Category Archives: 1984 (Part Two, chapters III-X)

Who could be trusted more, Julia or O’Brien?

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With Book Two, Winston meets Julia and begins an affair that he deeply wanted, this started the contrast between them. Unlike Winston, Julia doesn’t really care about the Party. She has a mix of sense practicality that makes her plan their affair. She also lacks fatalism. When he tells her, “We are the dead,” she replies calmly, “We’re not dead yet.” Julia is more optimistic than Winston. She accepts her life for what it is, and tries to make the best of it. Winston tries to undermine it but she doesn’t understand that side of him or the party. The only thing that’s resides in her is the rebellious act of Winston because she’s apart of it. Julia is more of a selfish type of person than Winston. Winston just enjoys the fact that the rebellion will spread. The affair kept going until Winston meeting O’Brien. Since then he played a risk with renting above mr.charrington’s shop. This was due to the inspiration by “vision of the glass paperweight”. Making him think that their relationship could be similar to those in the past more free time. With Winston looking into the paperweight opens his mind about a world inside but outside time, free of the party. Also Winston thinks about his past on how deep the mind manipulation by the party is often but still knows the reality. Julia is one of his few outlets for his expression in a meaningful way. But the only thing that would separate them is the party with its manipulation through their past. “The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the party chooses to make it.” (Pg 219) In a way where that they would turn on each other if caught but still love each other which shows the power of the party in human minds. Winston meeting o’brien just fills him with optimism and yet fatalism. He does feel safe around him and that’s what O’Brien leads him to believe. With that belief, he’s filled with thrill, because of what he’s doing it will eventually get him caught. O’Brien is everything Winston wants to be, which is a act that he puts on to set Winston up in the long run.

Secret Relationship

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The full background of the Julia character finally revealed in part two chapter three and to find out she has more hatred of the inner party than Winston does. I found out that Julia and Winston are the same on how they feel about the inner party, but they are fundamentally different because Julia is an optimist and Winston is a pessimist like for instants, “She did not understand that there was no such thing as happiness, that the only victory lay in the far future, long after you were dead, that from the moment of declaring war on the Party it was better to think of yourself as a corpse. “We are the dead,” he said. “We’re not dead yet,” said Julia prosaically” (Orwell, pg.138).

Also, as young as Julia is in the story she has a great talent to live two lives without the Thought Police finding out about her dark half. She participates in the Junior Anti-Sex league but has sex with many Party members and create Hate Week banners but doesn’t believe in it. But Winston loved the corrupted aspect of Julia and the fact that she purposely to the other Party members, “Anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild hope. Who knew, perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing iniquity. If he could have infected the whole lot of them with leprosy or syphilis, how gladly he would have done so! Anything to rot, to weaken, to undermine!” (Orwell, pg. 128).

In Part Two, Chapter 4, Winston went back to Mr. Charrington store where he purchased paperweight to rent the room located above store to enjoy another moment with Julia. After Winston made love to Julia and showing Julia that he afraid of mice, I discover one part in this chapter that was very interesting to me. Winston described the paperweight as his relationship with Julia frozen in time, but this is the one time he was a little optimistic outside his current reality. “It was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete. He had the feeling that he could get inside it, and that in fact he was inside it, along with the mahogany bed and the gateleg table, and the clock and the steel engraving and the paperweight itself. The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.” (Orwell, pg.150).

“Welcome to the Monkey House”

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The lengths The Party goes to keep its status quo of government is more insanely brilliant, it being a whirl wind of gore for its subjects to enjoy and dragged into. The Party’s attitude on sex at first in to story is that seen of ” objective ” use, as it only being used to turn out more party members to feed the party, and to spy on their parents. Julia ultimately realizes that this is used two fold. ” It was not merely that the sex instinct  created a world of its own which was outside of the Party’s control and which there for had to be destroyed if possible. what was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship”( page 135). The sex prohibition is in turn, just another cog to the Party’s total war doctrine, and allow something as a demagogue like Big Brother to take hold as a central part of society. what is more interesting still is that, porn is distributed among the proles to keep them getting to uncomfortable, as the poorest people generally have sex the most in hierarchical society. The bombastic gathering called “Hate Week”, is simultaneously the biggest paradox to the Party and its apex of glory. the paradox arrives from the fact that Hate Week is a large grouping of people acting very cantankerously with bombs going off all around. (As a side note, the fact that rocket bombs go off much more constantly during Hate Week really solidifies the fact that the Party is bombing its members.). While all the the violent displays are regulated by the Party, with even them playing the “Hate Song” on every telescreens for a week. “The new tune which was to be the theme song of Hate Week (the “Hate Song” it was called)…” “resembled the beating of a drum. roared out by hundreds of voices to the tramp of marching feet, it was terrifying” (page 151). This cacophony never stops even at night, creating more and more hysteria for this week, trying to invoke a sense of constant war and emending doom, the bombs going off in the distance can be seen as a simulated battle almost saying that the “enemy” is close by. this all culminates with the feeling that only Big Brother can protect you from the ravages of war and that surveillance  is for your safety. The history and bulwark of the Party makes it evident on how the Party acts the way it does. The Party’s complete opposition to foreign ideas is because it never really had to deal with strong opposition ever really. The Party takes many of its ideas from the early socialist movements of the nineteen hundreds and the idea that things should be unequal, as the flaw of the past socialist movements was that sense of equality. At the apex of the Party is Big Brother, the cult of personality. “Big Brother is infallible and all powerful” (page 213). The fact that the Party turns the guise of a normal into the head of itself and a god is tell, almost saying its ruled by divinity and that the war machine culture is humanities apex an reason for creation.

A Not So Quiet Life

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The room that Winston rents out above Mr. Charrington’s shop is a small place, but is host to more than enough events in the story. It originally is used as an easy place for Julia and Winston to meet up, but escalates into much more. “So long as they were actually in this room, they both felt, no harm could come to them” (152). Both of them initially think that the little room, which Winston regrets renting out in the beginning, is a safe haven that will protect them from anything. They are both wrong.

Throughout hate-week, Winston and Julia slowly come to terms with the fact that they will eventually be caught by the Party. Winston finds solace in O’Brien, because he appears to be against the party.  O’Brien appeals to Winston with his talk about the resistance, not knowing that he plays right into his hands. It only becomes clear when it is too late and the police bust into the room. Their so called “safe haven” was a lie all along as there was a hidden telescreen behind the picture of St. Clement’s Church. The room does not protect them in the slightest.

“You will work for a while, you will be caught, you will confess, and then you will die…”(177). The quote has a lot of foreshadowing, as Winston and Julia both know that this will eventually happen to them. However they also both believe they will still love each other even after the party is done with them. The party is a force that should not be taken lightly.I wouldn’t say that they were too arrogant, as they both knew they would meet their end sooner or later, but they were both a bit optimistic about their love surviving the torture they would most likely receive.

Complimenting Contrast between Winston and Julia

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The relationship between Winston and Julia is interesting.  While both people have a lot of things in common, such as their hatred of the Party, they have a lot of contrasting things that compliment them in a way that completes or make up of for what the other lacks.

One obvious difference is their age.  Despite their love(or lust) for each other, Julia is 26 years old as mentioned in page 132 of the book while Winston is 39 years old as mentioned in the first page.  This is a very large age difference between a couple.  For a young woman, Julia displays a lot of street smarts as she was able to pass a note of her love to him and she was able to arrange meetings to privately be with him both in hidden areas away from the Party’s eyes and ears and in public areas full of people.  Winston is impressed by this as “she obviously had a practical cunning which Winston lacked”(page 129).  Not only is she’s clever, she makes up for Winston’s lack of skill on evasion of the Party’s knowledge to break rules.  Despite this, she claims “she was ‘not clever’, but was fond of using her hands and felt at home with machinery”(page132).  This is interesting as, from the beginning of the book, it shows and says how Winston is smart.  This goes even further as, due to both their ages and their intelligence, it also shows how the Party affected both of them and how much due these factors.

While Winston is bothered with how the Party can easily alter history and have everyone easily believe it, Julia doesn’t really care of neither the history nor the lies by the Party.  In some ways, as Winston found out, Julia is very susceptible to the Party’s lies because, along with many other people born before the revolution, “They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening”(page 160).  This is bad for several reasons.  One major one is that being unable to see the big picture of the situation makes it hard to make a change or even realize that some things can be changed and isn’t always all powerful.  Being unable to grasp the large problem or why things are the way they are can cause people to do damage or even harm themselves or someone else and not even know or understand why.  Another major problem is that if no one cares about what is going on, then people can harm people, things around them, or themselves without even bothering to find out why.  Even worse, this makes people more manipulatable as it can be easy to just make someone harm themselves and then lead to believe that this happens because of someone else or that they are not working hard enough.

Though, Julia isn’t all that manipulatable as she is aware of many things done by the Party that Winston is unaware of.  After all, as mentioned in the book, “in some ways, she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible to Party propaganda”(page 156).  This is shown as she discussed her theories based on her observations, such as how the Party’s purpose of dirtying the idea of sex is to make people mare sex deprived, which makes them more agitated, which they can then manipulated those emotions into war fever.  These kind of observations, despite how book-smart Winston is, would not be easily made unless a closer observation on both the Party was made as well as being intelligent in several different ways, like the street smarts Julia has.

Against your will.

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The party can change and modify the laws unreservedly as it needs. people never know whether they have carried out any crime, in this way nobody is brave enough to challenge the Party by any level, so fear is made.”Newspeak” is another law that is upheld to solidify the Party’s control. People utilize dialect to express their thoughts, by dispensing with words and supplanting enthusiastic words, for example, “astounding”, “awesome” and “phenomenal” by a solitary word “great” and its relative degrees “plusgood” and “plusplusgood”. Bunches of considerations are really restricted in light of the fact that they can’t be framed semantically in individuals’ brain. They can’t have their own particular basic considering, and just do what they are advised to do, they work similarly as PCs, which shockingly just have two words.

Winston needs to be the leader of his own thoughts, however the state is sufficiently capable to control even those. He needs the opportunity to trust that two in addition to two equivalents four, that the past is settled, and that affection is private.; However, Through its successful mental control strategies, the Party destroy all feelings of freedom and uniqueness. Everybody wears a similar clothes, eats a similar sustenance, and lives in the same grungy condos. Life is uniform and methodical. Nobody can emerge, and nobody can be remarkable. To have a free thought verges on the criminal.

the novel has a tragic ending. Every single good thing must arrive at an end. For Winston Smith, the hero of 1984 by George Orwell, that implies that his getaways with his darling Julia are ruined  that they are gotten by individuals from the Thought Police. Held for ceiminals to the state and its representation,  Winston and Julia are isolated and torturing. All things considered, the state requests total accommodation. To top it all off, his gathered contact to help him topple the state, O’Brien, is the person who is torturing.

 

Julia’s Role in the Novel

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The role of Julia is very complicated in the novel. Julia is not a true rebel as Winston thought she was at first, she is also not for the government/party either. Julia role is to fulfill her own desire and feel free but still, want the government control. Julia acts like a basic citizen of Oceania, but her impulses drive her to rebel.

Winston’s relationship with Julia begins to build more, their difference toward the party unravels. Both Winston and Julia rebel against the party (Big Brother), but their ideas and thoughts differ from each other. Winston’s thoughts on Julia ideas as, “accepting the party as something unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it”(134). It describes Julia as a person who thinks nothing can defeat Big Brother and just simply want to fulfill her desire, not caring about the party. On the other hand, Winston seems to want a rebellion, to experience a future when the party is not in control, wanting the life that was taken from him before the revolution. Julia and Winston show their rebellion by having the desire to be with each other whenever they have free time to do so. Julia wanted what she cannot get, she said “If you kept the small rules you could break the big ones”, she used the small rules and kept following them through so no one would suspect her of breaking any rule, which gave her a chance to break other rules(132).

Furthermore, Julia does not want to really rebel against the party and rather live her own life within the party. Winston asked Julia about rebelling against the party and Julia responded with, “I’m not interested in the next generation”, she does not care much about rebelling (159). Julia only cared about anything that is relevant to her and just break the rules of the party to fulfill her desire. Julia does not care about truth or lies as the narrator said, “the difference between truth and falsehood did not seem important to her” (157). Julia believes what she believes and don’t care about what the party spew out. Julia is conscious of the party, unlike the society which is brainwashed by fake or altered news by the party and the government of Oceania.

Throughout the beginning of the story, Winston, and Julia are very cautious when going about with their everyday lives. Winston even suspected Julia to be a spy, but when they meet they seem less cautious than before. Trying to meet whenever they can, they acted like real couples and not the one in which the party arranges the marriage. The narrator said: “They did not discuss the possibility of getting married. It was too remote to be worth thinking about” (134). Julia and Winston are in love with each other and did not care if they were married or not.

Overall, Julia does whatever she desire during her free time and follows the party’s rule whenever it is necessary. Julia is not really against the party, but she feels oppressed by the party, even saying that the party tries to steal away “pleasure”. Julia is in between, she is not a true rebel and dislikes the function of the government/party.

Breaking the Rules

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There is a long standing board game that has recently risen to popularity called Dungeons and Dragons. While the game has a long history and complexity, there is only one aspect that I want to focus on. The alignment system. The alignment system in the game works in a 3 by 3 grid forming 9 boxes that form a single larger box. At the top is good, the bottom is evil, the left is chaos and the right is lawful. From this you have 9 different character alignments. For the most part this system is hated by many players, and there are a number of misconceptions and other aspects that are unimportant to the point I am getting at. What is so important about this is the alignment of law and chaos. Many people believe that chaos is bad and is associated with evil. However, chaos isn’t someone becoming wild and beast like. Chaos also means choice and freedom. Even if you break the law, you chose to break the law and you have the freedom to do so. A world where you are expected to follow every law is a world not meant for humans. Of course with laws, there is security, safety and peace. But, where are your freedoms? Laws are used to discard some of your freedoms in exchange for these. And why do people break laws? Of course there are circumstances that make people desperate, but there are those who desire the freedom to choose and to be wild.

In the story Nineteen Eighty-Four Oceania is a country that enforces so many laws that no one has an ounce of freedom. The party has stripped all its citizens of its freedoms. Of course there is the problem that nobody will even think for themselves, but the party has been tampering with documents. Our story features Winston, a man who has taken note of the wrongs of the party and feels frustration towards them for it. At the beginning of the story he purchases a diary and writes in it in hopes of venting his frustration. Unfortunately for him, this only enhances his frustration. After some time, he encounters a woman named Julia. Some time after speaking to each other they have a sexual affair that the party despises so. When Winston asks Julia if she has done this before, she tells him that she has done it with countless other party members. It was then he knew about the party’s corruption. The story tells us how he felt about this at the top of page 128. “Perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing iniquity.” If there were countless men who slept with Julia than that means that he is not alone in his law breaking. Winston was overjoyed by this revelation and wanted to further his rebellious acts. He finds satisfaction in knowing that there are others who want to be free. He has found others who detest these laws and find glory and hope in freedom.

Reading Response Blog#7:1984

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In the text Nineteen Eighty-Four, the story continues off from Winston still living in the depressing conditions that the party and society still has to offer. He is than interacting with another character by the name of Julia and she is also another member of the party that they are both apart of. They both have and affair and make love and they do it in secret because that type of stuff is forbidden for certain reasons in Oceania. Also Winston has flashbacks of the last time he seen his mother and that he felt responsible for her death which shows that he is thinking on a human approach and trying to remember things in a difficult situation of living in the society he is apart of now.

Winston and Julia start to have a affair and have sexual exchanges in opportunities that they find when they can be able to. According to the book it says: “There were evenings when they reached their rendezvous and then had to walk past another without a sign, because a patrol had just come round the corner or a helicopter was hovering overhead.”(page, 131). This describes how the two of them had to keep their affair a secret and be stealthy about it so that they would not get caught and penalized for it. This means that both of these characters want to live their lives in a way where they don’t follow the unjust standards and rulings of the society that they are living in. What the two of them are doing shows that they are actually being more human because this symbolizes a kind of love between the characters. It shows that they don’t respect and they have a dislike of what is going on around them and they want to be different from that.

In the text there is also mention of something called “Hate Week”, in which it seems to be a kind of tradition in which the people would demonstrate their dislike and usually there are meetings and other workings that the ministry processes it for it and Winston works a lot on that as well. Also a man by the name of Syme vanished, which would mean that he got vaporized and his existence from the society is no more. According to the book it says: “It looked almost exactly as it had looked before-nothing had been crossed out-but it was one name shorter. It was enough. Syme had ceased to exist; he had never existed.”(page,151). This means that whenever someone in the party is getting rid of the existence of their lives and records would be erased like Syme being part of the Chess committee. It shows that the time and society that they are living in is unjust because they would get rid of records or evidence of the existence of another person which shows a type of corruption.

Later on when Winston was talking with O’Brien, he than gets a book from him and joins a brotherhood that is against the ideals of the party. Than afterwards he and Julia get captured. According to the book it says: “It occurred to Winston that for the first time in his life he was looking , with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police.”(page, 230). When Winston notices that it was the homeless man Mr.Charrington that helped aided in his capture to be one of the Thought Police, it shows that they were not safe from anyone or anything and they could not avoid Big Brother and the society even though they were careful about it. It also symbolizes that no matter the actions that they commit secretly that they were going to get caught regardless and that they are always watched, it’s just they don’t realize it.

It was a crazy turn of events that happened towards the end of this part of the book because it shows that the society has a way of finding out things in ways that many would least expect it. It will be interesting to find out what will happen to Winston and Julia.