George Orwell’s 1984 is usually understood as a warning against political totalitarianism; it is maintained that its most terrifying critique is of cultural control. This paper explores the way the novel defines ideology not only as oppressive instruction but as a system inscribed within the fabric of everyday life, reproduced through language, memory, ritual, and emotional conditioning. Drawing from the theoretical frameworks of Antonio Gramsci’s cultural hegemony, Louis Althusser’s ideological state apparatus, and Michel Foucault’s discourse on surveillance and power, the paper examines how the Party maintains control by reshaping the cultural imagination of its citizens. It is finally grounded at its core, however, in the utilization of Newspeak, Two Minutes Hate, manipulation of the past, and symbolic annihilation of individual memory, which are in themselves demonstrative of the creation of a world in which culture functions as a means of repression. This repressive regime does have its moments of fleeting revolt, though; Winston’s diary, his illicit relationship with Julia, and the fragment of the glass paperweight bear witness to the fact that cultural identity and free thought, transitory as they are not eradicated. In bringing a cultural critical framework to 1984, this paper brings to the foreground Orwell’s astute remark that control is most efficiently exerted not by coercion, but sustained through manipulation of culture.