World that tells of a futuristic utopia in which
babies are born from test tubes...and pushed into a world that has all but destroyed individuality”
(Urick). Brainwashing was also used to make people hate others. In 1984, it can be seen in the
form of the Two Minute Hate rallies that all Party members were required to attend. Everyone
would assemble in front of a large telescreen and the Enemy of the People, Emmanuel Goldstein,
would be shown along with enemy soldiers. Party members were encouraged to shout
obscenities at the screen. Winston claims “a hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire
to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through the whole
group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing,
screaming lunatic” (101)
By brainwashing the Party members into hating a common enemy,
the citizens would not unite against Big Brother. In Pink Floyd: The Wall, the audience
experiences a unique concert from the rock star. He stands up front at a podium, not merely a
rock star, but a politician. He tests the loyalty of the audience claiming, “we’re gonna find out
where you fans really stand” (Pink Floyd “In the Flesh”). Pink “spews out Nazi-esque
propaganda at his unsuspecting and equally ignorant audience in an attempt to mold them into
his warriors. The audience [is] mostly dressed in black and some [are] sporting shirts that simply
read ‘HATE’ ” (Urick). Through his music, Pink has brainwashed his most devoted fans into
nothing more than a reincarnation of the Nazi party.
Microsoft’s Encarta defines conformity as “adherence to the practices or beliefs of the
majority”. One, under normal circumstances would have the choice of conforming with the
crowd. In instances like those in Orwell’s 1984 and Pink Floyd: The Wall, conformity was more
than encouraged, it was forced onto citizens. The citizens of Oceania were described as a
“faceless, uniform mass of human existence” (Beetz 2963). Anyone who did not adhere to the
standards set by Big Brother would stick out from the faceless drones. Readers learn that “of
dramatic consequence...Winston surreptitiously attempts to establish his own identity” (Beetz
2963). He is sent to the Ministry of Love, which is not as cheerful as its name might suggest, and
tortured in the dreaded Room 101. The government made a “conscious effort to destroy the very
concept of hope” (Hitchens x). In the movie, Pink Floyd: The Wall, one sees that Pink is put on
trial. The prosecutor opens the case by saying,
...the prisoner who now stands before you
was caught red handed showing feelings
showing feelings of an almost human nature.
This will not do... (Pink Floyd “The Trial”)
This shows that in the imaginary world Pink has stationed himself in, feelings were not allowed.
They were merely a way of showing individualism, which was not encouraged. During Winston
Smith’s stay at the Ministry of Love, his “individual personality is wiped out and...he is recreated
in the Party’s image” (Hitchens xii). Going into this punishment, he has a personality all his own,
and Big Brother simply could not allow that. When his ‘re-education’ was complete, he emerged
a completely new person. When Pink Floyd was a young boy, it seemed to him that his
punishment was school itself. In the “Another Brick in the Wall: Part 2" sequence of the movie,
one can see that teachers would have made excellent workers at the Ministry of Love. They try to
educate the children into conforming. They enter school as individuals and leave with a blank,
expressionless mask on, making their change both physical and mental. Though the children
manage to do what Winston cannot; they rebel. However, “when the school children are all
chanting ‘we don’t need no education’ together in unison, this act, in a way, is more conforming
than the education they have grown to hate” (Urick). So in a revolt against their learning, the
children fight back the only way they have been taught, by coming together against the enemy,
or, in a word, conforming. Non-conformity, in both of these societies, was a sin that could not be
atoned for and there was only one way to deal with it; eradication of the culprit. This was similar
to Nazi Germany. In 1984, however, the criminal would not be executed immediately. O’Brien
made a point of explaining this to Winston by using the example of the Spanish Inquisition. “It
set out to eradicate heresy, and ended by perpetuating it. For every heretic it burned at the stake,
thousands of others rose up. Why was that? Because the Inquisition killed its enemies in the
open, and killed them because they were unrepentant. Men were dying because they would not
abandon their true beliefs. Naturally all the glory belonged to the victim and all the shame to the
Inquisitor who burned him” (329). When he was released from the Ministry of Love, Winston
had to accept the fact that “death never came at an expected moment” (352). In Pink Floyd: The
Wall, instead of the main character being the executed, he is more like the executioner. A
delusional Pink is heard singing “Waiting for the Final Solution to strengthen the strain” (Pink
Floyd “Waiting for the Worms”). Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ was to kill off anyone who did not fit
his ideals. By killing off these weaker strains, he believed it would strengthen the races he
thought were perfect, namely the Germans. “Pink’s autocratic personality has moved from ethnic
branding, to segregation, and finally to minority obliteration, spouting various phrases of ‘social
purification’” (Urick).Pink Floyd, much like Hitler, had become obsessed with conformity and
ridding the world of non-conformists.
Both Winston Smith and Pink Floyd share similar life events. Once Winston was taken to
Room 101, he was not only tortured, but drugged. He recalled “unsympathetic men in white
coats feeling his pulse, tapping his reflexes, turning up his eyelids, running harsh fingers over
him in search of broken bones, and shooting needles into his arm to make him sleep”(318).
These doctors lulled Winston into a false sense of security, they made him think they were there
to help and maybe even heal him, but when the “needle[s] jerked into Winston’s arm” (335), they
were really using drugs to control him. This, paired with the torturing, allowed a new Winston
Smith, that, up until now, had been locked away in the inner recesses of his mind. In Pink Floyd:
The Wall, the audience is taken into the hotel of the rock star. Pink Floyd is sitting in a chair in a
drug induced state of unconsciousness. Suddenly, at his manager’s orders a crew of doctors show
up to revive him. They try, in vain, asking him “Can you show me where it hurts?” (Pink Floyd
“Comfortably Numb”). The doctors must then look him over themselves, like the doctors in
Room 101. They then administer more drugs to revive the star. It seems that their intentions were
noble, but much like the case of Winston Smith, a newer persona rises from the ashes of Pink.
“The doctor’s shot acts as a catalyst for the future emanation of Dictator Pink, in a way freeing
the crazed self that has been locked away for so long in his subconscious” (Urick).
Accompanying these new personalities is a sense of guilt. When Winston submitted to the will of
the Party, he was given a new cell. This one was furnished unlike the grimy dungeon he was
accustomed to. Winston would sit in his bed and think about how futile his efforts against Big
Brother really were. “He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled” (352). Winston went through
every principle of the government that he ever questioned and “he realized...that [the thought of
questioning them] should ought never to have occurred to him” (352). Pink Floyd begins to
realize how wrong he was near the end of the song “Waiting for the Worms”. Roger Waters, the
lead singer of Pink Floyd, describes the song as “an expression of what’s happening in the show,
when the drugs start wearing off and what feelings he’s got left start taking over again...his real
feelings” (Waters). His negative actions subside at the single word command of ‘stop’. In the
song of the same title, Pink is seen in a bathroom stall singing, “I’m waiting in this cell because I
have to know / Have I been guilty all this time?” (Pink Floyd “Stop”). Unfortunately these
stories do not end in the ‘fairy tale’ ending the human race has come to expect. Winston Smith,
after being re-released into society spent his days at the Chestnut Street Café. He watched as the
telescreen declared victory over Africa, the country Oceania was currently at war with, and
suddenly, “the long-hoped for bullet was entering his brain” (370). With this act, Big Brother
could not only claim victory over Africa, they could also claim victory against the human race.
With the death of the last of the human beings, as O’Brien called Winston Smith, the government
finally had the mindless drones it had strived for all these years. While Pink Floyd is not killed
physically, he is destroyed mentally. In the final scene of the movie, Pink is on trial. He is
accused of building a wall to completely isolate himself from the pain he has experienced in life.
The judge finds this to be an outrageous crime. He screams at Pink, who, at this point, has
become a lifeless doll featuring the expressionless mask worn by his classmates earlier, “I
sentence you to be exposed before your peers. Tear down the wall!” (Pink Floyd “The Trial).
With the destruction of the only protection Pink has, he is left a vulnerable shell of a man.
Nothing more is ever heard about him again. Instead, at the end of the movie, children gather
bricks from what is very possibly the metaphorical wreckage of Pink’s wall. Perhaps, the bricks
will be used in their own walls. In the very beginning of the first song of the album, The Wall,
one can hear Rogers say very softly “...we came in...” (Pink Floyd “In the Flesh?”). At the very
end of the album, Rogers speaks again, this time saying, “Isn’t this where...” (Pink Floyd
“Outside the Wall”). The full phrase “Isn’t this where we came in?” suggests that this is a cycle
of life. After the destruction of Pink’s wall, another will be built and destroyed, and so on. Unlike
Winston, Pink will not be the last one to suffer madness.
Aside from both sharing British descent, it might seem like the enigmatic rock band, Pink
Floyd, might have little or nothing in common with Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George
Orwell. Pink Floyd: The Wall and 1984 are the most popular creations from these artists, and
although the main storyline varies, there are some notable similarities between them. By looking
at the use of brainwashing, forced conformity, and the main characters themselves, one can see
that perhaps war may not really be peace, freedom is not really slavery, and ignorance is not
necessarily strength, but perhaps they are “all just bricks in the wall.”
Works Cited
Beetz, Kirk H. Ed. Beacham’s Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction. Vol. 5. Osprey:
First Printing, 1996.
“Education–Brainwashing.” n.d. 27 April 2004.
< http://www.stormy.org/edubrain.htm >.
Orwell, George. 1984. Orlando: Harcourt, 2003.
Hartline, Bryan. “The Dark Side of the Wall”. n.d. 22 April 2004.
< http://www.uta.edu/english/hawk/syllabi/virtua/film/hartline/thewall.htm >.
Hitchens, Christopher. Introduction 1984. By George Orwell. Orlando:
Harcourt, 2003.
Myers, David G. Psychology. 7th ed. New York: Worth Publishers, 2003.
Pink Floyd. The Wall. Columbia Music, 1979.
Pink Floyd: The Wall. Dir. Alan Parker. Perf. Bob Geldoff, Christine
Hargreaves, and Eleanor David. 1982. DVD. Columbia Music Video, 1999.
“Roger Waters Online.” n.d. 27 April 2004.
< http://www.rogerwatersonline.com/roger_waters_news/430402.htm >.
Schein, Roberto. “Expression Through Design: Animation Sequences of The Wall.” n.d. 28 April
2004. < http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/3985/thewall.htm >.
Urick, Bret. “A Complete Analysis of Pink Floyd: The Wall.” 6 Oct. 2002. 22 April 2004.
< http://home.mchsi.com/~ttint/ >.
Waters, Roger. Interview with Tommy Vance. Radio One. 12 Nov. 1979. 23 April 2004.
< http://home.mchsi.com/~ttint/watersinterview.html >.