1984 Rhetorical Analysis

Emotional or Emotionless?
Imagine the world we are living in today, now imagine a world where we are told who to marry, where to work, who to hate and not to love. It is hard to imagine right, some people even today are living in the world actually have governments that are controlling their everyday life. In literature many writers have given us a view of how life may be like if our rights as citizen and our rights simply as human beings. One day the government may actually find a way to control and brainwash people into beings with no emotions like they have in the book 1984 where they express only hate, because that’s what they have been taught by the party.
Winston shows us this soulless type before in multiple ways, for example.

“When he got up to it he saw that it was a human hand severed at the wrist. Apart from the bloody stumps, the hand was so completely whitened as to resemble a plaster cast. He kicked the thing into the gutter..”(Orwell 84) This moment gives a fine example, because he simply does not care about this human body part that is just in the middle of the road, a person with some sort of emotion or even sense of humanity would not sit kick it aside as if it was a tin can. Also, we are shown moments from other people in the story that express about the same feelings “ ‘Why can’t we go to the hanging?’ roared the boy in his huge voice. ‘Want to see the hanging! Want to see the hanging!’ chanted the little girl.”(Orwell 23) The children want to witness the killing of someone who had done wrong in the eyes of the party. There two Children expressed something that we could consider excitement about the hanging. Which in a society where all they are taught it hate, it seems almost ironic that they do get excited about some things, although at the same time the hanging could also be seen as something that Big Brother would approve of someone being excited and possibly even happy about. Both of the examples give a good idea about how people living in Oceania are, the first just gives you this shocked expression along with the second. Although with the second example of the children, you do see a type of emotion being shown.
In Oceania, they are not given the option of finding love on their own, they are told who to marry, and I do not think that they truly know what love is.

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

everyone.
Soulless and dead seem to be associated with types of feelings and even actions, if you're dead, you soul is gone, and if you’re soulless you seem pretty dead. For example, “He was already dead, he reflected.”(Orwell 28) Winston feels dead, is life is the same things over and over again. All he feels is hate, though further into the same moment is states “now that he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible. (Orwell 28). Winston realizing this, is an important part in this story because it is Winston realizing that everything that the party is doing by trying to control the way the people feel and think makes them feel dead, because they don’t feel much of anything and he wants to have those feelings. Winston wants to be alive, he wants to feel.
We know that we can not change history, unless we do it with lies but even then, there is really no way to completely change history. We see this happen a lot in 1984, for example, “For example it appeared from the Times of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother, his speech of the previous day, had predicted that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher Command had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa alone. It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brothers speech in such a way as to make him predict the things that actually happened.”(Orwell 38, 39) This shows to a great extent how much power and control the government currently has over the people, and how much the party trust and believes them. Big Brother uses lies, to make Oceania trust him. They change their stories, for example we see this happening during hate week; “ There was, of course, no admission that any changes had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy.” (Orwell 180) shortly after we read that we then read “The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried onto the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker’s hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different..” (Orwell 181) The simply fact that the party can just turn around and say something completely opposite than what they just had told the people around them shows how much they citizens of Oceania just listens and thinks that what Big Brother tells them is always right and is always going to be true. The amount of party has complete and total control of the citizens and I don’t even think that they realize what all is happening. They want everything to correspond with Big Brothers words and never want what he says to be wrong, even if it means changing the past words on paper, or even in front of the citizens themselves.
The book 1984 shows us this world of totalitarian government and complete ignorance of citizens. We are shown the lives of different people but have all the thoughts of one man. A man who wants something different but not for long. The amount of control and trust given to the party was extreme because the citizens didn’t know any better, they didn’t have the knowledge, awareness or the ability to learn that the Party was corrupt. One day we can really only hope that the world as we know it doesn’t find itself so unimaginable.