1984 Discussion
George Orwell's 1984 sets up an atmosphere of darkness and fear immediately. The first image of the book is of Winston's apartment, which has a poster on every floor with the phrase "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU". Immediately, there is a sense that something is not right with this society: the idea of Hate Week, the telescreen that watches constantly and cannot be shut off, and the threat of the Thought Police all give that feeling within the first two pages. The world, Oceania, is clearly a dystopia, as "You had to live- did live, from habit that became instinct- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised" (5). Freedom is not even a viable idea in Oceania; an entirely new language called Newspeak is being phased in to prevent any discussion of ideas that the Party does not endorse.
Winston, the protagonist, is a member of the Party, and technically is an oppressor in this society, but it is clear that he is also oppressed by the policies of the Party. He is constantly in fear for his life. He begins writing in a diary, a crime of individualism punishable by death. That small act alone is enough to set up a conflict, as Winston defies the all-powerful Party. However, the first few chapters imply that bigger things are yet to come, as Winston notices another man, O'Brien, who "seemed to be saying to him 'I am with you,...I know precisely what you are feeling. I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your disgust. But don't worry, I am on your side" (19) with a glance. Clearly, Winston will not be a one-man rebellion of private thought. Although we view the story through Winston's eyes, it is obvious that others commit what the Party refers to as thoughtcrime.
As Winston does government-mandated exercises, he wonders about the history of Oceania. He is certain that a time before constant war existed, but he cannot confirm it because the Party denies any facts of recent history; the only facts important to the Party are the facts of now. This makes me think that the application and preservation of history will be a notable theme in the novel.
Assuming there is a revolution later in the novel, as Orwell seems to hint at, do you believe that it will be a violent revolution or a revolution of thought? How does the setting contribute to the mood of the book?
Winston, the protagonist, is a member of the Party, and technically is an oppressor in this society, but it is clear that he is also oppressed by the policies of the Party. He is constantly in fear for his life. He begins writing in a diary, a crime of individualism punishable by death. That small act alone is enough to set up a conflict, as Winston defies the all-powerful Party. However, the first few chapters imply that bigger things are yet to come, as Winston notices another man, O'Brien, who "seemed to be saying to him 'I am with you,...I know precisely what you are feeling. I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your disgust. But don't worry, I am on your side" (19) with a glance. Clearly, Winston will not be a one-man rebellion of private thought. Although we view the story through Winston's eyes, it is obvious that others commit what the Party refers to as thoughtcrime.
As Winston does government-mandated exercises, he wonders about the history of Oceania. He is certain that a time before constant war existed, but he cannot confirm it because the Party denies any facts of recent history; the only facts important to the Party are the facts of now. This makes me think that the application and preservation of history will be a notable theme in the novel.
Assuming there is a revolution later in the novel, as Orwell seems to hint at, do you believe that it will be a violent revolution or a revolution of thought? How does the setting contribute to the mood of the book?
I'm fairly confident the revolution must be both. For a better answer to your question though, it will start as thought. In fact, it already has begun. Winston's diary is the beginning of the revolution, and as he organizes his thoughts in a way that can't be rearranged by the Party, the revolution will begin to take shape.
ReplyDeleteThe setting is a huge part of the story, and everything so far revolves around the world crafted in 1984. It establishes a mood of despair and oppression. How the setting makes the characters act ties in interestingly with one of the points you made- that Winston as a member of the Party is technically an oppressor. I agree that he is oppressing people, but the interesting part is how it isn't so much something he is willingly doing as it is something he is forced into by the structure of the society. If he doesn't look for other people he can tear down, he is leaving an opening to be torn down himself. The system is set up so that each Party member is an oppressor to all others, a system far more efficient than any other they could put in place.
In the section I just read, there are a couple things worth looking at more deeply. When Winston is eating with Syme, he shortly realizes that: "Mrs. Parsons would be vaporized. Syme would be vaporized. Winston would be vaporized. O'Brien would be vaporized. Parsons, on the other hand, would never be vaporized" (61). The people who would be vaporized are the people who think. Not even the people who think anti-Party thoughts, or even plot against it, but the people who lack a 'saving stupidity'. I suspect this is going to be a theme in the novel, that the destruction of thinkers is what leads to dystopia.
Another thing to look at is what Winston's job is. He is a professional liar. This probably ties into his rebellion against the Party, as he is able to see the lies for lies because he made them. My question relating to the plot of the story here is whether or not this position is going to get him in trouble with the power he has. Winston is struggling against the unending lies of the Party, and the oppression of his fellow Party members. Where is he going to slip up? His tiny rebellion cannot continue as it is, he must either be caught or return to Big Brother. In the long term, will he be able to hold onto what he believes and knows?
I don’t believe Winston’s position will ruin him, unless he decides to overthrow the party from within. However, a larger problem for him may be his tendency to point out the lies; he may ask too many questions to fly under the radar of the party. I think he will try to contact O’Brien when he feels as assured as possible that O’Brien is on his side. Winston is careful with his thoughcrime, but he eventually has to do something to move the story forward, and it seems like at this point it will be openly talking with other people who he thinks want to overthrow the party. He probably will be able to hold onto his beliefs, as his beliefs are the reason for the plot.
DeleteIn chapters seven through eight of book one, Winston ponders the chances for rebellion. “If there is hope, it lies in the proles” (72) he writes. The proles are the non-party members who lack privileges and live lives of poverty, but are mostly ignored by the part. However, Winston knows to hope for a rebellion of the proles is to hope again hope, because they do not understand that they are being oppressed. The party has claimed to save them from oppression, and yet they are still being oppressed in the same way they were before the Party took over. Despite their terrible lives, they are more free than the Party members, as the Party does not enforce most morals of laws onto them. The Party acknowledges that “Proles and animals are free” (75), which is used to diminish the value of freedom as only the lowest class is ‘free’. This idea of freedom as a bad thing is interesting and it makes me wonder whether freedom is a value that every person holds, or if it is a value instilled by society.
Winston tries to make sense of history again, but he struggles to because the Party is constantly changing history. The aim of the Party in regards to history is that if they control the past, they can control the minds of the people. Winston is aware of this, but struggles with identifying a real memory to prove that the party is wrong. He remembers seeing three men who had supposedly rebelled against Big Brother—Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford—be arrested, be reinstated into the Party, and then be rearrested a few years later for allegedly committing treason in Eurasia. Later, Winston inadvertently discovers that the men were in New York at the very time they were allegedly committing treason. This causes Winston to be suspicious, with good reason; the Party’s alteration of fact and history is their main means of control. Winston tries to talk to older proles who were around before the Party took over, but gets little information. He then meets a prole, Mr. Charrington, who takes him to a room with no telescreen. That is certainly an important moment because a room with no telescreen is a place where Winston can be free.
The next day, Winston runs into the dark-haired girl who he initially hated and suspected was a member of the thought police, and she drops him a note that says that she loves him. He is desperate to understand what this means, and when they finally manage to talk without arousing suspicion, they plan to go to the country to truly be alone.
Do you think the Party members, if they understood the meaning of freedom, would relish the freedom that the proles have? Is it possible to entire wipe out the past? Do you think real love will develop between Winston and the girl, or will it be a weak connection as a result of mutual rebelliousness?
I don't think the party members can enjoy the freedom the proles have. Well, perhaps some could, as Winston and Julia show, but the Party members like Parsons have been so indoctrinated to the Party that even if they could somehow grasp the idea of freedom, they would choose to follow the guiding figure of Big Brother. The Party has brought this indoctrination about by altering the past. While the past cannot truly be destroyed, or even altered, 1984 explores the effect of pretending it can be. If no one acknowledges something, it can cease to have meaning. The Party's method of past control, which is terrifyingly plausible in real life, is to control information. Information is how the past lives on, and if it is controlled the past can be effectively bent to the Party's will.
DeleteRather than actively attempt to overthrow the Party, Winston has simply become more daring in his defiance. His attachment to Julia (the girl) was stated to be "...a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act" (126). However, as their relationship moves along, it does grow into a more real relationship. I suspect this relationship is going to be forged in strange times, but the struggles they go through to be together will strengthen it to the point where it ends up working against them. This relationship is going to be what moves the story forward, and I suspect the successful part is near done, and one of them is going to be caught. The way they hide and disguise their relationship reveals an interesting dynamic within the Party, that those who are the most vocally supportive of the Party can get away with breaking the most rules. It stands to reason then, that many of those in the most powerful positions, who clearly have devoted their lives to the Party, have the freedom to bend their own rules. In fact, Julia mentions how some of her old lovers were high ranking Party members. This is hope for Winston, who expresses his thoughts on the Party's system of purity with the remark: "I hate purity, I hate goodness. I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones" (125). This is an interesting statement. Is Winston's real enemy virtue? Is the target of his hate actually goodness, or merely Party dogma? Does he even know goodness? Will Winston's desire to see the Party corrupted lead to him stepping too far?
Winston doesn't really have a compass for what is good and evil, aside from what his conscience tells him, but he has been so indoctrinated by the Party that he can't identify what is good or evil. All Winston knows is that purity and goodness are what the Party wants, and he wants nothing to with what the Party wants. He is rebelling for the sake of rebellion, not for any sense of good or evil that he has. Winston doesn't desire what we think of as corruption (especially as to a modern reader, the Party is irredeemably corrupt), but he wants everyone to be free of the party. Of course, he is only one man, and even with Julia on his side, any sort of rebellion is dangerous and unlikely to work out. His hatred of the party will certainly lead him to go too far.
ReplyDeleteAs Hate Week nears, Winston and Julia are working overtime, but still manage to meet each other in the room over Mr. Charrington's junk shop. In the room, they find refuge; despite the heat and the bugs and the mess, they are happier there because there they are free. They talk about the possibility of rebellion, although Julia does not believe in the existence of the mysterious rebel group the Brotherhood and does not care much about active rebellion. She is keenly aware of the Party's lies, but feels no need for violent overthrow as long as she can live her life in peace. This distinction between Winston and Julia's feelings towards the party should be significant, but they do not cause conflict.
One day, Winston runs into O'Brien, the man Winston suspects harbors rebellious thoughts toward the party, and O'Brien invites Winston to his house under the guise of showing him a Newspeak dictionary. Winston believes that this confirms his theory that a rebellion does exist, and O'Brien is a part of this. However, despite his excitement, "He had the sensation of stepping into the dampness of a grave, and it was not much better because he had always known the grave was there and waiting for him" (166). This seems to foreshadow that Winston's interaction with O'Brien may cause trouble down the road.
Later, Winston dreams about his childhood, and wakes up, afraid that he was the one who killed his mother and sister. He remembers ravenously needing food and taking it from his mother and sister. He remembers stealing a chocolate bar from his baby sister, running away, and coming back to his mother and sister gone. He considers his mother, and how much she loved him to keep feeding him even when there was no food to give. He realizes, "What mattered were individual relationships" (172). The Party gives no value to lives except to live for the party, but Winston wants more than that, and realizes that power is found in relationship.
Do you think Winston and Julia's differing ideas on rebellion will drive them apart? Is O'Brien really on Winston's side? How will the value Winston places on relationships drive his interactions with others and the Party?
Winston's theory of the rebellion is true, in a sense. It is a strange rebellion for a strange society. The classical image of hushed conversations in cellars and gatherings of hooded revolutionaries is non-existent, and instead we are given the formless, secretive Brotherhood, unified only by 'the book'. O'Brien is indeed a member of this Brotherhood, but has no special lead role. He is merely another cog in the shifting Brotherhood machine, albeit with more status in the real world. His views on the nature of this rebellion are quite interesting, as although he is in the Brotherhood, he has little confidence things will change anytime soon. Do you think O'Brien is right? If he is, what does that mean for Winston? Could he be wrong, and have missed some crucial factor leading to the Party's collapse?
Delete'The book' is the unifying element of the Brotherhood. In it, we get revealed to us the state of the world. Winston, of course, already knew all this, but a lot of things are clarified for the reader as Winston erratically jumps around the book. For instance, it is revealed that "the conditions of life in all three superstates are all very much the same" (196). There is no bastion of liberty. All is authoritarian tyranny. 'The book' then goes on to explain the different philosophies of each superstate- namely, the lack thereof in all but name. It is also revealed that the war is a farce, that no land will ever really be taken, and that it is only a front to focus emotions and waste resources. Perhaps most interestingly, 'the book' delves into the newspeak term 'doublethink'. Doublethink means to accept two contradictory facts at the same time. It "lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty" (214). Doublethink is everything the party is, has been, and will ever be. It is really what the novel centers around, the use of deception to fool everyone, including the deceiver, into believing it as truth. The question therefore arises- if everyone believes something, and it is no longer possible to find any contradictions to is, is it truth? The natural instinct is to say that truth is always truth no matter how obscured, but Orwell brings up a good point. How can something be a lie if everyone and everything shows it to be true? Winston's own mind has this struggle, and the Brotherhood and Julia is where it finally gets validation. Is truth immutable, or is it something that can be edited? Is there any point bothering with these semantics if there is simply no way of knowing whether or not something was edited?
The Party's goal is to eliminate past truths and create its own truth. As long as there is resistance, and the past truth, which we as readers would regard to be the real truth, is out there, truth is still real. However, the Party does not want that. They want their 'truth' to be considered the real truth without reservations. Once there is no indication in a single mind that the Party's truth is untrue, there can be no debate as to its truth.
DeleteWinston thinks he is safe in Mr. Charrington's shop, and he and Julia enjoy their time together after waking up. However, their time is cut short. As they repeat "We are the dead," in reference to their rebellion, a chilling voice echoes, "You are the dead" (230). This simple line instantly creates fear and suspense. The voice speaks to Winston and Julia, and a telescreen behind the picture on the wall is revealed. They have been watched this whole time. This scene was so well written that it was frightening; between the creepy, disembodied voice, the knowledge that they are surrounded, and the stillness of Winston and Julia, an atmosphere of fear is created. Winston then realizes that Mr. Charrington is a member of the Thought Police, and the scene cuts off there.
Part III begins with Winston in a holding cell, watched by telescreens, in what he presumes is the ironically named Ministry of Love (which is where criminals are tortured). Winston waits in the cells for what feels like days, although he admits he has no idea how long it really is. This is just one way that the Party tries to play with his mind. He watches several people come and go, including his neighbor Parsons, who was turned in by his children. Several people are taken to Room 101, a place that makes every person taken there pale in fear. Throughout the chapter, Winston and the reader have no idea what Room 101 is. Finally, Winston's waiting is over when O'Brien comes in. O'Brien reveals that he is still on the side of the Party, and takes Winston in to torture him in Room 101. The goal of the torture is to cleanse Winston of his thoughtcrime and force him to believe everything that the party says. O'Brien tries to assert that whatever the Party says must be taken as truth, because "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past" (260). This Party motto represents everything that the party tries to do; by controlling foreknowledge and memories, they control the minds of the people. Winston's torture continues until his appearance is altered almost beyond recognition. However, O'Brien acknowledges that Winston has stayed strong and not betrayed Julia.
Why did Mr. Charrington let Julia and Winston go on using the room as long as they did if he was a member of the Thought Police? Why does the Party torture thought criminals into submission rather than just killing them? When Winston does not betray Julia, does it prove that love is stronger than the Party's torture and lies?
As for why Mr. Charrington let Julia and Winston use the room as long as they did, I suspect it has to do with the Party's desire to get into their heads more, so that when they torture thought criminals into submission they have more ammunition to use against them. As for Winston's not betraying Julia and love being stronger than the Party... that ends up being disturbingly reversed with the Party tormenting Winston until he finally submits. They used his deepest phobia, which they learned from observing the 'secret room', to set up a custom built horror device for Winston. Under the pressure, he cracked and told them he would rather have Julia suffer through the torture. As Winston and Julia mention during the brief moment they get to see each other for the last time, "...perhaps you might pretend, afterwords, that it was only a trick, and you said it just to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true" (292). The Party won. With their intense mind games, they forced Winston, and apparently Julia, to truly betray the one they loved. In Orwell's fallen nightmare world, love loses. Which is interesting, considering the lengths at which Orwell defines human nature through Winston. He says that love and justice and truth are all things which humans know, and that cannot be taken away. Then in the next breath, the Party transforms those concepts into horrific perversions of their true selves.
DeleteThe end of the novel is no less depressing. It's no surprise, it was built up to for the entire book, but it is still no fun to watch our hero, the one hope against the Party, broken into another lost soul and put down like a dog. Though, it is one extremely effective way to drive home a point. In the end, 1984's brilliance is that it works on many levels. On the one hand, it is a direct criticism of Stalin's government. On the other, it is a dire prediction about the direction history is going. On a third, mutant hand, it is even a criticism of the direction the United States is heading, and a plea to turn away from this strange method of thinking. On the fourth, increasingly improbable hand, Orwell delves into the nature of humanity as a whole, and whether or not it is malleable. Personally, this is the one that most interested me. Winston has an incredibly deep conversation toward O'Brien at the end. Winston defiantly proclaims everything good that man is, that the Party wants to bury in hate and savage emotions, and O'Brien doesn't respond in a predictable manner. Instead, he points out that if Winston uses those traits to define a man, then Winston is the very last man. The implications are staggering. Orwell reveals his belief that it is possible to suppress human nature. By extension, this means that it could be within our futures that human nature is lost. 1984 was perhaps my favorite independent reading I've ever done, and it has left a lot to think about.
Super kudos, you two. In these entries, you ask the right questions from the very beginning, and moreover you track how Orwell's plot twists respond to and challenge your expectations. Especially good observations on the manipulation of mood throughout, relevant quotes, and scintillating musings on the developing meaning of the work as a whole (MOWAW). I'm particularly impressed by the way each entry draws legitimately meaningful conclusions even before the actual ending is known. Well done. Grade on Portals.
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