Julia’s role in the novel has often been disputed. She is sometimes a rare glimmer of hope and happiness for the reader when everything else in the novel, including Winston himself, seems extremely gloomy. However, this happiness comes through different forms; her actions against the party (such as obtaining bread and real coffee by seducing inner party members) are enjoyed by the reader because she seems to have so much spirit and positivity. The way in which she acts can be interpreted as Orwell’s conscious decision to create a form of political heroine, to add some vigour and hope into the novel. Despite this, others state that Orwell has branded her a stereotypical sex object, to further denounce the regime created in the novel. It can be seen that Julia is experienced in the matter, as not only does she know how to get ‘real’ coffee and nice bread but she also knows several places where she and Winston can make love and many ways to get there. Her antics in the novel are positive, yet other instances are crude and vulgar, for example, through the use of sex George Orwell creates an awful image of Winston’s encounter with the old prostitute, unpleasant for Winston and us as he recalls the instances. Also, the way in which the writer describes Winston’s wife, her incredibly motionless way of ‘doing her duty for the party’, is also designed to make the reader feel uncomfortable, and he does this through the way Winston’s memories and dreams enter the page. Everything about the language is foul and tainted: ‘She threw herself down on the bed, and at once, without any kind of preliminary, in the most coarse, horrible way you can imagine, pulled up her skirt.’ Orwell consciously tries to scare the reader with these images in a very obvious way. The way he writes could very well reflect his personal life and his own attitude to sex. He had a very unhappy childhood and this may be the reason he writes in this way. I believe that Julia is used as a political heroine more than a sex object, because the reader enjoys her antics and the way she can manipulate, as it brings hope to the novel. However, the coarse way the prostitute is described is obviously an attempt at upsetting the reader, and he succeeds in doing this. Winston’s view on sex is corrupted by other characters around him. His aggressiveness towards women evolves from his wife’s stagnant attitude, and he feels dependent on Julia to satisfy his lust.
There are some definite similarities between Winston Smith and George Orwell himself. Orwell’s attitude to the world at the time he wrote the novel comes across in the unlikely hero, Winston. Like Orwell, Winston is dejected and horrified by the state of the world and how it may become. Orwell wrote the story as a political warning for the world because he believed the regime created in ‘1984’ could materialise sometime in the future. The agonising helplessness of Winston can be seen as Orwell’s feeling that no-one would take notice of his message. I believe that it is because the reader can see the utter vulnerability of Winston that people took notice of the book, and because we can now see how bad the situation could have been that we appreciate the seriousness of the issue addressed. In fact, at the time, due to the growing Communist threat, the book was highly regarded by many people as predicting the future. We now know that the world of Oceania, or something similar, is very unlikely to happen but we can appreciate that it could have happened at the time Orwell wrote. Personally, the book appears extremely grim but then we must remember that Winston and Orwell were campaigning to eliminate the threat of Communism and Totalitarianism, and Orwell presumed the extremities he goes to create fear within the reader was the only way to get people to notice his work.
It is not only through Winston that Orwell creates his message however, but also through descriptions of the terrible scenery and landscape surrounding him. He lives in a tired old block of flats in which the lifts do not work, all of the streets are dingy and badly lit at night and the only tranquil places are those off limits to party members, such as the wooded area where Julia and Winston first make love and the small room above Mr. Charrington’s shop. Again, it is a feeling of helplessness that Orwell commands so brilliantly that makes the world seem so bad. The way in which the Government lie to party members, saying they are making things better but things are getting worse for example, that creates such a bleak outlook. The reader cannot help but feel helpless reading the book when all around them is doom and gloom. It becomes again apparent that Orwell creates a pessimistic view in ‘1984’, but then it is important to bear in mind he does so as a warning for the world of what he believes will happen in the future.
O’Brien’s character has been designed by Orwell to evoke fear in Winston and the reader. A critic states ‘Winston’s catechetical sessions with O’Brien complete the…purpose of the book’. He argues here that without the viciousness of O’Brien then the book would fall short of creating the stark warning it set out to achieve. Winston looks up to O’Brien throughout the novel, despite his rough treatment. He is seen as intellectual yet brutal, and this is the view Orwell uses to warn his audience. This is not an idealistic view of the future, yet the novelist argues this is what is to happen if nothing is done to stop it. O’Brien is also argued to be the human incarnation of Big Brother himself; it s true to say that he possesses qualities of a dictator. He is strong willed and utterly ruthless. I believe that it is his power within society that makes O’Brien so scary for the reader, as we can see how power can be used for the wrong purposes.
From the outset, the ‘Thought Police’ are used to scare the reader and emphasise Orwell’s political warning. They evoke fear because they are brutal and seem heartless. Winston is terrified of the punishment he is about to receive in Rom 101; ‘A sort of premonitory terror, a fear of he was not certain what, had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse of the cage’, it is a fear of the unknown Orwell wants to create for Winston personally and for the reader on a larger scale, in terms of the type of system created allowing such brutality. Orwell appears extremely severe with his interpretation of the future, yet I believe not without reason. Society was still in a place when Orwell wrote, and indeed it is now with the terrorist situation, in which high punishment and torture may be needed to be put in place to extract information and even beliefs for political or financial gain. In the respect of punishment presented by Orwell, he is never excessively grim and pessimistic as this is still a realistic image of the future and the present he is describing.
Orwell had good reason to speculate that the world of Oceania may easily materialise, and he was acting not only on personal beliefs, but from history itself. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, less than half a century before he wrote the book, replaced a king (or Tsar) very much like our own monarch, with a Communist regime. This was due to overwhelming unhappiness in the country, and Orwell believed that after World War II, there would be discontent in Great Britain at much the same level. Another example, the cause of the Second World War itself, is Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany, which is extremely similar to Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ regime, with no freedom of press or speech, and with mass propaganda, just like in Orwell’s novel. History has shown us that George Orwell’s world can and has materialised on more than one occasion in the recent past, thus backing up the novelist’s reasons for describing the pessimistic world as he does. I personally believe that if the political and cultural situation in our country had become as dire as it had at the end of World War II then a similar regime to the one described by Orwell could have occurred. It may have been thanks to Orwell that we didn’t let that happen as he has created a frank warning for us to adhere to. However, with the strong democratic history and conservative dominance that our country had had around that time, the situation was extremely unlikely and would have required dire circumstances to happen.
It is also important to remember that even in these regimes there was never the level of control that George Orwell describes in his dystopia. It may always be impossible (and is now at any rate) to control the thoughts and emotions of the individual. Also, all attempts at power close to that expressed in ‘1984’ have eventually failed. The Roman Empire, one of the greatest civilizations ever to exist, could not last due to over expansion, and the greed of the Nazis and their global pursuits led to their downfall. Orwell does not include the aspect of failure in the novel, and perhaps loses some influence by creating this level of control that has never been managed in the past, and may never happen. The amount of control created by the system is unrealistic in places and Orwell’s political warning suffers due to his ‘fantastical’ regime. This is backed up by the fact that even in today’s society measures such as telescreens watching everyone in their homes has not happened, showing Orwell’s views to extremely pessimistic, and possibly overly so.
A critic argues ‘We are carried along by the depiction of the nightmarish world of 1984 by our personal belief in Winston’s thoughts and feelings; if he seems real then the world also seems real’. It is true to say Winston is a ‘hero’ many readers can identify with and believe in. It is because of this fact Orwell can be so successful in creating an unlikely yet believable world in which power and violence prevail. The world described is so unlike our own in terms of government and living standards but the reader can still identify the problems Winston finds himself in. We empathise with Winston throughout his encounters with O’Brien and the thought police, and in that respect Orwell is successful in putting his message across. However it is also clear, like in all of Orwell’s novels, that Winston is an unsatisfactory hero who does not express signs of his own power or knowledge, but relies on others such as O’Brien and Julia to guide him through his life.
Orwell creates an extremely grim and pessimistic view of the future in ‘1984’, and uses his personal views and plays on strong nationalistic fears such as Communism and the devastation of war to create his political warning. Recent events such as the Nazi threat and World War 2 are included in the book and he uses the bleakness of the times to get his message across. The way in which Winston and other characters in the book are constantly referred to as powerless and their eventual death creates an onslaught of pessimism from Orwell; the Party and its surroundings are consistently grim and relationships and love do not prevail; this is realism in its most disillusioned form. I believe that despite the harsh surroundings and grimness, it is not overly so. This is due to the fact that Orwell tries to create a political warning for the world that he believes to be a realistic situation in the future, and to an extent he succeeds. The world has seen televisions in every household and ongoing war and dictators’ attempts at continental domination in every year since the book was written. It is because of Orwell’s selfless intentions in the book that he succeeds in making a pessimistic yet possible view for the future.
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