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George Orwell 1984 book
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George Orwell 1984 book
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Have you ever tried to predict the future? In the novel 1984, by George Orwell, Winston Smith is a not sane person. This novel is Orwell’s guess on the future. He thinks that there will be one person in charge. That person is known as Big Brother. Winston is considered to be a not normal person in Oceania. Winston has a rollercoaster of emotions throughout the story. Winston loves Big Brother at one point and hates him at another. Winston’s love for Big Brother changes throughout the whole novel.
In the beginning, Winston hates Big Brother. Big Brother is the head of everyone, he is the president of Oceania. One reason Winston hates Big Brother is because of 2-minute hate. 2-minute hate is a session that the government, also known as The Party,
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puts on telescreens. When on the telescreens, the people are made to sit and watch it everyday. It has a combination of sounds and images that all the people hate. It lasts for two minutes. The Party purposely does this to have control over Oceania. Winston wants to rebel against The Party to prove that he can live in the past. Winston wants to live in the past because Big Brother changed it. History was changed to make it seem like everything was perfect. It was changed to believe that The Party was the same in the past as they are in the present. SOMEONE STATES “ The past was dead, the future was unimaginable” (Orwell 26) The past was dead because it was rewritten into what The party wanted it to be seen as. The future is unimaginable because no one will know if anyone will rebel and take over Big Brother. The Party will control the future how they want it if Big Brother is still the ruler. Winston just wants the future to be run by the people not The Party. When people live in the past, in Oceania, Big Brother changes that. He changes it by erasing the brains of people. This is the last reason why Winston despises him. Winston finds out that people change but he doesn’t know how. Winston said “ To die hating them, that was freedom.” (Orwell 26) To Winston them was The party and Big Brother himself. He thought that if he died hating The Party he would feel complete in life. In Winston's brain the only way to feel complete was to think his own way and to hate Big Brother. In the middle of the book, Winston feels indifferent about Big Brother.
When Big Brother changed history he decided to brainwash everyone to believe what the changed history said. To get Winston back to the reality of Oceania, a party member named O’brien, brain washed Winston. Winston screamed, “‘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!’” ( Orwell 284) Winston said this as O’ Brien brought out rats in Room 101. The room where everyone deals with their biggest fear. Winston was in this room to be turned against his secret girlfriend. He had to keep Julia a secret because in Oceania you get married just so you can have kids. You don’t get to divorce your husband or wife after you are done having kids you just separate. Winston had separated from his wife and felt close to Julia. He still didn’t love her enough to take his biggest fear to save her. After Winston screamed to O’brien, he was then brainwashed. All of his memories were taken away and he was completely lost. Slowly he was reminded of the memories that The Party wanted him to know. Winston didn’t know how he really felt about Big Brother at this point because he only was reminded of the good things. Winston said, “ you couldn’t. You couldn’t! It’s impossible. (Orwell 284) Winston said this to O’brien after he was told that to The Party 2+2=5. In Winston’s brain 2+2 could only ever equal four. Winston could not wrap his …show more content…
mind around the thought at first. After he thought about it more Winston couldn’t decide if Big Brother and the party were right or if he was. Winston realizes, at the end of the novel, he loves Big Brother.
After being brainwashed by O’brien Winston was still fighting about 2+2=4. The way to get WInston to stop complaining he used a torture technique. The more Winston rebelled the more pain he had to go through. Winston really liked Big Brother at this point do to the fact that O’brien was the one making him go through the pain. O’brien is also the person that set Winston up in the first place to make him be at this point. After being released from the Ministry of love, the place where Room 101 was, Winston realized Big Brother did this all for a reason. Orwell states “ Two gin scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose bit it was all right, everything was all right. The struggle was finished. ( Orwell 298) Winston was sitting at a bar when this happened. He was sitting there thinking about all his life choices when he thought about the reasons why Big Brother does this. Big Brother set up Oceania to be a safe place where no one would feel different. It was created to make people all the same so no one will be judged. He did this for the people not for himself. Orwell wrote, “ He loved Big Brother.” (Orwell 298) This was stated because Winston finally figured out the purpose of Oceania. He figured out why the world fell how it did. He realized why he was set up and put in to pain. He finally saw that he was normal and not different at
all. Throughout the novel, Winstons love for big brother grows. Winston finds out that he actually loves Big Brother. Even though he starts with hating him, he discovers that there is a purpose. He grows with the love of Big Brother when he finds out that everything was done for a reason. I think that Orwell’s guess of the future was very close to how the world is today. We may all not like the person in charge of the country but eventually we will grow to love them. We will learn that there is a purpose for everything that is done.
The novel 1984 by George Orwell is a fictional future where The Party controls everything. The Party is lead by a larger than life figurehead named Big Brother. The main character is Winston Smith. The story is divided into 3 parts and chronicles Winston’s rebellion against and then re-entering of The Party.
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.
“He has finally learned to love big brother” was how George Orwell in his novel 1984 described Winston, conversion to the party are represented by big brother at the end of the novel. It is easy to believe that at this instance, after torturous reeducation that Winston has endured, he has lost free will and no longer be able to freely choose to love big brother but was forced to, against hiss will. Therefore Winston was never free to love big brother, and in fact not free at all after his “reeducation.” But if we are to accept a definition of free will that stipulates that we are able to produce and act on our own volitions we must accept that Winston has retained and has chosen to love big brother out of his own free will.
From the beginning of the novel, it was inevitable that Big brother would eventually win, and Winston would be caught by the thought police. He could never have an immediate affect on the Party. His long and pointless struggle achieved no result in the end, and finally was brainwashed and lost any freedom of thought he once had.
Tired of his constricted life, Winston decides to take part in rebellious acts against the Party and attempts to overthrow the government that rules over him. As one could imagine, Winston’s personality does not conform to the rest of the population, because he possesses original characteristics that make him different. 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 for the leader of the Party who supposedly watches over everybody.
Firstly, O’Brien, a member of the inner party, uses technology to accomplish complete control over the public through the means of telescreens, hidden microphones and torture machines, ‘Any sound that Winston made… could be picked up by [the telescreen]. [Winston] could be seen as well as heard’. This emphasises to the reader the extent of control that the party can exercise over the public, enabling them to eliminate any potential rebels. Furthermore, this loss of freedom and individuality exterminates any real friendship, family or love forcing the public to turn to Big Brother for companionship. This in turn minimises the chance of rebellion as everyone views Big Brother as a figure of comfort and security, ‘As he seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless protector…’ O’Brien also uses a torture machine on Winston, ‘[He] had never loved [O’Brien] so deeply as at this moment’. This machine enables O’Brien to manipulate Winston’s views, personal opinions and even feelings. O’Brien is able to make Winston view the world as he wants him to, even to the extent of making Winston love him, his tormentor, the person inflicting the pain. ...
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.
O’Brien tortures Winston due to his acts of thoughtcrime, Winston is told that the Party will be satisfied with nothing less than Winston completely giving in. O’Brien explains, “We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him” (210). Winston is tortured for the goal of eradicating the cause of Winston’s fight, to consider himself happy and free. O’Brien wants to destroy any possibility of Winston becoming a martyr for his cause. The use of the telescreens, microphones, and all other sources of the government spying on its people ensures a lack of freedom: “Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed- no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull” (26). The members of this society are monitored at all times for the sole purpose of government control, with constant monitoring they are able to discover the most they can about individuals and later use it against them to gain an upper hand in controlling any possible uprising. Fear is used as another tactic to gain control. Winston is aware of the fact that “More
Winston writes, “Down with the Big Brother” (Orwell 19). From the beginning of the novel readers see Winston’s extreme disgust with the government. He expresses the views that no few in the society will. Winston rebels against the government to find meaning in his life. His journey into finding individuality shows his expression of freedom which no one else expressed. As Alex McGuinnis, a professional academic writer part of the Professional Development Collection, discusses the “Allness” language used by Big Brother to control a populous and perpetuate conformity within a society. As McGuinnis states, “Allness thinking is especially dangerous because those who influence our minds most in frequently are the people who are constantly groups using allness” (108). This quotes shows how Big Brother used “Allness” language to control the people in the society. Many times Winston is critical when talking about Big Brother and to show lack of conformity and resistance towards the regime. Tyner continues to show how Winton’s small actions show resistance towards a tyrannical regime. Winston challenges all societal behavior, such as expressing his thoughts in his journal and deciding to have an affair with Julia even though facing punishment by the government. In addition, readers see that “Allness” language is used and taught to younger generations to influence them from early in development. Winston’s change and expressions were miniscule resistance towards the whole society, but it still provides an example of an individual who choices not to conform to societies standards. Orwell express how even though with miniscule resistance towards conformity cannot get rid of it without the help of an entire
George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 follows the psychological journey of main character Winston. Winston lives in a utopian society called Oceania. There, the citizens are constantly monitored by their government coined “Big Brother” or “The Party”. In Oceania, there is no form of individuality or privacy. Citizens are also coerced to believe everything and anything the government tells them, even if it contradicts reality and memory. The goal of Big Brother is to destroy individual loyalties and make its citizenry only loyal to the government. In Orwell's novel 1984, he uses Winston's psychological journey to stress the dangers of individuality in a totalitarian regime because it can result in death. Winston’s overwhelming desire to rebel
This happens because it is the party’s way of getting into the citizen's heads. On page (??) O’Brien says to Winston, “There are three stages in your reintegration. There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance.” This quote from O’Brien tells us how the party manipulates the people into loving Big Brother. Their definitions of these three stages, however, are tortuous. They use learning to get the selected person to learn their crimes that they are accused of. For Winston, the first stage consisted of numerous beatings and degradation of his character. He is accused of all crimes of sexual perversion to spying. The party uses this technique to humiliate Winston and destroy his power of arguing and reasoning. Winston gives in and admits to all these crimes since he is afraid of further violence. Furthermore, Winston must understand to love Big Brother. At this point, O’Brien confesses to Winston that he is the author of Goldstein’s book. Winston continues to protest but then O’Brien shows him a powerful image which consisted of his own malnourished body. While Winston blames O’Brien for his health, O’Brien says “This is what you accepted when you set yourself up against the Party. It was all contained in the first act. Nothing has happened that you did not foresee.” (??) Since Winston is still not convinced, this
Through months of torture and debilitating pressure, he was stripped of his individualism and was taught to love big brother (McLaughlin). The pressures of society mixed with the strenuous hours of daily torture took a toll on his weakened brain. This was most evident when O’Brien asked him one last time if he loved Big Brother, and he answered yes. He did not say yes in order to end the torture, rather he said yes because his brain was rendered incapable of independent thought. Orwell does this to show his readers that self expression and independent thought are what ultimately make us human. Without those two things, we are left to live in an impressionistic society, one that urges us to like and believe in certain things- similar to that of Oceania. O’Brien torturing Winston was more than just the climax of the book; it was the solution to Orwell’s underlying question: Can the traits that make us human prevail in the face of turmoil and despair? "You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized” (Orwell 3).The fact that this statement made in the beginning holds true by the end of the novel answers the question that no; humanity would not
George Orwell uses Winston to represent truth in a deceptive world in his novel 1984. In Oceania, Big Brother is the omnipotent and all powerful leader. Everything the government dictates is unquestionably true, regardless of prior knowledge. Even thinking of ideas that go against Big Brother’s regime, or thoughtcrime, is punishable by death. Winston serves as the dystopian hero, longing for freedom and change. Orwell uses Winston to emphasize the importance of individual freedoms, as they give us the ability to fulfillingly lead our respective lives.
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 this case, the government has to use severe actions to ensure they will never act in this way again. Winston Smith, is a minor member of the ruling Party and is aware of some of these extreme tactics. Since Winston is not completely brainwashed by the propaganda like all the other citizens, he hates Big Brother passionately. Winston is one of the only who realize that Big Brother is wiping individual identity and is forcing collective identity. He is “conscious of [his] own identity”(40-41) . Winston continues to hold onto the concept of an independent external reality by constantly referring to his own existence. Aware of being watched, Winston still writes “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER”(21) in his diary. Winston believes whether he writes in his diary or not, it is all the same because the Thought Police will get him either way. Orwell uses this as a foreshadow for Winston's capture later on in the novel. Fed up with the Party, Winston seeks out a man named O’Brien, who he believes is a member of the ‘Brotherhood’, a group of anti-Party rebels. When Winston is arrested for thought crime by his landlord, Mr.Charrington, who is a member of the Thought Police. Big Brother takes Winston to a dark holding cell, to use their extreme torture strategy to erase any signs of personal identity. Winston's torturer is O’Brien, the man he thought to be apart of the brotherhood. Winston asks