Winston's Fate In The Book 1984

Other than Winston’s weak characteristic and his lack of planning, the main cause that contributes to Winston’s downfall is his indulgence. Winston lacks the ability to control himself from anything addictive in life. This personal flaw makes Winston lost in his cause to the destruction of “Big Brother”. In the novel, Winston constantly drinks and smokes to distract himself instead of focusing on a plan to take down “Big Brother”. Winston’s dream is to have a love affair: “Almost as swiftly as he had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated” (Book 2, Chapter 1). His illegal love affair with Julia does no good to his objective of bringing down “Big Brother”. The only result that the love affair accomplishes is Winston’s

Winston started as a unique man who hated following the rules and he made a complete 180 following the events in jail. Winston came out a new man, with respect for the Party and Big Brother as well as others around him. Winston had this to say about his new life at the end of the book, “it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished.” When he said the struggle was finished he realized he was done fighting Big Brother and the Party and finally was willing to accept them.

Throughout the novel, Winston wanted to rebel against the government, but the fear of the thought police made him conform. The party used telescreens and other things to monitor the citizens to make sure they were not thinking for themselves. This is why Winston had to be careful in what he does because if he got caught he would have been killed. When Winston finally found people that he trusted and thought were on his side, he started to begin to do things outside of conformity. This is when the party stepped in and began to punish him with his worst fear of rats to make him conform again. Winston knew that Big Brother was not real, but he was forced to conform by being brainwashed by his

In 1984, the ultimate form of betrayal is introduced when The Party causes Winston to betray his own mind and accept their views, and love Big Brother. It the beginning, Winston stresses the importance of keeping your own thoughts, in a world where other opinions and alternate accounts of past events are being forced upon the population. Winston points out that “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.” and thoughts like this become important to the reader, who, as Winston does, believes that they are safe in his head as a facet of his character (Orwell 29). However, the torture in the Ministry of Love gets to Winston, and he begins to lose his individual opinions. O’Brien systematically removes all rebellious thoughts in Winston’s mind, replacing them with the ideology of The Party. In doing so, it is as if they are killing a character. When Winston is released he behaves like a new character altogether, he loses the battle with himself and betrays his original opinions against The Party. In using self-betrayal to show

This is shown in part 3 of the novel where Winston feels the full extent of the brutal power of the Party when he is taken to the Ministry of Love where he is tortured and brainwashed so he can’t remember things that have happened, he is made to be like everyone else in Oceania. This is shown when O’Brien tries to persuade him:

Winston goes through emotional change throughout 1984 that changes his perspective and personality. At the beginning of the book, Winston is filled with hatred towards the Party. “They’ll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother-” (Orwell, 19). Winston’s fury towards the Party and Big Brother is evident. Through his diary entries, you can definitely tell that he harbors an intense anger towards them. So, it may seem that this trait will never change and make him always fight for it. The reader may at first think that he will never change views. But then, Winston completely changes perspective at the end of the book when he states, “He loved Big Brother.” (Orwell, 298). This keeps Winston from becoming another boring character who refuses to change his opinion which makes for an interesting book and a more complex character.

Once caught, Orwell writes that Winston must undergo a form of drastic mental “treatment.” “You are mentally deranged. You suffer form a defective memory…fortunately it’s curable”(Part 3, Chapter 2). O’Brien describes Winston’s mind as the same way Freud would diagnose a patient with a disorder. Winston in fact goes under a similar process that closely relates to the psychoanalytic treatment. “We gather in detail what the peculiarities of the Unconscious are, and we may hope to learn still more about them by a profounder instigation of the processes…”(Freud 324). According to O’Brien, Winston seems to have developed a mental disease that causes him to have delusions. Winston’s dreams, which Freud considers “a highly valuable aid into psycho-analysis technique” and an “insight into the unconscious,” are put under inspection and further investigated by O’Brien to study and gain knowledge of how to “cure” Winston’s mind. It is then when Winston’s nightmares of rats gives O’Brien the key component to understand how he will strengthen Winston’s ego and superego according to the views of the Party.

No one knew if what they remembered was true or not because of all the false stories put into their heads. In Orwell’s novel, the rebels were beaten and the soul they once had floated away to never come back. “We have beaten you, Winston. We have broken you up. You have seen what your body is like. Your mind is in the same state. I do not think… You have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed everybody and everything. Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?” (Orwell, 273). This is clear proof that Winston was tortured and beaten into believing what the government wanted him to. He hated Big Brother his whole life and now the person that he was once was had been taken away from him. A new and government improved version appeared. No flaws, no doubts, no anger, just confidence that everything Big Brother said was true.

Later, Winston becomes broken and says that he knows that he was in the wrong, but preferred to be in the wrong. He showed that he still had motivation to fight for freedom. This is what causes him to go to Room 101, which is where he ends up betraying Julia because of the fear he has of rats. It seemed like everyone ends up betraying what/who they love most, since the purpose of the torture is to replace everything they know and love with Big Brother. Despite his failure, Winston still shows that he is a very heroic character based on his persistence to hate Big Brother and wanting to bring it down. The book “1984” shows that Winston is a hero because of his dedication to rebel as much as he could and his bravery to take action and to do what he believed was right. Winston was an phenomenal protagonist and was a hero defined through what he did, not by what happened to the him in the

Winston also shows determination throughout the novel. For example, when he was caught for having an affair with Julia, he did not give up his beliefs. O’Brien tortured Winston severely for thought crime and for the fact that he was willing to join brotherhood. However, until the very end of his pain Winston still said he hated Big Brother and that he did not like what they were doing. No matter how much pain he went through, Winston stood up for what he believed and he expressed his beliefs. When O’Brien asked

Even though Winston contributed to committing acts against the government that are quite courageous, it was all in a discrete manner. Instead of engaging in an open revolt, Winston’s sexual escapades with Julia and journal entries were in secrecy and remote locations that were never repeated twice, also in the room provided by Mr.Charrington. I interpreted Winston’s approach to act in confidence from everyone around him out of the fear of the reactions of people during the two minute hate, telescreens, hidden microphones, and brainwashed, spying neighbours outing you at the first open moment to save themselves very cowardice rather than make an open revolt. The open revolt would have spoken actions of a hero, “ordinary people doing whatever they can to change social systems that do not respect human decency, even with the knowledge that they can’t possibly succeed”. Basically even if Winston’s public revolt to get others to go against rather than conform to the Party’s laws and live in fear didn’t succeed, it would have been the effort that counts for what a hero would do to better a country, people, or even the world. The fear Winston felt and had thought of in the back of his mind that he mentioned all kept him regretting the actions he took part in.

Winston does seem to focus on his curiosity of the unknown. He is seemingly willing to do anything for it. The journal, which is a big example as his only place to vent and make a personal record that only he can see. True leaders are judged based on how they act and think publicly, and Winston is not the average scum he is surrounded by.

Additionally, the portrayal of this dystopian society controlled by a totalitarian government might have been understood well by contemporary audiences, mirroring the rules of totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy- the citizens have no influence on the government and have no freedom of choosing the rules that govern and control every part of their lives. Therefore, Winston blames the misery in his life totally and completely on the government and on Big Brother. In Winston’s case, we can see that the propaganda, deprivation, and strict rules fail to make him concur with the party and accept Big Brother- in this situation, the party has to use extreme force and torture to make Winston love the party as well as Big Brother, in order for the party to maintain complete power.

This physical control produces marginalization as it removes the ability of individuals to exercise their own ideas or draw their own conclusions. It does this through the constant influx of knowledge that Winston must accept or face extreme physical pain. The physical pain removes the existence of an external reality, as eventually he loses the ability to think as an individual. They are left with the somewhat contradictory answers of the party, like war is peace, freedom is

Despite Winston's passionate hatred for the Party and his desire to test the limits of the Party's power, his capacity to carry out action against the Party is burdened (i.e. lacking positive freedom) by his intense paranoia and overriding belief that he will ultimately suffer scrutiny and brutal torture for the crimes he