Response To George Orwell's '1984'

Through his failure, Orwell portrays the dangers of a disunited society for the individual. Even though Winston willingly chose to oppose the Party and offered his life towards the eradication of his oppressors, his sacrifice proved futile without communal support to usurp the tyrannical regime. Despite the common suffering the people endured, their fear of the individual torment each would suffer motivated them to submit to the government. In Winston, Orwell highlights the frailty of an individual person in comparison to a mob. When imprisoned at the Ministry of Love, Winston’s will crumbled under torture and he even offered the life of the one individual he had earlier seemed hesitant to sacrifice, Julia. Hence, Orwell illustrates the need for a united social front for individuals to change the society in which they live in. Otherwise, self-preservation shall remain dominant within each individual, leaving them vulnerable to continuous manipulation through propaganda.

Winston eventually went mad, confessing the psychological abuse was more severe than the physical he experienced while in the prison. He began begging for mercy, and went as far to ask others to be put in his place to relieve him from the torture that seemed to occur “hour after hour” (Orwell, 199). This is proof the dignified man that was introduced in the beginning of 1984 was lost to the Party’s power and manipulation and completely stripped of his ethics.

In the book, 1984, the main character, Winston Smith, chooses to go completely against the grain of the accepted and enforced form of totalitarianism. Unlike most, Winston chooses to carry out rebellious thoughts and desires against the government. Though realizing his consequences, Winston pushes his thoughts even further into action. These thoughts and, later, actions eventually catch up to Winston and land him in jail. While in jail, Winston,

Nevertheless, a telescreen hidden behind a painting in Winston’s room reveals to the duo that they have been found out, followed by the Thought Police rushing into his room to arrest the both of them. Winston’s torture starts in real earnest and is presided over by O’Brien himself. At first it is sheer brutal physical torture, incessant blows all over, reducing him to a cowering animal confessing to anything and everything, implicating everybody if only the pain would stop. Then the guards are replaced by the intellectuals of the Party who inflict subtler kinds of pain and reduce him to an abject cringing wreck crying from sheer humiliation and exhaustion. In between, he is administered frequent drug injections which sometimes increase his pain and sometimes knock him out completely.

While under the custody of the Party, Winston faced various methods of torture including beatings. During one of the sessions O’Brien asked:

O’Brien tortures Winston, making him doubt himself and his ability to remember changes in the party then eventually breaking him. Firstly O’Brien shows to Winston that he could harm him and make him suffer for as long as he wanted by simply turning a lever, then he tells him he is ‘mentally deranged’ and that he is curing him by making him suffer. After O’Brien makes Winston suffer for days or weeks or even months or years he takes him to room 101. Here Winston is exposed to his biggest fear. Rats. This is where all the inmates at the Ministry of Love were finally broken.

The author uses a vast amount of examples of imagery to create and show his concerned tone, starting from how Winston woke up in a camp bed, fixed down so that he could not move. He continues to describe the events that would take place in that room and the actions that would be done to him. Orwell explains that “sometimes it was fists, sometimes it was truncheons, sometimes it was steel rods, sometimes it was boots” (263). This displays how they didn’t care about what they used, they entirely wanted to conflict as much pain as possible on him, no matter what it took. The more that he

In the novel, Winston is a character who lacks "hero" traits as he has more traits of an everyman than a hero. Winston is an out of shape, average man with a "varicose ulcer above his right ankle" (3). Considering the typical hero, not only does Winston lack the physical strength, he lacks the mentality as well. Throughout the novel, he consistently talks about "overthrowing the Party," but he never actually does it. Instead of overthrowing the Party, he rebels by purchasing a diary and writing sentences such as "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER" (20) and " I don’t care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck" (21). Winston chooses to write these into his diary as he is too cowardly to say this in public. As time passes, his

The language of this passage, illustrates Winston’s frantic thoughts and worries, by having long, and sometimes grotesque sentences, describing life, death, and suicide, the current topics circulating Winston’s mind. Prior to this passage, Winston’s had just had an encounter with the dark-haired girl, where he believing her to be a spy who was following him, contemplated killing her, but found himself unable to. In this passage he’s very overwhelmed by this past event and his thoughts are portrayed in long, sentences, that show the current hopelessness he feels. He thinks to himself; “On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues you are fighting are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralyzed by fright or screaming with pain, life

Appearance vs Reality is the struggle which the protagonist , Winston, faces throughout the novel. “The outward appearance which conforms, the inward life which questions” could be most suitable to describe Winston’s dilemma. Winston is forced to conform outwardly because it is a crime to show any face expressions of doubt or wonder, also known as facecrime, which indicates thoughtcrime, the action of simply thinking and questioning the beliefs enforced upon a person. Winston’s continuous struggle of maintaining a perfect countenance was almost inhumane, however, during the two minutes hate, he admits that “he could not help sharing the general delirium”, “it was impossible to do otherwise, to dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction.” That, however, was not the first sign of his struggle. As Winston finally reached his apartment, he walks over to his window with his back to the telescreen “It was safer; though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing,” staring out at the Ministry Of Truth, his workplace. When he turned around, “He had set his features into the expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen.” Winston’s incredulous nature refused to accept the formidabile lies they fed. He craved an insurrection which explained why his body screamed in pain every

I do not mean his death, which is an occurrence of little significance when compared to the events that precede his departure from life. As the State imprisons him and Julia for treason, Winston glows with a hope that he has been able to break out of the system, as being a part of the Brotherhood as allowed him to taste freedom and that was an act of defiance far greater than any militant struggle yet in Room No 101, Winston is slowly, methodically broken down, physically, mentally, and emotionally. O’ Brien comes out of the dark, reveals his true self, maintains that Goldstein was just a fabrication of the State as a valve for public emotion, convinces Winston that “ 2+2=5”. This systematic and almost machine like deconstruction of the human psyche and body is terrifying to witness, as a proof of the power of the State, what Foucault would term as “biopower”. The body of Winston and his mind becomes the arena where the State displays its greatest strength: the power of Room 101 to alter the very consciousness of individuals, to make them believe in constructs they know are false and finally the submission through consent to a system they detest. The final line of the text are Winston’s own thoughts “ He loved Big Brother” which are in such contrast with is earlier private thoughts “ Down with Big Brother”. It is this change wrought by the hands of the State that is of significance in the story. Forcing an individual towards an act that he consciously resists is a common thread in authoritarian regime but having the power to make his commit such an act by inducing consent in his consciousness towards it is the true test of a complete authority. Big Brother is that authority and Winston represents the human populace susceptible to such an

He loved Big Brother” (Orwell 298). Orwell does not directly state that Winston is dead, but it is clearly obvious that he is because previously in the novel Orwell states, “It would not matter if they killed you at once. To be killed was what you expected. But before death (nobody spoke of such things, yet everybody knew of them) there was the routine of confession that had to be gone through” (Orwell 103).

The first impression of Winston is a weak, worn down individual. His body was getting older, as illustrated by his limited ability when participating in the daily stretches. Orwell only explains his physical characterization in the beginning and end of the book when he is being tortured. The middle of the book is more focused on characterizing Winston's mind. The reader is constantly wondering how many rules Winston is willing to break at the risk of torture. At first is seems as though his follower-type personality will only let him risk

Unlike the typical heroes of past stories, such as Odysseus from The Odyssey or Harry Potter, Winston is flawed and plain, similar to many modern anti-heroes. The author, George Orwell, created a character that seemed relatable to the readers, and was not “dehumanized” with extraordinary gifts or pure perfection. Winston “..was thirty-nine, and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle.” (1) Winston Smith did not have any special features. He was not

Hopelessness, deep and gaping ever lasting hopelessness. If the course of humanity fails to change, to this everyone will succumb. That is the message that George Orwell has left for the future, and it would be in humanity's best interest to heed. Winston Smith of 1984 lived in a world that had been consumed by the everlasting abyss of injustice. Eventually this world became too much for our hopeful protagonist and thus, like the future that is bound to a horrific fate, he succumbed. “It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it” (Orwell 248). No one in this world is any different than Winston, they will follow his path like all of those before them, following the five stages of Kübler-Ross. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance make up the cycle that every feeble life will follow and that Winston grew to know all too well.