Analyzing dreams

Winston has a dream back when he was around 12 years old. He remembers air raids, and taking shelter in tube stations. He remembers picking up scraps with other boys and picking up ribs of cabbage leaves or whatever they could find just so they wouldn’t starve. He remembers that his mother did not show any grief when his father disappeared but she changed. She became spiritless and just took care of the kids waiting to die. Winston remembers how he would always beg and scream for more food because they were starving. He would take food from his siblings and his mom so that he wasn’t starving but had no regard for their well being. He remembers taking chocolate from his sister and running out of the house because he felt ashamed. When he returned home, everyone was gone. His physiological state must be so messed up because of these memories. Remembering doing something so horrible to those you love such as taking food from them must be so traumatic. It’s no wonder that Winston is so destroyed. This dream is important to Winston’s character because it shows us that he has a lot of regret from what society has done to him.

Winston and O'Brien

Winston knows that he will eventually accept O’Brien’s summons to meet him, but he isn’t sure when he will go and meet him. What Orwell is doing here is foreshadowing that O’Brien is going to talk with Winston and Julia about how they can overthrow the party somehow. It makes the reader feel like the beginning of a revolution is about to start until Orwell says that the feeling Winston got from talking to O’brien is the sensation of stepping into the dampness of a grave. This then changes those feelings of everything changing for the better to that when Winston finally does go and meet O’Brien it will be a trap to destroy Winston. Because I have already read the book I know what is going to happen so my view of O’Brien is already set in stone, but for now, the impression I have of O’Brien is that he is unhappy with how the party is treating the outer party and wants to rectify the situation. He acts very cautiously and is able to read people very closely. If he really is the man that is going to help start the revolution he is doing a very good job of making the inner party think that he is truly working for Big Brother.

Winston and Julia

Winston and Julia have a very strange relationship because it doesn’t seem like they would be a very good couple, but in this society they can scheme together against the party. Julia sees Winston as the bad boy character that can help her feel like more of a rebel, and Winston sees Julia as the girl he could never have. When he first saw her, she was wearing the junior anti-sex league sash so it made her seem like she was just in love with the party and would do anything for them, which made Winston’s feelings even more confused. It is possible that he got even madder because he figured if the party wasn’t in control then he could be with her but they have corrupted her to the point of no return. Julia is different than Winston because she doesn’t care about things she can’t control whereas that’s all Winston cares about. They are similar because they both want to rebel against the party, but Julia’s way of rebelling is to sleep with Winston and his way or rebelling is to create thought crimes and try to disguise them.

Comparing John and Winston

These statements relate exactly and it’s no surprise because both of the characters that say them aren’t happy with the society that they are talking about. Winston doesn’t want purity, goodness, or virtue because the party has told him what those things are and he hates everything the party stands for. John’s defiant speech in Brave New World is about how he wants a government that doesn’t intrude upon people’s personal beliefs just like what Winston wants. Both John and Winston are talking about how the society is keeping people controlled so that the society can function, but that the increase in functioning the societies gain is not worth the misery and lack of freedoms that they say the society instills upon them. It’s interesting comparing John and Winston because at the bottom of it all they have the same issues with their societies when the governments go about controlling its’ citizens in very different ways. In Brave new World the government tries to make its citizens happy by making them believe that they are lucky to be alive and to be in the position they are in their society by means of hypnopaedia or controlling the oxygen amount in their embryo. In 1984, the government doesn’t care about happiness, all they care about is people following in line by fear. People in Brave New worlds society are happy where as people in 1984 are miserable. So Winston’s and John’s arguments about what they want in a society because although they both want less control, John loves virtues and goodness but Winston’s society has shown him misery and fear of those things so he wants the lack of control but, unlike John, he wants a society with nothing to guide you but human instincts.

Controlling the past

The party controls the past to work in their favor because they believe that whoever controls the past, can control the present. The party re writes the past to make it look like life is constantly improving when it really isn’t. They make it appear like they have done all these great deeds to improve the life style of the outer party, when really it is the outer party that is getting used to do all the boring, hard work that nobody wants to do. When the party says that a certain number of goods is produced, they will usually end up falling way behind on that promise, then they will go back and change the promise they made to make it look like they exceeded their goals, when really they didn’t even come close. This method is effective because even if someone can remember that what they said was wrong and tries to tell people, they have no proof to back it up. All the proof points to the party being write in every instance. The past becomes blured so people just forget what life used to be like and become content with the way life is now. The past is completely erased also. So people never learn what life used to be like, or could be like. They never question the party because that is all they have ever known. They have no idea that other civilizations used to exist that had a lot more freedom and happiness, but they just put up with the control because they can’t remember the past, and even if they could they are too afraid of the thought police to speak out against the party.

Chapters 4-5. Language controlling individuality.

The reason that Winston writing in his diary is a crime is because it promotes thinking. The party is doing everything it can to make the citizens less like human beings and more like zombies. Syme’s job of destroying words is very similar to what not letting Winston write is accomplishing. If people aren’t allowed to think then they pose no threat to the party. When we think, we think in words. If we have no words to think with, then it is nearly impossible to communicate how we feel. Say somebody realizes that the party is awful, and they are making their lives miserable but all they know now is newspeak so they have no way to say or think about what they are feeling inside. When you control someone’s language and not allow them to put their thoughts onto paper you are destroying their individuality. Everybody becomes exactly like everybody else, not because they have similar interests, but because they aren’t allowed to have the words to construct their thoughts into something other people can understand. So the party is making it impossible for people to rebel by restricting their language.

Chapters 1-3

George Orwell has already painted a terrifying image in my mind of what the world could possibly turn into, if power got into the wrong hands. These first three chapters don't start off lightly either. We are placed into a third person limited standpoint and all we really get to know is what Winston is thinking and what it is that he does. This perspective does allow a closer feeling with what it is to actually live in the society because it allows side comments of the surroundings. The first page starts off making the world seem very derelict. There is dust everywhere; the hallways smell like boiled cabbage, but then through all this, there is the picture of Big Brother. His enormous face, more than a meter wide. He has the face of a man in his forties with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features, that when reading can by synonymous with Adolf Hitler. So already we have an image of a miserable world that has pictures of a leader that resembles a man we all know to have had no sense of human compassion and this is just from the first page. The government is all-powerful, all controlling, but most of all the government is secretive and hidden. The government is not known about, people know there is a 'party' but what they do, nobody that doesn't need to know, knows. The party's figurehead is Big Brother. Whether he exists or not is up to debate, but he is the man that is said to have lead Oceania and make life as 'great' as it is today. They keep the sense of always being around their inhabitants by having telescreens, which are monitors in every room of every house that work as two-way communicators and allow (or so they say) for the party to be always watching you. Their are Big Brother posters everywhere and to keep up with the theme of 'the party is always watching you', his eyes are like the Mona Lisa's, in that they always appear to be watching you. The government has the regular police that regulate laws like every society has, but they also have the thought police. The thought police monitor people to make sure that they aren't committing thought crime which is not punishable by death it IS death. The thought police scare people into not doing anything that could get them taken away and vaporized, as people have called it. Theres a massive uncertainty about everything and nothing is explained but there is enough fear created to have the entire population controlled by fear and hate. Everyone’s life is miserable because they are kept under control and are always scared of the government while being locked out of being informed. Winston can’t remember what life used to be life before the party took over, but he knows that it hasn’t always been this way. He can’t really remember what happened either. The characteristics of a dystopian society are that a lot of people question the motives of the party and have to be exterminated. There are a ton of loose ends that should lead to a lot more questioning but all the questions that arise are quelled by the thought police going around and vaporizing all of those that have thought crimes.

2/26/09. First post since september!!

This society does what it is supposed to do. People are happy, and the world keeps spinning without any fighting. The problem is that there is no original thought from people. Nobody questions life, and it seems like all resources are spent on keeping people happy, not advancing their civilization. This is probably deeper than Huxley intended or a different thought completely, as I feel like he was trying to make a point on what kind of civilization would be the nicest to live in. You can either have the freedom to think but have horrendous living conditions, or be a zombie that doesn’t care about life in really nice living conditions fulfilling what Huxley says is the human races greatest want whenever you want, with whoever you want. It’s hard to say what you would rather want, because as the book has shown, we tend to accept the world that we’re presented with, until you find a flaw. If you find a flaw, Huxley did what every civilization has done in human history and they use religion as a way to explain the problems of the world. With either society, I feel like you’re brain washed. It’s either being brainwashed and believe that a merciless God is responsible for why life is miserable, or be brainwashed to be happy by means of hypnopaedia or other conditioning. So the Brave New World society is bad because there is no original thought and if people aren’t thinking and unhappy with the world I don’t see how any progress could be made to discover the way the world works, or answer questions like ‘why are we here?’ which I feel are the ultimate questions in life. But I would take it over the savage reservation, because at least in the Brave New World there is happiness and even though there is worshipping of a God, Henry Ford, it isn’t as dramatic or violent.