Every person has their own motivations, or in other words, their own reasons for their desires, actions, and needs. People such as serial killers are often motivated to commit their crimes by the desire to hurt people, which often can be traced back to a rough childhood. On the other hand there’s people such as doctors and lawyers who came from similar circumstances; yet they were motivated by a desire to escape their past, particularly through the means of success. However often, we might not even know the motivation behind our own actions, which hinders our self control. Perhaps this is why people often make rash decisions. This can be seen in the case of Winston Smith in the novel 1984 by George Orwell. Throughout the book Winston continually …show more content…
An instance of this can be seen when Winston purchases his diary from an ordinary shop, as “Party members were not supposed to go in” (1,6), which Winston continues on to do. Yet, despite knowing the consequences Winston buys the book without “wanting it for any particular purpose” (1,6). Perhaps this is Winston’s subconscious way of rebelling against the party; as despite knowing the rules, Winston acts on his desires without reason. However the most incriminating evidence can be seen through the content of his diary, where he express his inner thoughts and emotions. By writing words such as “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” (1, 18) and proceeding to say “they'll shoot me in the back of the neck down with big brother” (1,18). Yet again, it is visible how Winston is aware of his actions and the consequences; but he simply does not care. Through knowingly knowing of his wrong doings and acting on them, Winston rises or rebels against the …show more content…
His primary one being his curiosity; as the Party essentially holds the control of the public’s knowledge, Winston repeatedly expresses his confusion and desire to know more. Which can be seen with him questioning how we truly “know that two and two make four” (7,80) and pondering “if the mind itself is controllable…what then?”(7,80). As can be seen Winston is confused by his own knowledge, especially living in a society where freethought is considered a crime. Therefore the thirst for knowledge or more so for the freedom of it is his primary motivation. His secondary motivation is his desire to reconnect with the past. Throughout the novel, it becomes clear that Winston had a desire to reconnect with the past. Winston takes a risky measure by going into a prole pub to ask an elderly man who can “remember what it was like in the old days, before the Revolution”(8,89) for his memories. Through taking a risky action, Winston demonstrates his desperation for the past, part of this is likely rooted for his thirst for knowledge as well. Winston also has an affinity for old objects such as the paper weight or the diary he bought; which is his biggest crime of all. Lastly his third motivation was the want for individualism. Although this is not something Winston continually expresses his desires about; it is visible with his actions. For example the purchase of the diary; a place to document his inner thoughts.
Returning to his diary, Winston then expresses his emotions against the Party, the Thought Police and Big Brother himself; he questions the unnecessary acts by the Party and continuously asserts rebellion. Winston soon realized he had committed the crime of having an individual thought, “thoughtcrime.” The chapter ends with a knock on Winston’s door. Significant Quotes “From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” (Orwell 7). “But there was a fraction of a second when their eyes met, and for as long as it took to happen Winston knew— yes, he knew!
He purchased a small journal from a shop and began to write in it out of view of the telescreen in his house, which allows anything in front of it to potentially be seen or heard. At first he had some difficulties as he could only manage to write jumbles of some of his memories, but then he began to write things like “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER (Orwell, page 18).” He later had an encounter with one of his fellow coworkers, O’Brien, which got him thinking that there might be others out in the world who see things the way he does, including O’Brien himself. Winston eventually decides that his diary will become a sort of letter to O’Brien, and to a future or past where things might have been different. In these diary entries he wrote things such as, “To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone—to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone…(Orwell, page 28).” This refers to how citizens think and act the same and previous events are not written as they happened, but altered to Big Brother’s benefit. He also wrote, “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death (Orwell, page 28).” This can be further explained by Winston’s previous thought, “The consequences of every act are included in the act itself (Orwell, page 28).” Winston
loss, it's to do with futility. For all he did, for all the rules he
Throughout the book he tries to overcome the government, but in his heart, he knows he has no hope of thriving because “…was already dead” for committing ThoughtCrime and involving himself in acts worthy of death (Orwell 36). All of his character traits combined lead him to his ultimate death. His attraction to beauty makes him keep hold of objects and things considered suspicious, his rebelliousness causes him break nearly all of society’s rules, and his curiosity steers him toward people and places that eventually causes the Winston torture he endures in Ministry of Love. Winston could have had some false hope of a better world where he could get away from all of the harsh rules and regulations of the Party, but in reality, his personality traits dragged him through a life already pre-written and stamped with an early
Many works of literature have the main character’s downfall caused by one of their main traits. In 1984 by George Orwell the main character, Winston, displays envy many times throughout the novel. From the first chapter when he starts to rebel against the Party in small ways to the middle and end of the book when he says he will do anything to destroy the Party. Winston’s envy leads to many good things for him, such as finding Mr. Charrington’s shop and meeting Julia, however it also leads to his downfall.
Everyone craves rebellion at some point. It may not even be because they oppose something strongly, it may just be because they want a rush and the feeling that they are defying a cause larger than themselves. In the book 1948 by George Orwell, Winston Smith does not only just crave the feeling of defying the invasive Party and Big Brother, but he has a strong hate towards the form of government that is ruling over him. Big Brother is an overlooking force in Oceania that monitors every aspect of society. Winston works in The Ministry of Truth, where he alters history. Instead of sitting back and accepting The Party like his fellow members of Oceania, Winston makes the audacious move to rebel. Winston faces a struggle
If Winston never started to rebel he would've never started “voicing” his opinion in his diary which may of made it even harder to deal with things that got under his skin. Winston starts to use the diary which is starting to make him rebellious by writing his mind. He is also happy that his room was oddly shaped so that he could
George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 follows the psychological journey of main character Winston. Winston lives in a utopian society called Oceania. There, the citizens are constantly monitored by their government coined “Big Brother” or “The Party”. In Oceania, there is no form of individuality or privacy. Citizens are also coerced to believe everything and anything the government tells them, even if it contradicts reality and memory. The goal of Big Brother is to destroy individual loyalties and make its citizenry only loyal to the government. In Orwell's novel 1984, he uses Winston's psychological journey to stress the dangers of individuality in a totalitarian regime because it can result in death. Winston’s overwhelming desire to rebel
George Orwell creates a dark, depressing and pessimistic world where the government has full control over the masses in the novel 1984. The protagonist, Winston, is low-level Party member who has grown to resent the society that he lives in. Orwell portrays him as a individual that begins to lose his sanity due to the constrictions of society. There are only two possible outcomes, either he becomes more effectively assimilated or he brings about the change he desires. Winston starts a journey towards his own self-destruction. His first defiant act is the diary where he writes “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER.” But he goes further by having an affair with Julia, another party member, renting a room over Mr. Carrington’s antique shop where Winston conducts this affair with Julia, and by following O’Brien who claims to have connections with the Brotherhood, the anti-Party movement led my Emmanuel Goldstein. Winston and Julia are both eventually arrested by the Thought Police when Mr. Carrington turns out to be a undercover officer. They both eventually betray each other when O’Brien conducts torture upon them at the Ministry of Love. Orwell conveys the limitations of the individual when it comes to doing something monumental like overthrowing the established hierarchy which is seen through the futility of Winston Smith’s actions that end with his failure instead of the end of Big Brother. Winston’s goal of liberating himself turns out to be hopeless when the people he trusted end up betraying him and how he was arbitrarily manipulated. It can be perceived that Winston was in fact concerned more about his own sanity and physical well-being because he gives into Big Brother after he is tortured and becomes content to live in the society he hated so much. Winston witnesses the weakness within the prole community because of their inability to understand the Party’s workings but he himself embodies weakness by sabotaging himself by associating with all the wrong people and by simply falling into the arms of Big Brother. Orwell created a world where there is no use but to assimilate from Winston’s perspective making his struggle utterly hopeless.
The novel 1984, written by George Orwell, asks whether people should hide their true identity to remain safe, or if people should live the way they wish regardless of the consequences. It may seem that if Winston had not rebelled against the party he would have been better off, but this is not true. Keeping your true feelings to yourself and living how other people want you, is torture in-of-itself. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “imitation is suicide” and this quote is true. Every day lived like someone else and spent hiding your true self is soul-crushing death. Although The Party beat and tortured Winston, keeping his thoughts of rebellion to himself would not have made him better off. #
Winston works for 1 of the 4 government agency’s, The Ministry of Truth. In his job he re-writes old news articles so they show that The Party has always been and will be in control. By re-writing everything in print, The Party effectively changes history. The only proof of actual history is in the minds of the people who were there. Winston realizes that there is something wrong with this, yet he doesn’t know what. The re-writing of history is all he has ever known. It is most likely Winston’s job that leads him to rebel against The Party.
In this case, the government has to use severe actions to ensure they will never act in this way again. Winston Smith, is a minor member of the ruling Party and is aware of some of these extreme tactics. Since Winston is not completely brainwashed by the propaganda like all the other citizens, he hates Big Brother passionately. Winston is one of the only who realize that Big Brother is wiping individual identity and is forcing collective identity. He is “conscious of [his] own identity”(40-41) . Winston continues to hold onto the concept of an independent external reality by constantly referring to his own existence. Aware of being watched, Winston still writes “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER”(21) in his diary. Winston believes whether he writes in his diary or not, it is all the same because the Thought Police will get him either way. Orwell uses this as a foreshadow for Winston's capture later on in the novel. Fed up with the Party, Winston seeks out a man named O’Brien, who he believes is a member of the ‘Brotherhood’, a group of anti-Party rebels. When Winston is arrested for thought crime by his landlord, Mr.Charrington, who is a member of the Thought Police. Big Brother takes Winston to a dark holding cell, to use their extreme torture strategy to erase any signs of personal identity. Winston's torturer is O’Brien, the man he thought to be apart of the brotherhood. Winston asks
At the end of the novel, Orwell describes Winston as a cured patient who has over come his metal disease. “He had won the victory over himself: he loved Big Brother” (Part 3, Chapter 6). Both Freud and Orwell break down the components of a person’s mind in the same way. Orwell’s character, Winston, depicts the different parts of the human mind so described by Freud. In Orwell’s 1984, he uncovers the same components of a human mind as seen by Freud, the instinctual drive of the id, the perceptions and actions of the ego, and the censorship imposed by the morality of the superego.
In the book, 1984, written by George Orwell, protagonist Winston Smith is a low-ranking government worker for the ruling Party in London. The people are watched all the time, even in their own homes. The Party watches everybody through telescreens, the device used as a surveillance camera and a television. There are posters of the omniscient leader of the Party, Big Brother, everywhere. The Party has reign over everything in Oceania including the nation’s history and even its language. At the time we meet Winston, the Party is enforcing the implementation of an invented language known as Newspeak. This language eliminates all references to rebellion or words related to it. The Party has also made thoughtcrime extremely illegal. This is the worst crime a person can commit. This occurs when a person thinks a rebellious thought. Winston begins his story by finding a diary and beginning to write how he feels and what he is thinking, engaging in his first thoughtcrime is a rush that he must return to. This diary experience leads to other opportunities for Winston to betray the Party including meeting a woman named Julia and engaging in the forbidden act of having sex with her. He later goes on to have sex with Julia many times and rents a room just for their own personal needs. Winston leans who can put his trust in and who he cannot. This leads to betrayal and soon a breakdown of Winston’s mind and everything he thinks he knows. Orwell uses many themes and motifs in this story. Through the use of themes, symbols, and dynamic characters, Orwell creates a novel that is intriguing and a political statement about all totalitarian regimes.
An important action that occurred during the novel was Winston writing in his diary. The diary is a place of truth, where he can write wherever he wants. The diary is a symbol of freedom. Also, the diary gets us intrigued. In other words, it leaves us asking questions like "Why can't he keep a diary"? Furthermore, we learn more about Winston's character. The book reads, "The thing he is about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal, but if detected it was not reasonably certain that it was punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labor camp"(Orwell 6). Winston is taking a chance with his life for the advantage of the individuals to come. This is the first example we see him defying the party.