The feeling of love is simply indescribable. It has the power to make a person feel active, stronger, and better overall for love is one of the most compelling things in the world. People will go to great lengths in order to show their love, even if it means they must sacrifice themselves. This power of love is described in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. The novel follows a man named Winston who grows up in a dystopian society called Oceania. There is no more loyalty, care, or love for one another in the society, for the only thing people are allowed to praise is Big Brother and the Party. Winston feels a great desire to rebel against the Party and his chance to rebel becomes apparent when he meets his love interest Julia. His time with Julia allows him to recollect memories and discover the different types of love. Throughout the novel, we see …show more content…
these diverse forms of love whether it be family love, romantic love, or love for the Party. One of the biggest messages of the novel is the power of love can defeat all. Throughout the novel, Orwell presents the emotions of family love. Many of the characters in the novel have never experienced the feeling of loyalty amongst family members. Protection and security are no longer present between the members of a family in Oceania. Yet, there was a time when the love between family members was present. In the beginning of the novel, Winston describes a dream he has about his mother who vanished. Through this dream, Winston realizes that at one point in his life he felt love; but at the time, he couldn't understand the sacrifices his family made for him. Orwell illustrates the guilt Winston felt: “His mother's memory tore at his heart because she had died loving him, when he was too young and selfish to love her in return, and because somehow, he did not remember how, she had sacrificed herself to a conception of loyalty that was private and unalterable. Such things, he saw, could not happen today.” (28-29) Consequently, Winston’s mother is an extraordinary example of the self sacrifices many family members do for their loved ones. Winston's mother loved her children passionately and did whatever she could to keep them safe during the Party's rise to power. Though in Winston’s time, the Party removed family devotion, and brainwashed people into reserving their love for Big Brother. In addition, the only people who feel the beautiful bond of love are the proles, the lowest class in the society. Winston sees the affect of love when he looks out his window and admires a large prole woman singing. The prole woman happily sings out of tune, allowing herself to be carefree, which Winston idolizes. The narrator describes Winston’s fondness: “As he looked at the woman in her characteristic attitude, her thick arms reaching up for the line, her powerful mare-like buttocks protruded, it struck him for the first time that she was beautiful. It had never before occurred to him that the body of a woman of fifty, blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing, then hardened, roughened by work till it was coarse in the grain like an over-ripe turnip, could be beautiful.” (180) Hence, the prole woman is described as beautiful because she fills her life with love and happiness. In the novel, Winston describes proles as, “human” for they held onto the emotions the Party has tried to take away from the people. Even though the prole woman isn’t given much in life, she is still cheerful for she has love for her kids and love for her life. Winston reveres the fact that there are thousands of proles who found pleasure and freedom through songs and are able to express it in their lives. His mother’s self sacrifice to keep her Winston safe and the prole woman’s adoration for life shows the effects love has. Moreover, the feeling of romantic love is strongly taboo between the people of the Party.
Yet, Winston and Julia commit this forbidden crime of love to rebel against the Party’s ideals. Their relationship begins as an act of rebellion but soon blossoms into a fulfilling love for one another. They take enormous risks to be together despite the consequences the two can endure. A strong bond can save someone from the hatred they feel, whether it be towards themselves or others. Specifically, Winston’s love for Julia only becomes stronger the more he spends time with her. He begins to feel carefree and satisfied in a society of conforming, emotionless people. Orwell illustrates the affect of love when he writes:
“Winston had dropped his habit of drinking gin at all hours. He seemed to have lost the need for it. He had grown fatter, his varicose ulcer had subsided, leaving only a brown stain on the skin above his ankle, his fits of coughing in the early morning had stopped. The process of life had ceased to be intolerable, he had no longer any impulse to make faces at the telescreen or shout curses at the top of his voice.”
(124). As a result, the love Julia offers to Winston allows him to become happier, stronger, and a more lively person. Winston no longer needs the presence of gin to fill his discontented life for he has Julia to complete him. His thoughts aren’t focused on the party anymore but rather on his love for Julia. Furthermore, Winston and Julia’s love is so powerful that nothing else matters to them except their affection towards one another. When the couple is questioned by O'Brien before they are accepted into the Brotherhood, the two instantly agree to carry out a list of barbarities such as to "throw sulfuric acid in a child's face,", "commit murder,", and even "commit suicide" (142). However, the only thing they refuse to do is separate from each other. Winston’s biggest desire was to be apart of the Brotherhood to help make a change in society, but he is willing to give it all up for Julia. He wouldnt have been the joyful person he was without Julia and wouldn’t give that feeling up for anyone or anything… or so he thought. The love that Winston and Julia share shows the power of love and how it can change a person for the better. Evidently, the Party has gone to extreme measures to make sure no one loves anything other than Big Brother. The Party is successful in achieving this through acts of brainwashing and fear. Accordingly, the most profound love in the novel is the love for the Party, and in Winston’s case, the love for O’Brien. Their relationship is a distort love between a tortured, Winston, towards his torturer, O’Brien. The love displayed among the two remains strong throughout the novel even when O'Brien contiously tortures Winston. For example, Winston hears O'Brien's voice in his sleep, saying to him, "'Don't worry, Winston; you are in my keeping. For seven years I have watched over you" (201). Hence, O’Brien becomes a protector of some sort for Winston, at least in his head. Even though Winston knows that O'Brien is the reason he is arrested and is the one responsible for his torture, he still feels affection towards O’Brien. This affection is not broken even after weeks of torture: "The peculiar reverence for O'Brien, which nothing seemed able to destroy, flooded Winston's heart again" (225). Though Winston should feel hatred towards O'Brien and what he has done, instead he is full of love. Even when O'Brien exposes Winston to his biggest fear, the rats, Winston continues to love him. Instead of hating O'Brien, Winston begins to hate towards Julia instead. Consequently, that is exactly what O’Brien was planning all along. Once he has Winston’s trust, he knows Winston will not be able to walk away. By using the trust, O’Brien is able to brainwash Winston into loving Big Brother and only Big Brother: “But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” (245) Truly, in the end of the novel, the only love remaining is the love for the Party. The power of love, for Big Brother, defeats all. In brief, the Party tries desperately to erase love for anything but Big Brother. In many ways, it is successful in doing so. All love between families and other Party members are forbidden, yet Winston feels three different types of love throughout the novel. He reconnects the love his mother had for him and watches the prole woman sing her love out, showing Winston the beautiful effect love has on family. Winston also experiences romantic love when he and Julia do acts of rebellion against the Party. But the most powerful love that Winston encounters is the love he has for O’Brien and eventually leading to his final and only love for Big Brother. The novel illustrates the importance of love and its influence on people. Love has the power to change someone and distract someone's thoughts away from actual reality. It has the power to rule all.
In the 2nd part of 1984 Winston is meets a girl named Julia. At first Winston believes Julia will turn him in for committing Thought Crime. Then Julia passes Winston a note and they meet each other. The Party also does not allow association that is not goverernd. This is the start of an affair between the two, because they are not married and free love is not allowed. Winston is rebelling fully by his association with Julia. The 2nd section Winston fully rebels, he joins an underground resistance, and he believes that his life is better because The Party is no longer controlling him. At the end of this section Winston learns that he has been set-up and followed by the Thought Police the whole time. He and Julia believed that they were resisting and rebelling but had actually been entrapped by the Thought Police.
Winston expresses his feelings towards Julia in such an extraordinary way, “He would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon. He would tie her naked to a stake and shoot her full of arrows.”(Orwell 15). When he is expressing these thoughts, he is actually talking about someone he was actrate to, Winston just had no way of expressing it besides anger. He sees this beautiful young girl, who has made this vow its remain pure and chaste and he just wants to kill her because of how frustrated about it. Although late in the book, who these same two people are alone in a place without worry, everything is different, for example “You are prepared, the two of you to separate and never see one another again. ‘No!’ broke in Julia….’No,’ he said finally.” (Orwell 173) This second moment gives us a definite second opinion about how he may actually feel towards Julia. When they are both in a safe place, and can freely state and do they things they wish to do, Winston does show that he cares for Julia, enough that he does not want to leave her. I believe that these two different feelings show us that even with the body trying to control how people feel, what they do, along with what they think they never get to have complete control of
“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity” (Nelson Mandela). Throughout the novel 1984, written by George Orwell, there is a severe lack of humanity. During the course of the novel, the level of humanity is tested through the challenges Winston and Julia face in their war against the Party. In 1984, humanity has been impacted by the Party’s control over its members, its lack of control over its members, and its war against love.
George Orwell has created two main characters that have conflicting traits: believe in the idea of love in a world where it is forbidden. Although both are secret rebels of the Party and share the same hatred for the Party’s totalitarian power, Julia and Winston display a remarkable number of differences between each other. The differences between them include their morality, their motivation towards the rebellion, and their personalities. Julia represents elements of humanity that Winston does not: survival, instincts, pure sexuality and cunning (1984 By George Orwell Character Analysis Julia). Her actions show the lack of an emotional connection to anyone, even Winston.
In George Orwell’s 1984, where strictly regulated rules is what generates this society, and any disregard for these rules ends in unimaginable punishment. Winston and Julia’s love for each other, however unconventional it is, is greatly beneficial for not only the participants, but also for O’Brien, and particularly for Big Brother itself. This passion for each other, seemingly inextinguishable, is later on taken into account by the Inner Party, finally resulting in not only complete obedience and conformity from Winston and Julia, but also in a peace of mind for these two characters.
Love is an emotion affecting people's everyday lives. In the book “1984,”, George Orwell introduces his readers to this idea, with a compelling portrayal of this important feeling. In Orwell’s totalitarian society of Oceania, the ruling party attempts to demolish all love for anyone except Big Brother who controls them. The affection that normally exists between individuals, in Oceania, warps to exist between individuals tortured and those torturing them. This is demonstrated by familial bonds and affection between siblings, wives, mothers, fathers and children, changing and creating an opportunity for the government to monitor its citizens. In contrast the interactions between the main character, Winston and his oppressor, O'Brien exhibit true love. Real connections between regular human beings in Oceania are virtually non existent due to actions taken by the government to destroy these bonds.
Love is the foundation and the weakness of a totalitarian regime. For a stable totalitarian society, love between two individuals is eliminated because only a relationship between the person and the party and a love for its leader can exist. The totalitarian society depicted throughout the Orwell’s novel 1984 has created a concept of an Orwellian society. Stalin’s Soviet state can be considered Orwellian because it draws close parallels to the imaginary world of Oceania in 1984. During the twentieth century, Soviet Russia lived under Stalin’s brutal and oppressive governments, which was necessary for Stalin to retain power. In both cases, brutality and oppression led to an absence of relationships and love. This love was directed towards Stalin and Big Brother, and human beings became willing servants of their leader. The biggest threat to any totalitarian regime is love, or the lack of it. As Orwell said, they key danger to the system is “the growth of liberalism and skepticism in their own ranks” (Orwell 171). For example, in the novel it was the desire of the Party to eliminate love and sex, in order to channel this pent-up passion towards the love of Big Brother. Similarly, Stalin used propaganda and extreme nationalism to brainwash the peoples of Russia. He channeled their beliefs into a passion for Soviet ideals and a love of Stalin. In both cases, love for anything but the Party is the biggest threat to the regime. The stability of the Party and Stalin’s regime directly depended upon loyalty to the government above all else. By drawing upon the close relationships between the two Orwellian societies, we can examine just how dangerous love is to the Party.
To start off, Orwell's sole inclusion of women who base their relationships with men exclusively on sex demonstrates Orwell's negative beliefs about women. Despite Julia's claims to love Winston, their relationship is not about “the love of one person, but the animal instinct”(132). Julia has been in similar relationships to her and Winston's “hundreds of times”(131), relationships that look only at the sexual side and never at the emotional. She refuses all of Winston's attempts to expand their relationship, having “a disconcerting habit of falling asleep”(163) whenever he persists in talking. And although Winston cares for Julia more than he cares for Katharine, Katharine also bases her relationship with Winston completely on sex. When Winston reflects on their time together, he thinks, “he could have borne living with her if it had been agreed that they remain celibate... It ...
Love is an underlying theme in the novel. Love can be seen as nonexistence in this totalitarian society. The marriage between Winston and Katherine was a disastrous one because they were only married for fifteen months and they can n...
The novel 1984 is a futuristic portrayal of the world in the year 1984. The main characters Winston and Julia fall in love with each other but are caught and purified of all their wrong doings. In the end they betray each other because of the pressure of the party. The party is a group that controls society in these ways: Manipulation of Reality, Invasion of Privacy, and Desensitization.
He broke at the end and ends up loving Big Brother but even though this was due to because of O 'Brien 's torture and mind control, he still failed to fight back against Big Brother and the party and eventually betrayed what he believed.“Which do you wish : to persuade me that you see five, or you really see them? Really to see them”(Orwell 251). This showed that Winston did infact double think, showing how he gave him to O’brians torture and he was slowly breaking down to what he truly believes in. He always knew that this would be the outcome because of all of the diary entries he did, conversations with Julia and his observations of Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford. “Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don 't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones, Not me! Julia! Not me! “ (Orwell 286).
...he views of the Party. "Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!" (Part 3, Chapter 5). Winston’s mind is considered cured the moment that he turns on the one person her truly loves.
Winston felt like sex was a rebellion. He is drawn to his lover Julia because
...tury love is a commercial package, and novels and films make billions off of the idea that love can conquer all, utopian ideas as such, yet Salinger effectively identified with the corrupt side of love – even if there are connotations of incest.
Love is a strong affection or warm attachment to someone; on the contrary, pain is a punishment or penalty or suffering of body or mind. These emotions carry a direct relationship; love leads to pain. However, everything that begins must eventually come to an end, and in the end one emotion is victorious. There is a constant struggle between the opposing emotions; henceforth, Ernest Hemingway combines both of these emotions into A Farewell to Arms. Through Fredric Henry and Catherine Barkley’s relationship, Hemingway combines these two emotions in a relentless power struggle. Where love leads, pain shortly follows proving that what comes from love can be dangerous. Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms takes place during World War I and describes the relationship between a war doctor, Fredric Henry, and a nurse, Catherine Barkley; the couple follows the cycle of love and pain to prove Hemingway’s point that love is ultimately dangerous.