In 1984, George Orwell introduces a main character, Winston who is an Outer Party member and works at the Ministry of Truth in Oceania. In Oceania, the Party controls everything – citizen’s minds and thoughts, and they even rewrite the people’s language, referred to Newspeak, in order to get rid of rebellious actions and thoughts. As people in Oceania get controlled by the Party, Winston’s hatred towards Big Brother becomes bigger and bigger. He feels frustrated by rigorous control of the Party, which prohibits free thought, sex, and any expression of individuality. Winston then secretly follows the enemy of Big Brother, Emmanuel Goldstein because he doesn’t want to be like other people who are unconsciously controlled by the Party. For that …show more content…
reason, he meets a woman, Julia, who doesn’t really care about rebellion of Big Brother but really cares about her own pleasure and enjoying sex. Later, when Winston and Julia get caught by the Thought Police, O’Brien, who is a Party spy and pretends to be a member of the Brotherhood in order to get Winston into committing an act of rebellion against the Party, tells that the Party matters more than its individual members and they give up some element of their individuality to survive. This statement suggests that individuality cannot exist in the novel since people in Oceania have already given up their individuality in order to survive among the Party. From the novel, the Party group membership requires loss of individuality. For example, the Two Minutes Hate unconsciously controls Winston and other Outer Party members, which is a two-minute speech of Emmanuel Goldstein showing on the big screen in order to brainwash people’s thoughts – not to be rebellious against the Party. Winston describes the Two Minutes Hate that “it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise” (16). As the Party pushes people into brainwash, Winston becomes confused by his struggle for freedom of having his own individuality. Even though Winston doesn’t want to be like other people who follow Big Brother, he has no choice to be rebellious and has no power to argue about his own individuality against the Party. Yet, the Party focuses on giving up one’s individuality as key to escape. According to “The Architecture of Repression: The Built Environment of George Orwell’s 1984,” Gerald Bernstein demonstrates that 1984 is made evident in “[Winston’s] loss of individuality” (26). The control of the Party depends on the conquest of the individuality spirit. Bernstein implies that the world in 1984, nothing is one’s own and individuality is “abolished” (Bernstein, 28). Despite Winston’s loss of individuality, the Outer Party members have already given up their individuality choosing “an act of self-hypnosis” in order to survive. Therefore, individuality cannot be free to choose and cannot exist in the novel. In the novel, the only way to get out of Room 101 is giving up one’s individuality and destroying the one’s mind in order to survive in totalitarian society. O’Brien spends several months torturing and brainwashing Winston, who struggles to resist. At last, O’Brien sends him to the frightening Room 101, the final destination for anyone who opposes the Party. O’Brien tells Winston about one’s own individuality and own self-controlled thoughts when Winston is in Room 101: You have not controlled it… you have failed in humility, in self-discipline… reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes… it needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane. (249) O’Brien implies “an act of self-destruction” which Winston lacks and needs to abandon – himself or his own individuality. However, I think O’Brien’s implication indicates significantly that O’Brien himself has once been rebellious, only to be tortured into receptive acceptance of the Party. Even though one cannot be sure whether the Brotherhood actually exists, or if it is simply a Party creation used to trap the disloyal and give the rest of the populace a common enemy. Winston lives in a world in which reasonable existence of individuality is impossible; lacking any real hope, he gives himself false hope. Winston doesn’t understand what O’Brien’s saying at first, but Winston is gradually hypnotized by O’Brien’s control of getting rid of individuality. Moreover, in “Utopia, Dystopia, and the Middle Class in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four,” Robert Resch states that “[Winston’s] refusal to love Big Brother and his resistance to the party’s domination is, at bottom, an egoistic drive indistinguishable from O’Brien willing submission to Big Brother and his pleasure in destroying Winston’s individuality” (170). Winston’s own tendency of resisting his individuality demonstrates the harsh oppression of the Party, Big Brother, and the Thought Police. Winston is extremely desperate to understand how and why the Party controls such absolute power in Oceania. Winston acknowledges O’Brien’s superiority to himself since his own point of view and mind are organized around the power of the Inner Party. While Winston gets pain in Room 101, all O’Brien wants is just giving up Winston’s own individuality and his affection towards Julia, which indicates the impossibility of individuality existence. Along with the interrogation in Room 101, as repressive and degrading as any of the techniques of brainwashing, Winston finally breaks down and gives up his own individuality in the novel.
When O’Brien straps a cage full of rats onto Winston’s head and prepares to allow the rats to eat his face, he eventually cries out in order to save himself from the rats, “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!” (286). O’Brien intends to make Winston betray his love and more feeling towards loving Big Brother. Since giving up Julia is what O’Brien really wants from Winston all along, Winston later is released from Room 101 with his spirit broken. This indicates how immoral society controls people in Oceania and prohibits them from their own thoughts and even love. Furthermore, Resch states in his article, “Winston is forced to acknowledge, in the same terrible instant, the primacy of his own will to power and the enormity of his personal defeat. It is this double realization that breaks Winston’s will and propels him into the open arms of Big Brother” (171). Winston obliges to assert individuality in protecting himself, yet he gives it up by doing what the Party has set him to do. After Winston gets out of the Ministry of Love, Winston meets Julia, and Julia says, “You think there’s no other way of saving yourself, and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way… All you care about is yourself” (Orwell, 292). It is irony that the Party forcing Winston to think of himself, but like Julia tells Winston, his resignation is one of the reasons for protection of his own individuality. Even though Winston knows that he cares about only himself, he doesn’t have any feeling or thoughts toward Julia anymore because he has accepted the Party entirely and has learned to love Big
Brother. This is an unfortunate society of not having one’s own individuality and minds in the novel. As several quotes shown above, individuality can never exist since the powerful Party controls everything and from that, people follow the control of Big Brother and give up their individuality in order to survive in a self-centered society, Oceania. Winston is fascinated by power and fatally disempowered by his belief in the hopelessness of rebellion and in the all-powerfulness of the Inner Party. Although Winston gives up his individuality at last, it is a must policy in Oceania to survive, and it will never change unless the Party allows people and their individuality exist in the novel.
In “1984,” Orwell uses Winston to portray a single individual’s attempt to take action against a powerful government, culminating in his failure and subjugation. His individual efforts failed tremendously due to the overarching power of the Party to control every aspect of social life in Oceania. Orwell uses Winston’s deeply seated hatred of the Party to portray his views on power and social change. Winston’s actions show that even in the direst of situations ...
Every part of life is regimented and controlled, but the only crime is ‘thought crime’: independent thinking and individualism. Big Brother is the figurehead of the Inner Party, and throughout the book, it is heavily implied that he may not really exist. The people are divided into Inner Party members, who control the government, Outer Party members, who make up the middle class, and Proletarians, or Proles, who make up the uneducated lower class. He utilizes strong but vague descriptions of the world around Winston to hint at the state of the world without directly saying it. He describes a bright cold day, which seems to perfectly depict the world's bleak state in a sort of indirect way (Orwell, 1948).
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.
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.
In the middle of the novel, O’Brien appears as the escape from Big Brother, providing both Winston and Julia with information pertaining to the Brotherhood. Unfortunately for these two lovers, it is all façade. O’Brien is merely trying to find out what their limits and breaking points are. After asking Winston and Julia a set of questions, O’Brien asks the ultimate question, “You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never see one another again” (180), to which Julia replies, “No” (180). This exchange of words gives O’Brien the upper hand for later events. He now knows that the love shared between Winston and Julia is not solely an act of rebellion, but also that it is what will get the two characters to conform and accept Big Brother. This finally gives O’Brien the opportunity to change Winston; something that he has been willing to do for some time now. O’Brien states, “For seven years, I have watched over you. Now, the turning-point has come” (256). Prior to Winston’s relationship, O’Brien had nothing to hold over Winston if he was to get Winston to conform, and was waiting for the opportune moment to do so. However, he is now able to manipulate Winston’s love for Julia, and turn it towards love for Big Brother. He uses their love as leverage while torturing Winston. O’Brien also
George Orwell’s 1984 novel goes through the life of Winston, who is trying to resist the power of the totalitarian government of Oceania known as The Party. Although the proles do seem to be marginalized by the inner party, they aren’t aware of it. They are free and have the sense of individualism to live their lives. On the other hand, the outer party is aware of the Party’s manipulative powers, and they are capable of rebellion. Because of this, they are put under severe monitoring.
Noah Miller English Honors: D Ms. Hiller 13 December 2013 1984 Major Essay Assignment. Individualism is the one side versus its opposite, collectivism, that is the degree to which individuals are integrated into groups. When put into a collective whole, one might do for the whole more than one does for oneself.
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
In the novel 1984, written by George Orwell, there is a place called Oceania where the government is Big Brother. The government, the Party, and the Thought Police are constantly oppressing the citizens of Oceania. Most of the people don't know that they are being oppressed, but the two main characters, Julia and Winston, realize the oppression and don't stand for it. Winston and Julia absolutely hate the Party, and are constant breaking its “rules”. Julia is self-centered and resists the Party by doing rebellious acts that only affect her in a positive way. Similarly, Winston also does small acts of rebellion in the beginning of the book in ways that only relate to him. Later, Winston rebels for a greater cause, joining the Brotherhood to
Both are taken into custody and tortured and beaten so that they can be rebuilt to obey the Party and to sell out each other. Winston takes many days of torture and pain before he is put into room 101 where he is encountered with his worst fear,which is rats. Winston the breaks down and yells, “Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me” (Orwell 286). The only thing that kept Winston going was the fact that he hadn’t yet betrayed Julia, and he felt determined to never betray her. With Julia, O’Brien told Winston that she gave him away almost instantly. She was all about saving herself,and did not care about what could happen to Winston now that they were caught and their relationship would not continue.
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.
In 1984, George Orwell presents an overly controlled society that is run by Big Brother. The protagonist, Winston, attempts to “stay human” in the face of a dehumanizing, totalitarian regime. Big Brother possesses so much control over these people that even the most natural thoughts such as love and sex are considered taboo and are punishable. Big Brother has taken this society and turned each individual against one another. Parents distrust their own offspring, husband and wife turn on one another, and some people turn on their own selves entirely. The people of Oceania become brainwashed by Big Brother. Punishment for any uprising rebellions is punishable harshly.
At this moment, Winston feels powerless against the seemingly unstoppable Party, knowing that his life is at the mercy of O’Brien. Thus, Winston’s already weak willpower continues to wither away, rendering him more vulnerable to further reformation. The final procedure in completely transforming Winston’s personality occurs in the dreaded Room 101. To achieve his ultimate goal of breaking Winston’s loyalty towards Julia, O’Brien exploits Winston’s deepest fear of rats in a rather gruesome manner.
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.