I Reading Check #1
Section One: Chapters I – VIII
How does the author characterize the setting and Winston? What aspect of his work does Winston enjoy? What does this tell you about his character? What is ironic about Winston’s love of his work? P 43
In the first few chapters alone, the setting is depicted as unbearably stifling. The fact that a large telescreen placed in your home allows you to be involuntarily "seen as well as heard" (pg 8, Orwell), patrol helicopters are constantly hovering outside your home and "snooping into people's windows" (pg 8, Orwell), and your own thoughts, which are regulated by the Thought Police, could get you arrested, vaporized, and erased from history are invariable pieces of evidence of how smothering the atmosphere of this dystopia is. More specifically to Winston's case, the apartment he lives is described as "falling to pieces" (pg 23, Orwell), with a broken elevator, flaking plaster, broken pipes, and roof leakages. The author may have characterized this setting in such a manner to create a sense of both paranoia and uneasiness (in being watched yet also neglected). As for the character of Winston, he appears to be both wise and curious. He exhibits his curiosity when he decided to purchase a small book to keep as his diary,
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However, he is wise in that he is able to acknowledge that keeping a diary is a very dangerous act and "if detected it was reasonably certain
In 1984, George Orwell’s choice of negative connotations, verbs, and figures of speech clearly set the stage for a nightmarish narrative. Orwell distinctly uses negative connotations to support the nightmarish mood found in 1984. Orwell applies the word “escape” (Orwell 3), creating a vision of Winston trying to avoid some kind of danger or threat. The threats that a person fails to see coming are often the most dangerous. Next, Winston, a thirty-nine-year-old man with a “varicose ulcer”(Orwell 3) is continuously struggling.
Loneliness is something everyone experiences. However, nobody should have to go through the degree of loneliness of being unable to confide in one person. Everybody needs a person. At the start of 1984 by George Orwell, Winston is completely alone and cannot open up about his feelings towards Big Brother to anyone. He is unable to conform to his natural human nature due to a government in total control. George Orwell’s 1984 communicates the threat on society of a totalitarian government by using literary devices such as irony, foreshadowing, as well as characterization.
As the book progresses we see Winston gradually growing more and more doubtful that his dystopian environment is the way things should be. He is seen searching for the truth and is always weary about what may lie ahead. Although I do not ask questions on the same grand scale as Winston, I do have a naturally inquisitive, and somewhat skeptical nature. I find myself interested in the most abstract and bizarre concepts, sometimes relating to the possibility of time travel through quantum particles, and other times something as trivial as movie trivia. Despite my desire to learn new concepts and ideas, I can often times lose interest in things I have trouble understanding. This is where I believe Winston and I share some common ground. We are both incredibly curious and at the same time held back by skepticism of the
The lyrics of Radiohead’s 2003 single, “2+2=5” refer to both 1984 by George Orwell and the administration of President George W. Bush. In the three distinct sections of the song, we hear about a character who chooses to live in ignorance, then becomes aware of the evils of his society. In the final segment of the song, the character struggles after learning about the truth, much like Winston Smith did in Orwell’s novel. The music was written and released during the presidency of George W. Bush, whose public reputation had shifted from negative to positive in the years following his controversial election in 2000. The songwriters suggest that, just as citizens of Oceania were trained to forget about history in order to maintain their
How would you like to live in a world under constant surveillance and not knowing what is going on in the world? In the world of Oceania, this is true. The Party, led by Big Brother is a totalitarian government that controls every aspect of everyone's lives, through telescreens and even the language, Newspeak. Winston a thirty-nine-year-old who is described as; “...a smallish frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the Party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine…” (Orwell 2). Winston is described as a thin, frail, and fearful of the Thought Police. Winston works in the Ministry of Truth or Minitrue in Newspeak, which deals with arts, education, and the media or entertainment. Winston lives in constant fear in Oceania due to the Thought Police; a group working for the Party who look for people with ideas that could be going against the Party and Big Brother. Throughout 1984 Winston becomes known as the protagonist in the story as he deals with many pressing issues and problems, Winston often gains levels and drops them on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and Winston parallels his everyday life to Bentham’s Panopticon.
Winston realizes that Big Brother is controlling people’s lives in a way that he should not be, and he is very passionate about changing that. Winston begins his own rebellion by starting a diary in which he is writes to a time when thoughtcrime is no longer a crime. He eventually gets so passionate that he writes a major truth about himself: “...I don’t care they’ll shoot me in the back of the neck I don’t care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck I don’t care down with big brother--”(Orwell 19). At this point, Winston is truly revealing what is inside him. He proves that he actually does not care about himself nearly as much as he cares about changing the world, (or at least London).
Orwell shows Winston’s state of mind. This passage shows a worrisome state that Winston is in. It also shows that a younger generation lacks independent thought and will do anything to show loyalty
And those who dissent will be vaporized, not only from living, but from ever existing in the first place. Giving Winston an incentive to have this conformative facade. The motif is the total control of information. Winston works in a department where he literally rewrites history to suit the needs of the party. Thereby, the party controls reality, something Winston abhors.
Orwell made this book for the purpose of cautioning the future generation of the course society is leaning towards. Winston tries to rebel in a world where the bad guys can predict everything you will do. That is why he failed. Orwell wanted to show that you can’t rebel if your core personality isn’t strong enough to handle the unimaginable difficulty of this feat. orwell doesn’t have a bright look on the future. He doesn’t have hope for the world because he knows humans will choose ease of living over freedom. Winston was the perfect character to portray an average person trying to rebel in a bleak
Most of the population consisted of proles, people who lived in poverty. Even Winston’s apartment complex was not in decent condition. “The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats...It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working.” (1) There was also constant surveillance through telescreens and the Thought Police. Oceania was ruled by the Party, and through his job, Winston caught a glimpse of the Party’s corruption. His job was to rewrite history where it favored the Party and Big Brother’s words. Winston began to grow a sense of hatred towards the Party as time passed, and his rebellious desires grew along with it. One of his first acts of thoughtcrime was purchasing a diary and writing in it. Another major crime he committed was having a love affair with Julia. In contrast to a hero’s conformity, Winston was quite a rebel. However, one of his greatest flaws was his continuous paranoia every time he committed thoughtcrime. Once he wrote in his diary, Winston figured that “He was already dead.” (28) He believed that his capture was inevitable, and was fearing it day by day. When he arrived at the rendezvous he and Julia agreed upon, Winston questioned the privacy of the clearing in the woods. “There were no telescreens, of course, but there was always the danger of concealed microphones by which your voice might be picked up and recognized..” (117) Winston was a rebel who was not on the right side on
Through the majority of the book Winston thinks independently and breaks the norms of society despite the dangers involved. He has a rebellious spirit and devotes much of his time to discreetly disrespecting Big Brother through his thoughts and actions. However, after his intense interrogation and torture in the Ministry of Love, all of this fighting spirit is lost. The reader sees Winston sitting alone in the cafe for disgraced ex-Party members in a sort of hypnotic state. Instead of keeping the loyalty that he had for his morals and for Julia, he is thinking of being “back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow… confessing everything, implicating everybody” (Orwell, 375).
Winston’s life is replete with misery and pain, but has been give brief moments of happiness and love by Orwell to create a sense of hope for Winston, and subsequently, hope for a future free of the imprisonment of totalitarianism, although Orwell makes clear throughout the novel that there is no happy ending. Totalitarianism does not allow the possibility of such an ending to thrive in the minds of people; If Winston were to escape this fate, Orwell’s definition of totalitarianism and everything that encompasses it would have been lost. Orwell has written the book in a way that the readers become so attached with Winstons character that he gains a form of individuality that can only be given by the reader. Winston is a symbol of the values democracy, love, peace, freedom, and decency which are found within a civilized society. When the character of Winston is destroyed, these values and connection to the reader are also destroyed with him as Winston Smith is a representation of the struggle faced between bad and good in every aspect of
I drew Winston, hand in hand with Julia, walking down a hallway. The hallway intentionally lacks colour and is drawn to appear white and spotless as described in the quote, “The passage down which he led them was softly carpeted, with cream paper walls and white wainscoting, all exquisitely clean”. I added a thought bubble above Winston to signify him remembering only contaminated, grimy hallways, “Winston could not remember ever to have seen a passageway whose walls were not grimy from the contact of human bodies”. The endlessness of the hallway, and the minuscule size of Winston and Julia signify the fear in them in this part of the chapter. What they were facing was unknown and scary, and they couldn’t be sure how it would end, they must
Telescreens are the most important and visible symbol of the party which they use to monitoring its subjects. The telescreen is a propaganda tool which is used by the party to get into people’s heads and control them. Not does it only control people it also monitors everyone’s actions and speech completely controlling every aspects of human existence. The telescreens also symbolize how the government abuses technology for its own good and there is no escaping from it.
As human beings, there are distinct characteristics that separate us from feral animals; the ability to create, to appreciate art, to curiously question the world and most importantly to sympathize for our kind. However, when that exact nature is stripped from us, we tend to become mindless, restricted, cold, and degraded as an entire race. This is the setting of George Orwell’s last book, 1984. A world where human thought is limited, war and poverty lie on every street corner, and one cannot trust nobody or nothing. It is all due to the one reigning political entity, the Ingsoc Party, who imposes complete power over all aspects of life for all citizens. There is no creative or intellectual thought, no art, culture or history, and no