1984: Post 9

At the end of book 2 Winston is captured by Mr. Charrington and now he is in the Ministry of Love. While he is being held there, he sees O'Brien and assumes they captured him as well. As it turns out O'Brien is an operative for the party and he set Winston up. O'Brien then oversees all of Winston's tortures. Winston is beaten by guards, given shock therapy, and was thrown in a solitary cell with no food or water. Winston was put through so much pain that it got to the point where he believed O'Brien was the good guy because he made the pain stop. In reality O'Brien commanded the guards to start torturing him but when he said for the guards to stop, Winston convinced himself that O'Brien hadn't started it. In the cells he was thrown in there were four telescreens set up, one on each wall. If he tried to move around or talk to the people in the other cells the telescreens would yell at him and make him stop whatever he was doing. The final method behind changing Winston was room 101. When the door opens, Winston sees cages upon cages of rats that make him terrified. O'Brien tells him that he will be thrown in with them if he doesn't talk. At that moment Winston breaks and would much rather have Julia take the blame over him. He betrays Julia and gives into the party. At the end of the book Winston is out of the ministry and he sees Julia walking down the street. They stop and talk to each other briefly simply to tell each other that they don't love each other and that they both betrayed the other one. In the end Big Brother and the party win by changing Winston's emotions and mind into what they wanted.

1984: Post 8

Emmanuel Goldstein's book that Winston received from O'Brien has all sorts of different information about the party's secrets and theories on how the party got to be the way it is. Winston is drawn to this book every chance he gets. When he and Julia are at the room in Mr. Charington's shop, Winston reads the book in order to learn more and to find answers to questions he never knew about. Goldstein's book talks about how there have always been three classes of people in any society. The high, middle, and lower classes of people are always around, despite the fact that in different societies, these three classes are treated differently. In this society the lower class is the proles. According to Goldstein's book the lower class is the class that will break down the ruling party. This gives Winston great hope that the proles will band together and overrun the party freeing everyone from their terrible controlling ways.

1984: Post 7

In Chapter eight Winston has an intensely real dream about when he was a young boy. Winston's childhood was spent moving from place to place just trying to stay alive with his family. Then when his father left with no return, his mother struggled to keep food coming in for her, Winston, and Winston's sister. Winston would go around outside with other boys and try to find food. They would find the occasional scraps of food but for the most part they were starving. One day Winston stole some chocolate from his sister and then ran away. When he went to go back, his mother and sister had already moved on leaving him behind. Throughout the book you can see that Winston is pretty screwed up in the head. He is horribly depressed due to the conditions of his life and the party's control but now we have been given another view of why he is in that depressed state. They say that people with family issues will have issues further on in their life. If this is the case, then it is justified that Winston has his problems.

1984: Post 6

At the end of chapter 6 it is said, "He knew sooner or later..." This is talking about Winston and O'Brien. Winston knew sooner or later he would go and talk to O'Brien or O'Brien would come and talk to him. Winston had a dream where O'Brien told him they would meet in the place with no darkness. Obviously this is foreshadowing the fact that O'Brien is going to teach Winston something and that O'Brien is apart of the brotherhood. (As you know I've already finished the book because I'm doing these blogs really late.) My opinion of O'Brien at this point of the book ignoring the end of the book is that he is a legitimate rebel and will try to help Winston and Julia. Granted I know now that at the end of the book he turns them both in and turns out to be a party operative.

1984: Post 5

Winston and Julia have a very weird relationship. They say that they love each other but if you really look at them, it is easy to see that they only love how defiant the other one is. Winston hates everything about the party and he wants to be a big rebel. Julia dislikes the party but is able to hide that very well. There is a scene where Winston gets really mad at Julia and claims she is a rebel only from the waist down. Part of me actually believes Winston when he says this because she has slept with several men and the only reason she is interested in Winston is because he is another man she can sleep with to defy the party. Despite some of the things Winston says to Julia, he still likes her a lot. I think the reason he loves her is because she is someone he can share his thoughts and feelings with. Also he will be able to get out some of his sexually repressed energy.

1984: Post 4

Winston defies the party by saying, "I hate purity, I hate goodness. I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere." Honestly though if you think about it, you'll see that the only reason Winston hates these things is because the party told him to love them. I get the feeling sometimes that Winston lets the party control him even if he is trying to defy them. In Brave New World there's a time when John talks to Mond about how he hates their society because they control people. Both John and Winston essentially have the same ideas behind these two speeches. They both hate that their society leaders are controlling the citizens of their worlds. In my opinion, I think John has more credibility than Winston. It seems as if John actually knows what he is talking about because he experienced another way of living before going to the World State. Winston has always been in Oceania and the only real connection to another way of life is his distant, distorted memories of his family before the Revolution.

1984: Post 3

In this book the party has many ways of controlling people. One of these ways is when they change the past. The party has programs in place filled with workers who's job is to erase and create people, change around news stories, and anything else to do with history. The point to changing around history for the party is so they seem completely right in what they do. The people who work for this organization create people in order to move around historical stories for the party to look good. In my opinion I think the party's idea of changing history is morally awful. It is horrible for them to create or destroy people just for the sake of saving their own butts. Then again a lot of things that the party does are morally bad. It would be really sad to live in this world and I actually feel really bad for the characters in this book despite the fact that they are in fact characters in a book.

1984: Post 2

In the world of 1984 it is illegal for people to write. Winston rebels against this by keeping a journal of his personal thoughts. The Party changed around history before the 1930s and took out anything that might make governments look bad. As a method of getting rid of all that history, they have to destroy all personal accounts or writings about those historical moments. I think this is the reason that writing is made illegal. If someone were to write, then future generations would have a link to the past, which The Party could change if they wish it to be. Another reason that writing is illegal is because writing is a way for the individual to express themselves. The party wants to control everything and everyone in the world and people expressing themselves goes completely against that. Syme's job of destroying language relates to Winston's inability to write in his journal because they are both being held back in their ability to express themselves. Syme has to destroy everyone's thoughts that have been written down, while Winston is restricted from writing his thoughts to begin with. There are many other ways that The Party and Big Brother restrict people's lives and I'm sure more will come up as the book goes on.

1984: Post 1

From the beginning of this book I am given a view of dark and depressing living conditions. There are signs all over the place of "Big Brother." There are posters with his picture on every wall and there are telescreens in every room that are used to watch the citizens of this world. It is obvious to gather from this that the government is ridiculously controlling and nothing goes on that they don't know about. The Party is what started all of this and are the people who control everyone. Everything from Big Brother to The Party to telescreens and posters point towards a power hungry government. It is one thing to be watched all the time and be forced to follow certain rules but it is something terribly worse when there aren't technically any rules to follow. The party never actually set down rules for people to follow, they can change the rules whenever they please and they can change what people are supposed to think all the time. If someone does something that they think is out of line, they can send the thought police or other groups to arrest the person. Actually, arrest is a nice word compared to what they do. The police will go to their house in the middle of the night, grab them, throw a bag over their head, and take them away to never be seen again. It is likely that the party thought the people couldn't have freedom in order for the society to succeed as a whole. For us to have an outside view, we can easily see that this is a recipe for disaster.

Is the World State really that bad?

In Huxley's novel we're given two completely different worlds and cultures. There is the World State and the Savage Reservation. Essentially the World State has everything good about our world and the Savage Reservation got everything bad. In the Savage Reservation the people are subject to disease, sickness, pregnancy, age, depression, the list goes on and on. However in the World State none of these things exist. People stay young forever and never get sick. If your contraceptives fail, there's no problem because you can go and get an abortion at one of the many clinics around the city. There is no chance of people feeling sad because they can just take Soma. Anything that someone in our world might find wrong or strange is taken care of by conditioning. When I read this book, I'm constantly picking things out that I find stupid or down right insane. Then I start to think about the fact that no one questions it because they have all been conditioned to be happy with the circumstances they have been dealt.
I really don't think the World State is bad because if you're there, then you're going to be happy. I would love to live in a world where I'm constantly happy. I know exactly how crazy and impossible that sounds but that's the world they live in and they're happy. I feel bad for John because he can't appreciate anything about the World State due to the fact that he hasn't had any conditioning.

Huxley's Visions

In Brave New World the people are born from bottles and there can be thousands of babies made at a time. There is a drug called Soma that makes you extremely happy without any side affects. People fly everywhere instead of driving. There is no such thing as families or love. It is meant to be this perfect world where everything is planned out ahead of time and nothing can go wrong. When you're first "born", you have to go through conditioning centers that teach you what to think and what to do throughout your life. There are different classes with different intelligence levels and importance.
To think that back in the 30's someone could have predicted people could be born out of bottles, or in our case, test tubes is crazy. Huxley had no way of knowing that people would one day be able to be born that way or that people could take certain drugs (like, prescription drugs) that give them happiness. I think those are the most realistic two out of all his futuristic predictions. Some children today are born out of test tubes and given to their mothers. Not to mention the fact that we have pharmaceutical breakthroughs all the time...I wouldn't be surprised if something like Soma came out at some point. The most insane prediction he made in my opinion is the extermination of families and literature.
I'm not gonna lie though, it's kind of frightening that this world doesn't seem all that out of reach.