The great contrast of imagery, natural versus unnatural, used in the book when talking about freedom/Golden Country and the Party/technology illustrates how they cannot coexist. Both nature and things that go against nature cannot be present at the same time without conflicting and one must dominate over the other. As opposed to the “green pools under the willows” or “gentle sunshine” (p. 250), Orwell connects the Party with very unnatural “gritty dust” and “strong [manmade] light” (p. 245). Everything, except for the uninhabited country-sides, in Oceania is covered with this dust and there’s “grime in every crack” (p. 52). It’s even found in the cracks of people’s skin and “in the creases of [their] face[s]” (p. 54). Just like the overpowering presence of Party, the dust is inescapable. No matter where you go it is always there. “Big Brother is watching you” (p. 2); he is always watching and his gaze, whether it’s through telescreens, posters, or mikes, is impossible to hide from. The absence of sunlight and constant presence of artificial light in the windowless Ministry of Love also greatly contrasts nature. The sunlight is “gentle” and the artificial light is “strong”. Technology is implied to be much stronger than nature, thus can overpower it. The Party has the strength to annihilate nature completely. The Golden Country is a very colorful, warm dreamland, whereas the Party’s Oceania is a gray, wickedly cold reality.
The Party has two main ways of using technology to gain their power and rid the world of freedom. They use the telescreens to prevent people from having private thoughts. The telescreen watches and listens to the people all the time and keeps them from acting or talking freely for if they are caught, they are vaporized. It also makes individual thought difficult. It is constantly blaring out music or news briefs. This not only stops free thought, but also brainwashes the people. It implants thoughts into their heads through the constant rambling of Party ideas and propaganda. The other technological technique is the torture and mind reading/altering machines. This is the most powerful technology that is used as the last resort to control people’s minds. It uses methods of pain and electric shock to break down a persons defenses until they will happily accept all that the Party tells them, and become mindless machines. This method is the sure-fire way to take away someone’s freedom. NO ONE can resist giving in to it. “In the face of pain there are no heroes” (p. 213). The torture and instruments the Party uses on the thought criminals in Room 101 kills the human spirit. “There were things…from which you could not recover. Something was killed in your breast; burnt out, cauterized out.” (p. 259) The people released from the Ministry of Love are broken souls with minds empty of real thought (crimestop). The Party “could get inside you” and vaporize your memories, implant false thoughts. Winston had so valiantly fought that two plus two equaled four and not five before going to Room 101, but afterwards, “almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the table: 2 + 2 = 5”. (p. 259)
It is impossible for nature (freedom) to exist in the world of humans because technology power over nature is so much stronger and demolishes it. The only place that it can exist is in the world of animals and proles. They are the only ones that were always and forever will be free. “The birds sang, the proles sang, the Party did not sing.”(p. 196) Winston later realizes this and looks upon both the singing bird and the fat prole woman with a kind of envy. The bird “swelled its speckled breast and again burst into song. Winston watched it with a sort of vague reverence.” (p. 109-110) He feels this same “mystical reverence”(p. 195) for the prole woman. After so many years of looking down on the proles, he sees that they have the most valuable possession he lacks. They have freedom. The proles go through much hardship because they lack certain vanities the Party has, but they are the only ones who are happy to the end.
…she had only strong arms, a warm heart, and a fertile belly….She had had her momentary flowering, a year, perhaps, of wildrose beauty, and then she had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red and coarse, and then her life had been laundering, scrubbing, darning, cooking, sweeping, polishing, mending, scrubbing, laundering, first for children, then for grandchildren, over thirty unbroken years. At the end of it she was still singing. (p. 195)
The prole woman is “an overripe turnip”(p. 195). She is weathered by many years of hard labor and child raising, but through it all she is still singing. The proles are a part of nature and are content with their lives of freedom, to have children, human emotion, and individual thought. Winston sees that they are the “future”(p. 196) and all those like him were the slaves under the control of “the priests of power”(p. 235). They are no longer a part of nature, and lost all that was associated with it. They would not survive. “Out of their bodies no child would ever come. That was the one thing they could never do.” They could never be a part of the future. They “were the dead”. (p. 196) Sadly for Winston, neither he nor the future will ever see the Golden Country again. The Party’s technology makes their power too strong and the revolution marked the end of nature, the end of freedom. “Presently they were in among a clump of ragged leafless shrubs, useless either for concealment or as protection from the wind. They halted. It was vilely cold.” (p. 260) The Golden Country can only be a part of his drifting, blurry thoughts.