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Understanding policies and procedures
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The book starts off with an interesting first sentence “the clocks were striking 13.” To me this was unusual because there is no 13 on a clock and it is usually considered an unlucky number. I thought it was kind of weird and different compared to what kind of world we are living in today. This is because in London the province of Oceania is where our first and main character Winston Smith lives. There are signs reminding citizens that Big Brother is always watching. Big Brother is the leader of the party in which Winston is a part of as well as all the people of Oceania.
Winston Smith is about 39 and has on ulcer on his left ankle. He had to wear blue overalls as a rule of the party. He lives in Victory Mansions by himself. One vocabulary word that I didn’t know I found on page 6, eddies, which is a current air running contrary to the main current. Also on page 6 I learned that in this place where Winston lives they use what is called a telescreen which watches and hears everything everyone is doing. There is a telescreen placed in every corner of every room. This telescreen could not be turned off. If you are heard thinking of something the Big Brother does not want you to think then you will be punished by the Thought Police. This punishment could be death or a sentence of 25 years in a forced labor camp. You had to keep your feelings to yourself and try to hide them from the Thought Police. “Your worst enemy is your own nervous system,” (page 67) this is something you hear all the time from criminals who say their self conscious got to them.
There are three slogans of the party, theses slogans are War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength. Not everyone is a member of the Party. Only about 20% of the people of Oceania are involved in the party. Most people living in Oceania are living in slums. The people are given a small amount of coupons to trade in for clothing, food or anything else they needed. On page 8 we find out the 4 most important buildings in Oceania. They are the four Ministries, which are all government buildings. They are the Ministry of Peace, which is concerned with war. The Ministry of Truth is concerned with news, entertainment, education and the arts. The Ministry of Love maintains law and order. The Ministry of Plenty is responsible for economic affairs. Each ministry had its own concerns and problems. I agree w...
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...fter saying this, Winston is eventually let back into the world to work and live. They gave him a new look and a new job. Winston looked different because of all the scars and bruises he had suffered from being beaten in the jail.
Winston then begins to love his new life and enjoys every minute of it. He is also now a good member of the party, doing everything he is suppose to, and not thinking for himself. He is thinking just like the party had taught him. He had found Julia at a restaurant, and they went to the park to talk. They both had turned against each other and decided it was best for them not to be involved anymore. It was mostly because they did not have the physical attraction to each other anymore as they used to. They both had changed because of being beaten in jail.
A few days later an announcement comes onto the telescreen saying they have won the war and defeated Eurasia. People crowded into the street to cheer on the victory of the party. Winston jumped for joy and that’s when the Thought Police had seen on the telescreen and had realized that Winston was cured and a real member of the party. He had loved Big Brother and then he was shot from behind and killed.
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.
Winston Smith is a thirty-nine year old man who participates in a group of the “outer-party,” which is the lower part of the two classes. Smith works in one of the four main government buildings. This building is called the Ministry of Truth; his job is to rewrite history books so those that read them will not learn what the past used to be like. The occupation Winston is the major factor that allows him to realize that Big Brother is limiting people’s freedom. He keeps these thoughts to himself as secrets because the totalitarian party will not allow those of rebellious thoughts around. The tensions between the two grow throughout the book because the Big Brother becomes very suspicious of Winston. The Big Brother becomes so suspicious of Winston that he sends a person by the name O’Brien, to watch over him. Mr. O’Brien is a member of the “inner party,” which in this book is the upper-class. Winston doesn't know of the trap that Big Brother had set tells O’Brien of his own idea and plans. He tells Winston of a rebellious leader that has been rounding up those that want to go against the totalitarian government. But like the Big Brother had done, he set a trap and O’Brien betrayed Winston. During the story the conflict between Big Brother and Winston climaxes when Winston is caught. He is taken to some sort of bright underground prison type
Winston is arrested and taken to The Ministry of Love, another of the main government agencies. Here he is tortured physically by starvation and electrocution under the watch of The Party. He is manipulated physiologically by being conditioned to avoid torture by answering questions about his loyalty to The Party.
Orwell shows the Party has taken strict measures in order to maintain the established status quo that suppresses the majority of Oceania. They have shaped and constructed history so that children grow up as servants to the party. Propaganda stating how rich and prosperous Oceania is the news of the day even though real conditions show buildings are dilapidated and resources are sparse.
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
The book, 1984 by George Orwell, is about the external conflict between Winston Smith and Big Brother; and the internal conflict between the two ideas, democracy and totalitarianism. Orwell wrote the novel to show society what it could become if things kept getting worse: he sensed of the expansion of communism when he wrote the novel. The conflict between democracy and totalitarianism at the year of 1945 created two characters, Winston Smith and Big Brother, in orwell's mind. Big Brother is the embodiment of all the ideals of the totalitarian party. In contrast to Big Brother, Winston Smith keeps the idea of democracy emphasizes freedom, he has to hide his own thought because the Big Brother's party will punish him by death if the party finds it out. George orwell criticizes of Big Brother's society by describing it as a dark and a gloomy place. It warns that people might believe that everyone must become slaves to the government in order to have an orderly society, but at the expense of the freedom of the people.
The protagonist of this story is Winston Smith, who works at the Ministry of Truth as a sort of professional history revisionist. His job is to rectify newspaper articles and documents in which Big Brother made predictions or statements that did not agree with the actual outcome of events; in other words, to maintain the public illusion that the Party is perfect. Unhappy with his state of being, Winston would like to overthrow the Party but is powerless to do so. So he teams up with his love interest Julia who is another Party worker. He also collaborates with a high-ranking Party official named O'Brien, who reveals himself as a secret member of a society called The Brotherhood who are planning to destroy the Party. O'Brien gives Winston a book explaining the ideals and motivations of the Party: The upper classes (the highest Party members) need to retain their economic status. Therefore, it is important to control the minds and bodies of the lower classes, and wars are waged constantly only so that money will be spent on the production of war machinery instead of being converted into wealth which could be given to the lower classes.
Main characters, Winston and Julia, both increase their rebellious activity throughout the book. It all started when Winston was thinking some non positive thoughts toward the party. Once theres thoughts and emotions flooded his mind, he could not get them out or stop his new views on the corrupt world. He noticed things that never occurred to him as strange and picked up on lies the party was forcing on the people. He even bought an empty notebook from a prole shop and wrote his anti-party thoughts in it. An effective way to conduct rebellious behavior, is fit right in with the crowd for the most part and not draw any attention to oneself. Winston and Julia began to form a true relationship with one another and have meet ups where the acts performed there directly contradicted the morals of a group Julia has involvement with called the Junior Anti-sex League. The rebellion of these two eventually evolved into trying to find and join “The Brotherhood.” No one out there knew if the group really existed or if there were more people within the party that feel the same way they
Winston, on the other hand, did not receive any of the answers that he was looking for. He wanted to know if he was the only one in possession of a memory, and he wanted to know if this was all there is to life. But the Party convicts him of thought crime and changes everything he ever believed in. The Party made him learn about Big Brother, they made him accept him, and ultimately, they made him love Big Brother and the principles of Ingsoc, and Winston did.
... monitored all along. All the careful planning and discreet actions were for nothing. After the Ministry of Love, Julia and Winston cannot feel the same way about each other. Winston’s interactions with Carrington too, turn out to be all a lie. The kind old man who can remember a past without the party turns out to be a member of the thought police. O’Brien, the one person who understands Winston, tortures him and assimilates him. The fatherly figure, the friend and the love interest all turn out to be false or corrupt relationships.
For Big Brother to stay in control there cannot be individual identity. The ‘Party’ strives to strip away people's identities to have power over a group of emotionless individuals. Big Brother believes that the past must be controlled in order to regulate the present. Since Big Brother “is in control of the present” ( 20 ), they decide how everyone lives their everyday lives. The reason why the Party breaks links between the past from the present is clear. Therefore, citizens will fail to remember their individual identities from the past, and way of life was far better than is it now. “Oceania” lacks diversity, all their citizens are thought to be like emotionless robots. They all live in the same style apartment buildings, wear plain clothes, and eat stale food, everyone has to be uniform. This uniformity causes their citizens to act how they are told to which is the reason for their uniqueness and lack of personal identity. All over Oceania are posters reminding their citizens “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING [THEM]” ( ). This is the ‘Party's’ way of telling citizens there is never a time they can be alone or be by themselves. They always have to act in accordance to how the party expects them to. To make sure of this, the government is constantly monitoring their citizen via ‘telescreens’ that are found in every room. Big Brothers obsession of complete control leads to the destruction of individual's
of history. Winston struggles to face the state of Oceania and ultimately loses everything in the end.
By enforcing these simple laws and regulations, the government is able to keep a tight grip on its people, with few ever releasing themselves from its grasp. Winston Smith, on the other hand, seeks to know the truth behind the government, he is constantly questioning everything and repressing all the ideas forced upon him. Winston “seeks truth and sanity, his only resources being the long denied and repressed processes of selfhood” (Feder 398). All identity is gone in this place called Oceania, and for the sake of Big Brother and its continuous control of the people, it will never exist again. In 1984, the absence of identity strips the people of all creativity and diversity, as well as takes away any chance the society has to advance as a people or in the area of technology.
Orwell's economic views and opinions introduced are rarely in his literary works, he wrote many volumes of his political commentary, which is expressed in a totalitarian world. In "1984", his expressions on totalitarianism and controlled societies are very pessimistic and negative (Roback 127). Orwell's thoughts on technology were indifferent, he did not support it or go against it, all that mattered when technology came into the picture was who controlled it, (Roback 127). Orwell's views sync with the character in the book; Orwell's views and Smith's are the same and have the same standpoints on totalitarianism. Orwell’s "1984" creates a grim picture of humanity's existence within an extremely controlling totalitarian government.
...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.