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The influence of society on the behavior of the individual
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Most protagonists changed as they fought their conflict. As they fought, many have key events where things changed inside them. Winston in George Orwell’s 1984 was no different. He consistently changed his view on people and his society. Although Winston lost his fight against the Party, he experienced many important changes one change was his relationship with others, these changes showed up in Winston’s thoughts or actions. Winston’s relationship with people changed throughout the story. With these changes there is always something or someone who is a foil for him. His diary and Julia are two examples. The foils show the reason for Winston’s thoughts and action. His relationships with people are usually dark, because he usually thinks …show more content…
Winston’s past shows why he acted like he did at the beginning of the book. One experience he had was with the photograph of the three Party leaders which taught him not to trust the Party, and it gave him physical proof that the Party was framing their own members. After this Winston became more rebellious against the Party. Another example was his wife, “She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan” (66). This shows how she faithfully believed everything the Party had said. This bad experience with a woman changed his view of all women, at the start of the story he had a profound hate for them. He had thought them all to be like his wife, and that they all would have turned him in for thought crime. Julia had to expose herself to Winston for him to see that not all women were just faithful Party members, and his thought after that moment reflect it. For example he thinks more about his mom after this change. Another way Winston shows change is through his physical description. At the start of the book Winston has an irritated ulcer when he meets Julia he becomes healthier, and the ulcer went away. The reason for this may have been that he felt more of a will to survive during this time. After he was captured by the thought police his physical description changes again he was, “A bowed, gray-colored, skeletonlike thing” (271). This shows that the Party has …show more content…
Winston describes his act of rebelling as steps, “The first step had been a secret, involuntary thought; the second had been the opening of the diary. He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions” (159). This shows that Winston not conforming to them made him more rebellious and that made him not conform. This cycle eventually got Winston caught, which he knew it would. The conflict became more apparent after the thought police took Winston, because they began to try to make him conform to their ways. O’Brien described what they did as, “We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves” (256). They did that when they destroyed his character, then his mind, and finally his emotions. The end of the conflict between Winston and the Party ended when Winston finally loved Big Brother. By the end Winston had become someone who believed anything the Party told him and had absolutely conformed to them. The conflict between Winston and the Party ended when Winston conforming and the book said that this same thing happened all the
Julia instructs Winston how to return to London. The two arranged meetings where and when they would meet again. Julia reveals that she is not interested in the revolt. Although, she is a personal rebel. Winston reveals information to Julia about his wife Katherine which he decided weather to not killer her or not. Winston returned to Mr. Charrington’s offer: he had rented the room above his shop in order to spend some private time with Julia. Winston reveals his fear of rats.
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.
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.
She presents herself as a passionate Party follower, but underneath the surface she embodies the spirit of a bird; her desires are to be free and enjoy life. Winston is the complete opposite; he is consciously determined to differentiate fact and fiction .This is shown when Winston learns about Julia’s sexual history.
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.
One reason for Winston's rebellion, and eventual downfall, is his knowledge that the party will ultimately capture and punish him. With constant surveillance of Party members, any sign of disloyalty could lead to an arrest; even a tiny facial twitch. As soon as he writes Down with BB' in his diary, Winston is positive that the Thought police will quickly capture him for committing thought crime. With this wisdom, he allows himself to take unnecessary risks, such as trusting O'Brien and renting the room in Mr. charington's shop to host his secret relationship with Julia. Because he has no doubt that he will be caught no matter what he does, he continues to rebel, and brings his own struggle to an end.
According to the government of Oceania, most acts Winston engages in represent signs of rebellion. For example, within the first few pages of the novel, Winston wrote down the words “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” several times in his journal (Orwell 16). “Big Brother” stands as the leader of the Party who supposedly watches over everybody. When Winston writes down the phrase “down with big brother,” he participates in ThoughtCrime. Committing ThoughtCrime requires having thoughts displaying hate or defiance towards the Party. Participating in ThoughtCrime always leads to death, so someone had seen Winston’s journal, then he would immediately go The Ministry of Love, a place of torture, horror, and death. Furthermore, Winston also rebels against the party by becoming lovers with Julia and secretly meeting up with her multiple times. In this society, no two people can love, show affection, or have pleasurable sex without major consequences. Winston breaks both of these rules with Julia because he loves destroying the “pureness”and “virtue” of the Party. He strives for corruption, and says he will do “anything to rot, weaken, [and] to undermine” the Party (Orwell 111). He enjoys “the animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated desire,” and thinks the force of desire he feels will “tear the Party to pieces” (Orwell 111). Due to his beliefs, he repeats his actions over and
Firstly, Winston realizes the Party’s stress on trusting solely Big Brother; however, he is led to trust others in attempt to bring happiness and purpose into his life. Secondly, Winston meets a woman named Julia, whom he grows to trust and love completely; although the love Winston has for Julia causes him to be vulnerable to the Party’s manipulative methods. Finally, Winston betrays and is betrayed by Julia and learns to trust Big Brother, which consequently leads to the demise of his life and will to live consciously. Ultimately, Orwell describes that in a totalitarian world, trusting others can be destructive towards one’s life and will to live.
Winston finds a loophole to expressing his thoughts through writing in a journal. Since Big Brother is always watching everything that Winston does through telescreens, he cannot verbally express his feelings towards The Party without being caught. Living in a world full of mostly uniformity, Winston obviously stands out as a recalcitrant individual. Winston is fully exposed to The Party at all time, leaving him without any privacy. Winston uses his writing to express his individuality, but he does not even feel completely safe because “The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed--would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper--the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.” (15) Even when he is not expressing any opinion verbally, Winston is still in danger of being caught by the Thought Police, leading him to have a hatred and conflict with The Party because they do not allow him to express his individuality. Winston is never alone, even when he is physically alone, which diminishes his sense of any privacy. Winston’s invasion of privacy by The Party does not end with the telescreens. In Oceania, “In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between
As Winston does lose his identity and beliefs it does give some hope and optimism. Not to Winston but to the public. To the readers of Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell the author of this political novel wrote this novel to inform and by this grim ending he has done this. Big Brother and the party has control over everything, they control families, control language, control media and even the control of history. This creates full control over every act, thought and belief of a person. Consequently with Winston this is done so therefore Orwell’s point is made.
Winston’s change and expressions were miniscule resistance towards the whole society, but it still provides an example of an individual who chooses not to conform to society standards. Orwell expresses how even with a miniscule resistance towards conformity, we cannot get rid of it without the help of an entire society.
The foundation of his new personality is his ability to effortlessly commit crimestop at a subconscious level. Thoughts that interfere with Party views are promptly erased from Winston’s mind. “False memories” such as when “his mother was sitting opposite of him and also laughing” (309, 308) were recollections of happiness, and thus, dangerous to Party ideologies. The ability to selectively believe which memories are true and which ones are false, using Party ideals as reference, is one of the main traits of a perfect Party member. Additionally, Winston’s primal feelings of lust and compassion are completely abolished, evidenced by his final encounter with Julia. Clearly, Winston no longer feels any love towards Julia, for when they meet again “He did not attempt to kiss her, nor did they speak.” (305) Furthermore, any thought of sex cause Winston’s “flesh [to freeze] with horror” (304). His inability to love or feel sexual desire renders him less likely to revolt against the Party, which makes him an ideal Party member. Finally, his unquestionable love for Big Brother is ultimately what makes him “perfect” from the Party’s perspective. Winston’s feeling of contempt towards Big Brother is completely altered into admiration and respect: “He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world!” (310) Winston
In the beginning of the book Winston is writing in a diary. An act which may seem small but which is a unquestionably large crime in the book. From this moment the reader can tell that Winston is envious of life before the Party from what
he is a man with a tragic flaw. Winston's fatalism, selfishness and isolation ultimately lead him to his
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.