1984 October MOR
So... 1984. I've really been... enjoying? Is that really a word that can be applied to a dystopian novel? Whatever. I've been enjoying the novel. I've finished the first "book", in which we are introduced to Winston Smith, our protagonist, and the world of 1984: divided into 3 megacountries, the world is in a constant state of war. Oceania, the country our story is set in, is ruled by The Party, headed by Big Brother and kept in a constant state of poverty and total government control. Winston Smith is a low-level official of the party, responsible for editing speeches and newspaper articles to retroactively make them fit the narrative of the all-powerful Party.
I find it interesting that The Party seems to want people to believe in absolute truth, while it believes that truth is mutable. It's an interesting conflict between absolute truth and subjective truth and a really interesting instance of doublethink.
I'll be honest; I already know where the plot is headed. Months before ever deciding to read 1984, I had watched the video linked in my previous blog post which exposits the interesting, suspenseful, but ultimately bleak and sad plot. Nevertheless, actually reading 1984 has been very interesting. The imagery and the way that things are hinted at are just so compelling! The Two Minutes Hate and the Thought Police, alongside Newspeak, the Ministry of Truth and the ever-present telescreen show the true depth of The Party's control, all without the audience ever being outright told "this is a world controlled by a massively powerful government that controls every aspect of its citizens' lives" and it's honestly a great use of "show, don't tell" (although I suppose it is still technically telling the reader about these things, just not about the overall picture). Winston is in a unique position as a retroactive propagandist to reveal the inconsistencies of the party and the bleak grayness of the world to the reader. Only someone who is hopelessly naive or dangerously totalitarian could read the first part of this book and be at all satisfied with the state of the world and the Party that controls it.
So I've got several questions for you, Macy, and I'll give my own responses to some of them (because I always have to interject myself, of course) You don't need to respond to all of them, but I find them interesting points of discussion.
1) What is the purpose behind the slogan of The Party? ("WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH") What is the reason for having it in the beginning and the end of the section? What is that repetition supposed to do?
2) Do you think that Emmanuel Goldstein exists? Personally, I think he's just a created scapegoat to provide a face the people can be angry at. To those loyal to The Party, he's a figure to heap revulsion on; to those looking for something beyond the narrow, dull world of Airstrip One he's a false hope designed to catch people out. Also, is there any significance to his name? I'm not sure myself. Emmanuel, meaning "God with us", and Goldstein, a name closely resembling stereotypical Jewish last names. It sounds to me like his name (which I'm certain is fake and chosen by The Party) is meant to subconsciously heap scorn upon religion and religious iconography while also drawing on half-remembered racial tensions to make the people easier to control.
3) Why is Winston so fixated on sex? Why is sex his personal rebellion against The Party?
4) What do you make of the phrase, "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows"? How does that interact with the idea of absolute truth? I find it interesting that The Party seems to want people to believe in absolute truth, while it believes that truth is mutable. It's an interesting conflict between absolute truth and subjective truth and a really interesting instance of doublethink.
This book is a page-turner for me and I've found I really enjoy reading it. I'm thankful to be in a class that encourages us to read novels such as this that force us to think deeply. Let's see if I can address all of your questions.
ReplyDelete1.) I don't entirely understand what you mean by these phrases being at the beginning and end of the section. They are consistently repeated throughout the book to impress upon the reader the concept of doublethink in The Party. Doublethink essentially teaches Party members to hold two conflicting ideas as dual-truths. They literally exchange truth for lies. In Goldstein's book, he sums it up, "The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture, and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely. In no other way could the ancient cycle be broken. If human equality is to be forever averted-- if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently-- then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity" (Orwell 216). Essentially, truth is hardly a word that can be used in a society of literally insane individuals. Truth is whatever The Party says it is. That leads into my question: How is Winston able to discern what actual truth is when everyone else in his life disagrees with him? What makes Winston special?
That's a fair point about the contradictory statements showing up everywhere; I just thought that there was a certain parallelism between the intro to part 1 and the end of part one, and wanted your take on possible meaning. Also the very concept of doublethink is interesting; "The Book" pontificates on doublespeak, musing that "Even by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth" (Orwell 167). You could spend days examining the philosophical and psychological implications of doublethink, but that's off topic. I don't think that there's anything super special about Winston except for his position as someone responsible for 'fixing" history. Or rather, there's nothing special about him from our perspective. He's special in that he holds convictions and he remembers his past. He doesn't believe in the ideas of The Party and Big Brother because he still believes in objective truth and immutable past. That's nothing special by our standards, but under The Party, those are rare and dangerous. He possesses convictions and beliefs about objective reality and he has been granted a position within The Party that allows him to maintain and find evidence for those convictions. My question is: what does The Party, the innermost parts of the Inner Party, the true rulers of Oceania (and in turn the rulers of the other nigh-identical countries), get out of their hegemony? What does their control grant them? Is it just about the life of leisure? Do they simply enjoy moving people's lives around like pieces on a game-board? What does that have to say about people who seek power in our own world?
DeleteAlternatively what parallels do you see between the world of 1984 and our own?
Personally, I see the constant surveillance and the military-economy as the strongest parallels. We are constantly watched by our government and by corporations. Our economy is powered by the massive military that our government maintains and that money could be put to other uses if the government cut back.
2.) At first, I definitely would've agreed that Goldstein is totally made up by the party but now that I've reached the part of the book where O'Brien reveals to Winston that the Brotherhood exists and is headed by Goldstein, it seems more probable that he does, in fact, exist. However, due to the nature of The Party, certainty on this matter is out of reach. For Winston, it doesn't seem to be of great importance whether Goldstein actually exists or not. The only thing that matters to him is that he now knows he is not alone in his rebellion against The Party. Winston's main desire throughout the novel is simply to know he is not alone. When O'Brien finally lets Winston in on the secret of the Brotherhood, Winston initially asks, "'Then there is such a person as Immanuel Goldstein?' he said. 'Yes, there is such a person, and he is alive. Where, I do not know'" (Orwell 171). O'Brien and the Brotherhood seem to earnestly believe in the existence of Goldstein and are willing to do anything in his name. Goldstein is the faraway god that may or may not exist but his influence is , nevertheless, as powerful as if he were standing in the very room of his followers. I argue that his existence doesn't matter as much as it's effect, but then I'm starting to sound like a member of The part, aren't I?
ReplyDeleteO'Brien SEEMS to believe in Goldstein. We can't be sure whether The Brotherhood exists because Winston is never introduced to other members of The Brotherhood. Also "The Brotherhood" is a really generic "uprising name" that doesn't sound like something a real insurgency would use. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And to be honest, I don't really trust O'Brien. It might just be the paranoia of the setting getting to me, or my natural tendency to see ulterior motives in the so-called liberators, but something about him leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I just can't trust him in his open willingness to bring Winston into the fold. There are simultaneously too many and too few measures to protect The Brotherhood from discovery, and they very conveniently look to leave Winston a small number of people to look to within the so-called "Brotherhood". I think the whole thing is a Thought Police ploy to catch people like Winston who are starting to escape the control of Big Brother. It's like a theory I've seen about The Matrix, which says that the world that supposedly exists "outside" the Matrix isn't actually reality, but rather another layer of the Matrix designed to catch the people who might otherwise be problematic to the system. The whole Brotherhood seems really sketchy to me, although I agree with the idea that the only possible liberation lies with the Proles. Also I would add that O'Brien's servant makes the whole "Brotherhood" even sketchier. His demeanor is stiff and wooden throughout the encounter and it doesn't add any more credibility to the idea of The Brotherhood. I swear that if O'Brien is a traitor imma lose my mind. Then again, that would make sense with the paranoia created by the setting.
DeleteAnyway, do you think that there's anything symbolic about the delivery of The Book? Delivery by briefcase? Also what other things about the story make you suspicious about where things are going? Am I just paranoid, or is Winston too easily taken in by deception?
To respond to your third question in your first post about Winston's fixation on sex, I think that his sexuality is a very big part of his existence. This is true for many people and especially true for someone who is forced to repress all his natural desires in every regard of his life because he is constantly being watched. Sex, it seems, is all he has to rebel with that The Party can't necessarily control or cares to control. Winston views sexual freedom as a force that has the potential to destroy The Party. The Party directs sexual frustration into violent patriotism, leader-worship, and war fever. To fight against this redirection is to fight against The Party. After having sex with Julia, Winston reflects that, "No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act." Desire has the power to destroy the Party and that is precisely why they are attempting to stamp it out. When one loves another more than Big Brother, they are the dead.
ReplyDeleteResponding to your question about whether Winston is too easily deceived I have to give a resounding agreement. He's just so desperate to know he isn't insane that he's willing to risk everything to follow his instinct about O'Brien. That backfires on him big time (you'll read about that soon enough)! Winston ought have realized something was up when O'Brien turned 'off' the telescreen. There is zero chance that turning it off would have been a privilege granted to anyone.
ReplyDeleteAs for your question about why the Party wants power and what do they gain from it, I must answer that I don't believe they gain anything. They are just as insane and thoroughly convinced of all the lies just as much as an Outer Party member. They believe in doublethink with every fiber of their body. This is supported by an occurrence at a speech of a prominent Inner Party member. He was talking about Oceania being at war with one nation and then received a note half way through that they were, in fact, at war with the other nation and some terrible joke had been played upon whoever set up the wrong decorations. This party member was completely convinced in the truth that Oceania was at war with one nation and had always been at war with that nation. O'Brien explains this principle to Winston, "You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the discipled mind can see reality... reality exists in the human mind and no where else" (Orwell 249). O'Brien, an inner party member, is completely convinced of the truth of this statement. he believes it so deeply that he doesn't hesitate to torture those that defy his belief. The Party is insane and that is the only reason they remain in control. They have nothing to gain, in my opinion, because they have already lost everything by believing that truth is not truth and two plus two doesn't necessarily make four.
Ok, so I'm not the only one convinced of the futility of the Inner Party's quest for power is futile. That's good to know. What does that say about power in our world? Does it have any real value either? It seems to me that no power has any value. It seems that 1984 is commenting on the honest futility of all pursuits in a relativistic world. When the past has ceased to have value and objective reality has been destroyed, none of human pursuits have any meaning. When people can be made to deny their very being, nothing they do matters. It also refutes the idea of massive overreaching surveillance on behalf of a totalitarian regime. It elucidates the dangers of a massive, totalitarian government. At some point the purpose of the government is forgotten and it begins to exist only for its own perpetuation. It only exists for the oppression of it's victims. I also find that most of the criticism of Big Brother and The Party comes from a book given to Winston by O'Brien, who is shown to be an agent of the Thought Police in Room 101. Does The Book actually share the true nature of the Inner Party or does it try to obfuscate it and hide it? Does the Inner Party believe this or do they hide it from themselves with doublethink?
ReplyDeleteJJ and Macy, what a wild ride! While it often makes a little more sense (as a complete document) to have entries actually flow from one another, all of your individual analyses do effectively illuminate aspects of meaning in the text (even if I got a little whiplash racing ahead with JJ and then backing up as Macy delved into another intense question). Both of you have the "vivid writing" capability that's on the AP rubric. In future, please remember each individual entry is required to have at least one quote and that somewhere in the MOR you should deal with the ending of the book, especially as it relates to the MOWAW's you've been building. Thanks! Grade on Portals.
ReplyDelete(Also, at least 300 words per entry, though I know some of yours are longer--thanks.)
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