Where Is The Golden Country?

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Where Is The Golden Country?

        It is impossible for both nature and technology to coexist in the world of human society presented in George Orwell’s 1984.  The use and advancements of technology annihilate the presence of nature.  Nature symbolizes freedom, in particular, the freedom to have individual thought and human emotions such as love, pity, and loyalty.  Technology symbolizes power, which is the power over the public’s mind gained by the government (the Party).  With such technology, the Party has ultimate power and is invincible, for if they control the people’s minds, they control the people.  Nature and thus freedom cannot play a role in such a society when the government uses technology to take the freedom away from the people.

        The “Golden Country”, which is the embodiment of all that is natural, was the world at a time where humanity, free thought, and pure freedom existed.  It is the world that Winston remembers before the Revolution.  When in the presence of nature, Winston is able to reminisce of those older times.

“Isn’t there a stream somewhere near here?” he whispered.

“That’s right there is a stream.  It’s at the edge of the next field, actually…”

“It’s the Golden Country—almost,” he murmured. (p. 109)

Such memories are triggered by the nature imagery and acts of rebelling or doing thoughtcrime through feeling human emotions.  Winston has this faint memory of that Golden Country as he and Julia talk and look at the country landscape after sharing feelings of tenderness and making love.  This moment is important to show how constraining and rigid the present time is and that the power of the Party is so influential that it can block out such memories of the past.  It also gives Winston hope for the future, that just maybe they could bring that era back through these rebellions.  He also has dreams of this beautiful country of freedom to further imply his continuing optimism that it will one day return in the future.  “He was in the Golden Country,…with his mother, with Julia, with O’Brien—not doing anything, merely sitting in the sun, talking of peaceful things.”(p. 245)  Winston has several similar dreams of the Golden Country, usually including family members or loved ones, as he continues his hopeful belief that one day they would overthrow the Party, that nature will prevail in the end.

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        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 ...

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