1984
Throughout the entirety of the story, Winston actually develops into a
character with emotional feelings despite the totalitarian government
and dystopian society which frown upon such things. Winston eventually
falls in love with Julia under odd circumstances.But after being
tortured for being a traitor of the party, Winston betrays his only
"true love" to the party and is brain washed to forget all his feelings
for her. What do you think possibly motivated Winston to betray Julia
other than the fact that he was tortured? Was if for his own sake? Why
do you think Winston could suddenly remove all his feeling of emotion
and would you consider that a normal human quality?
The thought police's torture was really the main thing that pushed Winston. Before he was tortured, he was told there were three stages to his re-integration with big brother: learning, understanding, and acceptance. Winston actually stood his ground until the last stage, where he gave Julia up. So yes, he gave her up partially for his own sake, but by the end of his torture, the Party had successfully re-integrated him and Winston loved Big Brother and was a devout to the party. The reason he lost emotion was because the party had taken over his mind and reinstalled complete loyalty to big brother. Winston was broken down and forced to love big brother. O’Brien told Winston, that execution is not the punishment for betrayal of big brother, and the simple reasoning to that is the party cannot allow someone to die without loving big brother, because then they would die as a free rebel, not a slave lover of big brother. If Winton was killed before he was tortured and taught to love big brother over anything else, which in this case is Julia to him, he could be seen as a martyr that died rebelling against big brother and the party. There was nothing human about him losing emotion, the party forced him into loving big brother and eventually his mind broke and accepted. At one point, Winston said that the power of the party and its ability to reach into the past and change everything was more fearsome than death itself. So forcing the love of big brother onto Winston was really only a small feat.
ReplyDeleteI think that throughout the book Winston came off as a little paranoid. Examples of this are when he writes "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER" (Orwell) and immediately thinks the thought police will catch him and he will be arrested for his crime. After this Winston takes unnecessary risks that end up increasing his chance of being caught. Such as trusting O’Brien and renting the room above Mr. Charrington’s shop. Later in the story he even admits this fact while imprisoned. Also due to his fatalistic attitude he cannot see a long lasting relationship with Julia even though they seem so much in love and because of all that combined. He is afraid that he will never find out who he truly is and feels that if he just gets brainwashed by big brother people would accept him. Overall I think he wanted to save Julia but the threat of the rats pushed him over the top. If you normally threaten someone with their greatest fear they will be almost forced to agree, Winston has musophobia (fear or mice or rats). If you were subjected to torture like Winston, I think a normal human being would want to remove all feeling of emotion. I think he did it for himself, while not thinking about others because he just wanted the torture to end. Although he was pressured to that conclusion, he would never be able to escape if he disagreed further and the rats would eat his face off.
ReplyDelete1984 explores in depth the relation between physical control and mental control. Orwell is quick to establish the fact that physical control is powerful within the context of the first few hundred pages. He shows families torn apart by parents being dragged off for torture, men disappearing in the night to be whipped, and the ever mysterious Room 101. ““As he mechanically shot his arms back and forth, wearing on his face the look of grim enjoyment which was considered proper during the Physical Jerks” (Orwell, 24). The Party forces people to participate in Physical Jerks, maybe the most obvious example of the government controlling their people physically. They’re not only forced to move their bodies in pointless routine but to fake enjoyment too. However, once Winston himself is dragged into the torture room, it becomes clear to the reader that physical control isn’t the only thing the government wields over its subjects; it’s mental control too. With every bruise landed, psychological manipulation weasels its way into the equation too, eventually warping Winston’s thoughts to the point where he cannot even do simple math correctly, instead agreeing with O’Brien’s “2+2=5” concept. So this leads me to believe that while the torture did factor into the reason as to why Winston betrayed Julia, there was something bigger at work: psychological manipulation. He grew to associate her with pain, shifting the blame from O’Brien to her. I think the fact that Winston could suddenly remove all his feelings of emotion wasn’t surprising; in the beginning of the book, before their twisted affair, he rarely showed emotion at all. It’s especially reflected in the sentence structure, his sparsely decorated sentences, emotionless narration, and detached sense of self. So while I don’t think it’s a normal human quality for somebody who lives in 2014, I think maybe it’s a normal human quality for somebody who lives in 1984; it was how he was raised and how he lived, and he just happened to revert back to his previous viewpoint.
ReplyDeleteWinston betraying Julia does not come as a surprise which is what all of you are essentially saying and I wholly agree with this. It was the cruel manipulation by O'Brien and the government which caused his betrayal. But like Emily was saying, manipulation went far beyond physical but also psychological. Since in the beginning Winston was subjected to manipulation and control, something he himself knew first hand since he worked as a Party member. But giving up total emotion for big brother was like Josh said “nothing human about it” just proves how much control big brother had. On the physical side the threat of rats was too much to bear for Winston. Infamous Heckling has a good point saying that the threat of your worst nightmare could push anyone over the edge. The various types of manipulations were just too much for Winston to take and he cracked under pressure. His love for Julia in my opinion was mostly formed by lust so perhaps his emotional attachment to her was never that strong to begin with.
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