Anxiety And Anxiety

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How do Fear and Anxiety Affect the Characters Choices and Actions? Fear is a human emotion that starts when a person is in danger of being harmed. Anxiety is a thought in the human mind where they think something might harm them. In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, the protagonist, Winston Smith, experiences these two issues over and over as he tries to understand the world of Oceania and the government rules as created by Big Brother. With the novel being separated into three sections, each with their different points, Winston moves from anxiety to fear, back to anxiety, moves to true fear, and finally to defeat. The first section of the novel explains the world where Winston Smith lives. Anxiety is most common in this section of the book. Winston has heard of people being vaporized and that they become non-people but he has never seen this happen. Winston did things or thought things that made him anxious. However he also knew there were things allowed by the Party that were not within the law but sometimes you could still do. Winston bought a book for a diary, this was wrong and he hid the book from the Party. This action is noted when Winston went to the corner and thought about the book, “But it had also been suggested by the book that he had just taken out of the drawer.” (Orwell,9) Buying the book was not a serious crime. Winston still didn’t want anyone to know about the book so he hid in a corner of his room when he did his writing. Winston had bought the book so he could write on the smooth pages, write thoughts about the government, and about Big Brother. Nobody in the Party was allowed to free-think and writing was a form of free-think. He knew this and he still started writing in the book. “Party member... ... middle of paper ... ...gs.” (Orwell,239) Winston was alive but he had become a non-person. O’Brian had taken everything from Winston and he had nothing of any value for the government or for any one. O’Brian had done the job of reintroducing Winston to the laws of the Party and to the government of Oceania. Winston Smith had been trained to know that when the government is powerful, when the government controls all technology, all the public history, and the order of the public there is little a person can do. His only choice was to become part of this society. Society was all that was left after the rats and his betrayal of Julia. He had betrayed himself and he had to accept his choice. Fear and anxiety, when presented at the same time, can lead a person to make choices for their own survival regardless of what they may believed or what they think they can accept through torture.

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