Enumerating things up to a specific number is not always the best way of dealing with literary issues, BUT, in 1984 there are so many elements of dehumanization that coming up with five or more of them should not be hard. The constant surveillance makes it impossible for anyone to have a private life. The children are trained to dislike their parents and spy on them. The food is scanty, substandard, and monotonous. A huge segment of the population, the proles, are explicitly dehumanized by official policy. We hear the phrase more than once that “the proles are not human beings.”
The deepest form of dehumanization, however, would seem to be that no one trusts anyone else. It is not just the children who are spying on their parents, but everyone is a potential member of the Thought Police or at least has the likelihood of giving information about a colleague or acquaintance if that person slips up and says something heretical. Fear is the largest single factor in the Party’s objective of turning the population into so many automatons. At the stage in which we are shown this vision of the future, it hasn’t quite happened yet, but Orwell makes us believe that the process is practically inevitable, as the despairing close of the novel indicates.
1. The Party dehumanizes citizens by spying on them 24/7. This allows people no privacy or private lives. One's whole life is intended to be dedicated to the advancement of the Party, not their own desires.
2. Marriage is sanctioned only by the Party's wishes. Even sexual relations between a husband and wife are not allowed the possibility of fruitlessness—sex is for creating more citizens, not pleasure or emotional bonding. The relationship between Winston and his brainwashed wife shows this, since she only had sex with him with the hopes of pregnancy and was distraught when she could not fulfill this duty to the Party.
3. The very concept of Hate Week is dehumanizing. Citizens are basically expected to transform themselves into mindless, angry hordes for the sake of propaganda. The Hate Week practices turn individuals into a mob, which is dehumanizing and beneficial to the state keeping its power over the hearts and minds of its subjects.
4. Party members are forced to wear the same uniform, stripping them of personal expression and individuality.
5. Freedom of speech is decidedly not a thing in Oceania. You either support the Party or you are a traitor.
1. The Party dehumanizes its members by constantly watching them and creating a surveillance state. Party members have literally no privacy, and Big Brother watches them via strategically placed telescreens in their homes, at work, and throughout society.
2. The Party deprives the citizens of typical amenities, which are hard to find and are in scarce supply throughout Oceania. The Party economically deprives the population in order to keep them oppressed and weak.
3. The Party controls whether or not its members are allowed to have relationships with other members. Marriages and relationships are sanctioned by the Party, which dehumanizes its members.
4. The Party members are required to wear the official outfit of blue overalls, and women are forbidden from wearing makeup. The official uniform of the Party diminishes a person's individuality and further dehumanizes them.
5. The Party members are also forbidden from expressing their true feelings about Big Brother and anything deemed unorthodox is punishable by death. Winston Smith and Julia are forced to pretend they agree and support the Party at all times in order to survive in the hostile nation of Oceania.
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