Li Qiye once stated, “Losing before the battle begins — this is even more shameful than completely losing after the battle!” In other words, one should not simply give up in the face of oncoming danger. Instead, the morally correct decision in this case would be to accept the situation for how it has turned out and use this as an opportunity to overcome the challenges and obstacles present in one’s path. If it turns out that one is unable to win in the face of opposition, then one has nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about because at the very least, one possessed sufficient courage and had the audacity to fight even in disadvantageous conditions. Such is the case with Winston and Julia in their struggle against the oppression exerted by …show more content…
the totalitarian regime led by Big Brother. Rather than quietly submitting to their fates, the pair of lovers are willing to rebel and attempt to break free of the status quo.
As a 26-year old young woman, Julia is typically regarded as a child of the Party era. Working with novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department of Oceania’s Ministry of Truth, Julia lives in an all-women’s hostel and is a member of the Junior Anti-Sex League (Orwell 163). Detesting the Party for their terrifying degree of power, Julia possesses enough intellect to comprehend their methods, often elucidating some aspects of the Party to Winston. She comprehends many of the Party’s methods, such as the employment of sexual repression to exert control over the population. This reveals that not only is Julia sly, but she also displays qualities of being realistic and analytical unique from her peers in a dystopian society. She retains a practical mindset and worries about today and tomorrow as opposed to society’s future in the ensuing decades. Strong-willed and unyielding, Julia claims that …show more content…
if an individual followed the small rules, one could get away by breaking the big ones (Orwell 163). Regardless of the Party’s laws however, Julia enjoys having sex with Winston and was said to have engaged in the act with hundreds of other men belonging to the Party in the past (Orwell 157). Her rebelliousness can actually be perceived as her weakness however, because rather than submitting to the Party’s control and living quietly without any resistance, Julia engages in reckless actions. With her wishes as her master, Julia chooses to rebel against the Party in many small ways. The Party’s iron rule remains strong as her actions are tantamount to throwing an egg at a rock. Julia lacks the commitment to an attempt in severely damaging the Party or shaking its foundations. Her rebellion can be viewed as a passive-aggressive attack, but her rebellion itself compels Winston to seek an intimate relationship with Julia. As a quiet 39-year old man, Winston Smith is a child of the era prior to the Party taking control of the government and coming to power.
As a result, many of the totalitarian regime’s doctrines and policies truly frighten and appear as dangerously evil to Winston. Because Winston remembers a time when the Party was not in control, the Party’s methods of technological control over history greatly troubles Winston. Although Winston and Julia are currently lovers, it is ironic to discover that their perspectives on life and government are polar opposites. Julia is virtually everything that Winston is not, including her survivalist actions. Julia employs many methods to conduct her personal rebellion as a vehicle filled to the brim with primal desires. This is a fundamental difference between Winston and Julia. Julia enjoys regular sexual activities to quench her thirst while Winston partakes in intimacy not only for himself, but also in consideration for posterity. Julia can be described as being apathetic to the Party and its principles while Winston sincerely wishes for its downfall by engaging in actions that would truly damage
it. In an effort to warn readers in the West of the dangers of totalitarian government, the ending of 1984 is far from clarifying the fate of Winston in the last scene of the Chestnut Tree Café. The ending is left ambiguous because Winston’s literal fate is meant to be viewed and interpreted according to the reader’s collected thoughts. On the one hand, Winston was never killed by O’Brien or anyone else at the Ministry of Love even when he was notified that he would be shot. The Party did however, manage to kill Winston’s ‘self’ because at the end of the novel, Winston no longer possesses the capacity for thought. He is a puppet that exists solely for the sake of the Party that loves Big Brother (Orwell 376). Winston’s ‘self’ can be described as an essential part of making him human. With the absence of his ‘self,’ Winston now exists as an empty vehicle devoid of any capability as a thinking individual. His body is a corpse that is alive while Winston is dead inside. By pushing “the picture [of his earlier childhood] out of his mind” and deeming it as a false memory, Winston has been effectively taken over by brainwashing (Orwell 374). With no longer any thought of rebellion, the Party can make use of him however they like and can dispose of him later on whenever they wish. In this respect, the ‘bullet’ that enters Winston’s brain is allegorical. On the other hand however, readers can internalize the words “the long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain” as he was walking down the corridor in the Ministry of Love for their literal meaning. Winston is physically killed and executed following the psychological manipulation performed on him. The objective of carrying out Winston’s brainwashing and torture prior to his death is to ensure that he swears absolute loyalty to the Party virtually similar to the original leaders of the Revolution in which Big Brother’s rule over Oceania was formed: Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford (Orwell 350). With absolute power, the Party has no shred of regard for human life and abolishes personal rights, freedom, and individual thought without a second thought. In 1984, Orwell portrays the destruction of civil liberties, free-market economies, and democratic governments.
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’s and Julia’s meeting in the woods signifies breaking the totalitarian ways of the party. Here Winston feels free from observation, and gets a glimpse of the freedom that the party opposes. It is a place for lovemaking, a utter horrendous crime in their state. Here there are only Winston’s and Julia’s eyes,
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
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.
Orwell utilizes Julia’s character in order to capture the attitude of the oppressed as well. Winston wonders, “Any kind of organized revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same” (Orwell 131). Julia has no interest in overtly fighting the Party because she believes that the rebellion would never work out in her favor. Winston goes on to think:
By removing the stimulus of sex, the Party members are then given more opportunities to devote their loyalties to Big Brother. This influence is made evident in Winston’s reactions to Julia. Her “white and smooth” body “aroused no desire in him” (32). The Party has trained its members to become unresponsive to romantic feeling. The stigma of sex has been altered to such a degree by the Party that Winston views sex as an almost political act since it has become so closely related to Big Brother. In order to ensure true devotion to the Party, romantic connections are forbidden because becoming involved in such a relationship would mean devotion to another person other than Big Brother, and is therefore considered a threat to the Party’s power. Despite Winston’s relationship with Julia, he ultimately abandons his ties to her over his ‘love’ of Big Brother - thus his connection with Big Brother replaces his romantic
One example of rebelling against the party is that of Julia’s sexual escapades. She plots and plans to have sex with many of the different party members in order to find release in her otherwise boring lifestyle and by doing so she increases the amount of mass personal rebellion within the party’s regiment. After Winston and Julia are done having sex in the woods for the first time, he asks her how many other men has she done this with. She told him that she had done it with “scores” of other men and Winston is delighted to hear the good news. He feels that the more men she has had sexual encounters with makes the party weaker because those men don’t really feel committed to their party. Julia does not dream of rebellion against their oppressors as Winston does. However, she accepts her role in society and goes about life enjoying herself when she can.
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.
Prior to meeting Julia, Winston frets constantly about life and essentially has nothing to look forward to. Julia’s arrival into his life not only gives him
The totalitarian government in 1984, The Party, regards love and sex as, “a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act,” it is an act that aims to change the social order of the Party, which may eliminate Big Brother‘s influence. Therefore, during the torture of the rebel protagonist Winston, The Party forces him to betray his lover, Julia to eradicate feelings of love for anyone that is not Big Brother. Winston is threatened with his biggest fear - rats - and during the torture he pleads, “do it to Julia… I don’t care what you do to her.” Rats are significant because they could be a metaphor for The Party’s influence. O’Brien - Winston’s torturer, explains that rats will “strip [children] to the bone… They show astonishing
Winston’s method of resistance is actually taking action and doing something to solve Oceania’s problem with Big Brother’s complete control. Winston does not like that the Party can just tell you that 2+2=5 and you would actually believe it, because that means that the Party has complete influence over you, and can make you change your ideas about basic facts and truths. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” In other words, Freedom is the ability to know unquestionable truths, and if you have that, you can have more freedom, but if your basic knowledge is taken away, then your freedom is doomed. Winston looks for solutions, while Julia just tries to wait it out and only cares about herself. Winston at one point gets fed up with this attitude and even tells Julia that she is only a rebel from the waist down, which Julia takes as a compliment, “She thought this brilliantly witty and flung her arms round him in delight.” Julia and Winston’s perspective on resisting the party are similar at first but end up being completely different. Winston’s perspective is more compelling because his ideas can actually make an impact and change society, whereas Julia’s rebellion is
These presentation of women as inferior to men is obvious at all times; accordingly, the female characters in Nineteen Eighty-Four reveal an anti feminist bias on the part of the author. 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 “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.
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 causes 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 felt like sex was a rebellion. He is drawn to his lover Julia because