To answer the research question: How and why George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-four used Winston’s memory as the drive for his hatred against the authority?, a thorough textual research on the text itself will be conducted to find the link between Winston’s memory and his hatred towards the Party. Next, the effect of memory on his hatred and also comparison with other motives that can also be used to create hatred will be discussed to find out why Orwell uses memory as the main drive of Winston’s hatred. A range of secondary source will also be referenced to evaluate parallel or contrasting treatment of the research question. Hopefully, with this combination of method I can reach a valid and reasonable answer for the research question.
Winston’s memory is based on his reasoned logic and strong emotion. When the Party started their regime in Winston’s early life, he had suffered pain ever since, both physically and emotionally. People of Oceania suffered from poverty as well as Winston himself. But the thing that magnifies Winston’s hatred towards the Party is his emotional damage due to the Party and all its verdicts. In one part of the novel, Winston recalls having sex with an old prostitute who “had no teeth at all” (Orwell, 2008, p. 72). He also added that “When I saw her in the light she was quite an old woman, fifty years old at least. But I went ahead and did just the same.” (Orwell, 2008, p. 72). This recollection of his memory actually shows the sexual repression executed by the Party on its members that actually inflict a deep pain on Winston who is actually a man that seeks desire and affection from another woman. Desperate was his sexual needs that he continued though realizing that the old woman was toothless and was over fifty years old. He could even end up in five years of forced labor camp if he was to be caught with a prostitute. Winston tells us that he was married once to a woman name Katharine which he later parted with, as the Party does not allow divorce. The marriage was approved by the Party with a strict purpose of procreating. His ex-wife, being a devoted Party member has no response to Winston’s intimacy towards her and replied with “shut eyes, neither resisting nor co-operating, but submitting.” (Orwell, 2008, p. 70) This had embarrassed Winston severely and later made him felt so horrible of the memory embed in his heart. Such was the severity of the Party’s control over its citizen rooted on the fact that all energy must not be wasted on else other than Big Brother and the Party. Other evidence of how Winston’s memory had created pain that had contributed the reason for his hatred of the Party is the event when Winston had actually find the evidence to prove innocence of three Party figures which was later executed for the crime that they did not commit. A few years later, Winston held in his hands a newspaper showing the photos of the three at a function in NewYork at exactly the same date that they had confessed their betrayal to the Party. Their confession had to be false. However, giving in to his fear of the Party’s treatment to such people in such cases, he burned the paper in the Memory Hole. This experience means intensely to Winston as it marks his submission to the Party and he can only see himself as hopeless in the face of the Party even when a concrete evidence about its flaws are present. The photograph “was enough to blow the Party to atoms, if in some way it could have been published to the world and its significance made known” (Orwell, 2008, p. 82). However, even if Winston had kept the paper like what he imagined he would do if he was to found it in recent time, he might just be regarded as a mad being to the Party and its devotees because the party is always right. The fact that there is no way to turn down the Party to the extent that he had doubted his own sanity made him furious.
Winston’s memory of his family was no different from his other memory that he had with the Party being on governance. During the interim period of the Revolution, civil war had forced his family into poverty and later fills Winston with regret of his mother’s and sister’s death. When he was a child, he was stole the chocolate supposedly his sister’s out of pure selfishness. He believes that his mother and sister had died for him to which could never happen during his time. “Today there were fear, hatred and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows.” (Orwell, 2008, p. 32) For his mother’s love was personal for him and her children, he feels that it can never happen in current Oceania where the subject of love and affection is only exclusive to Big Brother. Winston is a lonely man, being brought up in an orphanage to be a Party member. He yearns for love and mutual kindness, even thinking how lucky proles are when it comes to having the liberty to love other human being. He finally acquires what he longs for when he met Julia who loved him avidly.
Winston’s dreams constitutes a major part of his memory, perhaps because he is unable to have any substantial event occurring in his everyday life for as a matter a fact, Winston is just an everyman, differing from everybody around him only by his sheer ability to think independently. Another possible explanation is that he despises the Party so much that he chooses not to remember anything that happens in his dull and uninteresting life under the Party’s watch. Therefore it suits the context to discuss his dreams as the modus of how his memory is put to use by Orwell to fuel his rage upon the governing Party. Winston had several dreams throughout the story and also amassed from his flashbacks. For instance, his dream of hearing O’Brien’s voice telling him that they “shall meet in the place where there is no darkness” (Orwell, 2008, p. 27) actually made him believe that the place with no darkness refers to the period when the Party has fallen in the hands of the Brotherhood. He concentrates too much on believing that the prophecy in his dream will turn out to be true which was later revealed to be false. The place of no darkness is actually the Ministry of Love or Miniluv where the light was never turned off. His inclination to put his trust in O’Brien had brought damnation to himself, though it was not actually a surprise to him since he, before the arrest have been holding to a fatalistic view of himself. The peak of Winston’s hatred was in the torture room with O’Brien when the latter, whom he altruistically regard as the only person who understands him breaks his every resolve and question about the Party. The Party, as how it appears from O’Brien’s explanation to be infallible because “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.” (Orwell, 2008, p. 275) In this part of the story, Winston’s memory had not only creates and maintains hatred towards the Party but also backfire Winston himself.
Another considerable dream that Orwell had used to channel Winston’s hatred is the latter’s dream of intimacy with Julia, who at this point only described as “the girl with dark hair”. As his other dreams, this one is not exceptional from being prophetic in nature, in fact so accurate that he in reality made love with Julia for the first time in later part of the story at exactly the same place that appeared in his dream of which he named the “Golden Coutry”. His hatred towards the Party was also expressed through the lines that describe Julia’s gestures while removing her clothes. “With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm.” Such description illustrates how the act of intimacy may kill the Party because it was a rebellion towards the Party’s principle. Julia’s movement (which later becomes true) symbolizes that if any insult could be done to the system, it is the rebel by independent expression of sexual act. Also, before it is known to him that the dream would come true, Winston thought it is impossible for him to have Julia. He even develops a disliking towards Julia and the Party of her youthfulness and attraction which he can never attain due to the sex suppression imposed by the party. Orwell had shown a comparison on how Winston’s dream as his memory had resulted in two different consequences, one is his dream misinterpreted and led to his arrest and the other is his dream initially made him hate the party for not able to have Julia but later led him to a happy contrary.
Now that the question of HOW Orwell made the reader convinced that Winston’s memory has caused his hatred of the authority has been addressed, an analysis of WHY he used it instead of other elements will be explored. Orwell had given Winston the characteristics of an independent thinker. What actually made Winston grow a different set of reasoning skills from the rest of the party member? It is actually Winston’s strong and reliability to remember. While other citizens around him find it difficult to grasp independent though because the Party’s propaganda are spewing from the telescreen all the time, Winston finds it secure to hold on to what he remembers, his memory to barricade himself from being infatuated with the Party’s doctrine. The evidence is shown when Winston vividly Julia’s direction of their first meeting’s secret place. Though Julia explained to him “With a sort of military precision that astonished him,” (Orwell, 2008, p. 121)he was able to remember it instantaneously and answered yes twice to Julia’s confirmation. His elaborate skill of remembering proves useful as a spur to hate the Party as one can easily forgot or gets carried away by what everyone else is doing as what Winston describe as “an instinctive reaction” (Orwell, 2008, p. 19). In the novel, it was also shown that Winston had such a good memory that he finds it hard to excrete atrocious memories of his childhood from his mind. Even when he was sleeping with Julia, he woke up from a nightmare of his memory with his family. “’I dreamt---‘ he began, and stopped short.It was too complex to be put into words. There was the dream itself, and there was a memory connected with it that had swum into his mind in the few seconds after waking.” (Orwell, 2008, p. 167) This was then followed by him re-telling the story of his life in detail account. He remembers even the feeling that he had during that period of time. He implicitly blames the Party for the poverty that it causes during the civil war, making him selfish and guilty of his mother’s death. Though Winston was blessed with good memories, it brought him problem of not able to eliminate the painful memories that he had, fueling his rage for the Party. Nevertheless, his remarkable memory directs his anger towards the Party though in different ways. Winston was very confident of his ability to memorize and to recall back that when O’Brien, through psychological manipulation, refers to Winston’s memory as a false, it shattered his determination terribly. “You preferred to be lunatic, a minority one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston.” (Orwell, 2008, p. 261) By this line, O’Brien claimed that Winston has not seen the reality because he did not submit to the Party, which is the price for sanity. (Orwell, 2008, p. 261)
Winston also developed a curiosity for memories of the Past when he realize that the past can be the tool to attack the current Party as it can be comparable to the Party’s system. The past can expose a myriad of different possibilities, as how the Party slogan indicates, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” (Orwell, 2008, p. 260) Winston, who realize the power of having knowledge about the past tried to seek out memories and stories from everyone beside him that he can use to reason his hate for the Party. Several times in the story, he became excited upon hearing anyone who remembers even a tiny scrape of memory from the past. He start with recalling his own memory from his own past during the daily Physical Jerks, “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, he was struggling to think his way backward into the dim period of his early childhood.” (Orwell, 2008, p. 34) Though he cannot remember the entire event with clarity because of the absence of any record, he can still compare how different it was back than for Airstrip One. His interest and curiosity was later further develop with him taking a considerable interest in collecting accounts from others to verify his own memory of the past. Thus he frequented his visit to an old antique shop in the proles area, which a Party member is actually not expected to be. There, he offered a drink for an old man who he claims to be “the last links that now existed with the vanished world of capitalism.” (Orwell, 2008, p. 90) In the bar, however, he did not find the answer to the questions as the old man answers with regards to his personal life. Winston took this with resentment and frustration which shows that he is really determined to learn about the future because of his hate for the government. Desperate for an answer, he finds himself next in the antique shop which later becomes the place that he was arrested. In exploration of the past, Winston find himself intrigued by a rhyme uttered by the owner of the shop, Mr. Charrington. “’Oranges and lemons,’ say the bells of St Clement’s!” (Orwell, 2008, p. 101). St. Clement’s actually refers to a church before the Party era which indicates there were religious practice before the rule of the Party and this excites Winston of the fact that such freedom was allowed during the time before the Party. By gaining more proof that the life before the Revolution was better, Winston was determined that his hatred for the Party’s regime was not in vain. If he could somehow disseminate the comparison of life before and after the regime, he will have support. His hatred for the Party increases gradually in the next part of the story when Julia and O’Brien added more lines to complete the rhyme. The rhyme actually symbolizes Winston’s evolution from his own collection of personal memories and later others’.
Memory speaks for emotion. The reason Winston has a strong bond with his memory is that his memories are all attached to an emotional and personal story of himself. And in order to create new memories, he needs to have an emotional attachment to it. This might perhaps explain the reason that he could not remember anything of living the normal life of an Outer Party member before he met Julia. He enjoyed Julia’s company because beautiful memories are created when they were together. Orwell used this strong emotional relationship of memory to send a message that it will be the last thing that could be stripped off a human being and make one inhumane. This was clearly shown at the remaining pages of the novel when Winston was already brainwashed and had already gain acceptance of the world in O’Brien’s perspective, but he had one thing left in him that prevent his total submission to the Party: his love for Julia and not Big Brother. “Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!” (Orwell, 2008, p. 293) was his exclamations which later doomed him to Room 101. He was eventually released and the ending clearly demonstrates his defeat he declared that “He loved Big Brother.” (Orwell, 2008, p. 311)
In conclusion, Winston’s memory in Nineteen Eighty-Four was manipulated to instill pain in him both physically and mentally which have sprouted the hatred long since he was still a little kid. The memory also haunts him in the form of visionary dreams which contributes two contrasting effect to himself, a contented affair with Julia and his damnation to the hands of O’Brien. This two contrasting effect had nonetheless fuels a larger fire in him towards the injustice and corruption within the Party. Winston who was poised with his ability to access memory freely and thinks independently runs his personal investigation of the past out of his curiosity. Orwell uses his curiosity and his reasoning characteristics to provide a bridge between the past and his hatred towards the party and how he had evolved together with his memory to provide a cause for his loathing. It was also shown that memory is the last thing that defines humanity and thus defined Winston and his ideology as the last sane human on Earth. This is perhaps what the writer tries to propagate with his original title of the novel, ‘The Last Man in Europe’. (Kreis, 2009)
Bibliography
Kreis, S. (2009, August 3). Lecture 13: George Orwell and The Last Man in Europe. Retrieved October 3, 2011, from The History Guide: Lectures On Twentieth Century Europe: http://www.historyguide.org/europe/lecture13.html
Merriman, C. (2006). George Orwell. Retrieved 09 30, 2011, from THE LITERATURE NETWORK: http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/
Orwell, G. (2008). Nineteen Eighty-four. England: Penguin Books.