The islands climate was unsuitable for someone suffering from tuberculosis and Nineteen Eighty-Four reflects the bleakness of human suffering, the indignity of pain. Indeed he said that the book wouldn’t have been so gloomy has be not been so ill. (“Orwell”2)
Eric Blair died in January 1950 of a tuberculosis hemorrhage, having just finished 1984. He left the world with a picture of communism, socialism, and totalitarianism that cannot be matched for either accuracy nor influence.
Of the two of his most famous books, Animal Farm, was written first, having been finished in 1945, and published, after a considerable amount of trouble, in 1948. His traditional publisher, Victor Gollancz, refused to publish it. Only after three years of searching was in finally put to print by Secker and Warburg Publishers. Animal Farm was a magnanimous work, a classic in its time. A satire on the Russian revolution; the characters all portray figures, movements, or tools that were imperative in the Russian socialist utopia gone wrong.
The story is one of revolution of the classes, as told through the dissent and uproar of the animals on an English farm. The famer, Mr. Jones, is a formally kind and generous farmer turned drunken lout, who in tough times is forced to tighten his grip in order to destroy drunken perceived threats and show his neighbors that he is in control. He is meant to parody Czar Nicholas II, who did not want to take the throne, and once he did felt forced to crackdown on dissent to prove to the nobility he was still in complete control. In the end, it was this cracking down, combined with the immobility of the nobility that doomed Czar’s regime. Because of the harshness of the Mr. Jones counter-revolution, Old Major, a pig described as, “pure-bred” gives a speech in support of a great upheaval to sweep Mr. Jones and his “administration” out of power. Unfortunately he dies three days later, and in many ways his ideals die with him. Old Major represents Karl Marx, by showing the way for the equality and revolution without actually taking an active part in anything acutely successful, the socialist revolts in Germany having been totally and absolutely crushed.
After his (old major’s) death, three days after the barn-yard speech, the socialism he professes is drastically altered when Napoleon and the other pigs begin to dominate. It's interesting that Orwell does not mention Napoleon or Snowball anytime during the great speech of old Major. This shows how distant and out-of-touch they really were; the ideals Old Major proclaimed seemed to not even have been considered when they were establishing their new government after the successful revolt. It almost seems as though the pigs fed off old Major's inspiration and then used it to benefit themselves (an interesting twist of capitalism) instead of following through on the old Major's honest proposal. This could be Orwell's attempt to dig Stalin, who many consider to be someone who totally ignored Marx's political and social theory. Using Old Major's seeming naivety, Orwell concludes that no society is perfect, no pure socialist civilisation can exist, and there is no way to escape the grasp of capitalism. Unfortunately when Napoleon and Squealer take over, old Major becomes more and more a distant fragment of the past in the minds of the farm animals. (“Animal Farm” 3)
Mr. Jones is eventually driven from the farm, and his counter-revolution crushed when he marches against the animals with his fellow farmers (a parody of the pro-monarchy, anti-communist white counter-revolution that almost defeated the bolsheviks). Now Napoleon, with the help of Squealer, and Snowball take over the running of the farm, even though this act is actually contradictory to the whole-supposed system of equality. The first act of their new administration is to put up the commandments of the farm in order to guard basic rights.
1.: Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2.: Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings is a friend.
3.: No animal shall wear clothes.
4.: No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5.: No animal shall drink alcohol.
6.: No animal shall kill another animal.
7.: All animals are equal.
(“Animal farm” 3
Eventually, after things settle down, Napoleon and Snowball begin to bicker over everything little thing, and you begin to see the overlying characters come to life. The first character to really come out of his shell is the pig Napoleon, who tires of his continuing verbal conflicts with Snowball and plots of his removal.
Obviously a metaphor for Stalin, Comrade Napoleon represents the human frailties of any revolution. Orwell believed that although socialism is good as an ideal, it can never be successfully adopted due to uncontrollable sins of human nature. For example, although Napoleon seems at first to be a good leader, he is eventually overcome by greed and soon becomes power-hungry. Of course Stalin did too in Russia, leaving the original equality of socialism behind, giving himself all the power and living in luxury while the common peasant suffered. Thus, while his national and international status blossomed, the welfare of Russia remained unchanged. (“Animal Farm”3)
Snowball also begins to show his true identity, but it is more shown by actions of Napoleon. In the beginning of the revolution, Snowball and Napoleon are much the same, both striving for the utopian ideal. While Napoleon represents Stalin, Snowball represents Snowball represents Leo Dawidowitsch Trotsky; the arch-rival of Stalin in Russia, but along with Lenin were erased from Soviet history.
The parallels between Trotsky and Snowball are uncanny. Trotsky too, was exiled, not from the farm, but to Mexico, where he spoke out against Stalin. Stalin was very weary of Trotsky, and feared that Trotsky supporters might try to assassinate him. The dictator of Russia tried hard to kill Trotsky, for the fear of losing leadership was very great in the crazy man's mind. Trotsky also believed in Communism, but he thought he could run Russia better than Stalin. Trotsky was murdered in Mexico by the Russian internal police, the NKVD-the pre-organization of the KGB. Trotsky was found with a pickaxe in his head at his villa in Mexico. (“Animal Farm” 3)
Napoleon steals 9 puppies from their mothers and raises them himself, molding them in his image, mimicking the KGB. After they are abducted they disappear from the scene, only to reappear when Napoleon needs them most. Eventually Snowball suggests that the animals build a windmill to produce electricity to sell to the other animals, and Napoleon pretends to disagree. Then, seizing the opportunity, Napoleon moves against Snowball, sending his dogs to drive Snowball from the farm. The other animals are shocked, and have no idea where the dogs came from.
"Silent and terrified, the animals crept back into the barn. In a moment the dogs came bounding back. At first no one had been able to imagine where these creatures came from, but the problem was soon solved: they were the puppies whom Napoleon had taken away from their mothers and reared privately. Though not yet full-grown, they were huge dogs, and as fierce-looking as wolves. They kept close to Napoleon. It was noticed that they wagged their tails to him in the same way as the other dogs had been used to do to Mr. Jones." (“Animal Farm”3)
The dogs are from here on the constant companions and defenders of the pigs, yet they never talk Orwell almost speaks of the dogs as mindless robots, so dedicated to Napoleon that they can't really speak for themselves. The dogs in the beginning are used only to defend against Snowball, and the possible reincursion of Mr. Jones, but eventually Napoleon turns them against the farm animals, having then root out traitors. They have been indoctrinated to believe in the doing of party, represented by Napoleon, Squealer, and the other Pigs. They are fully brainwashed and supplical to the will of their master, thinking for themselves in not possible.
Napoleon also uses the pig Squealer against the other animals, as he is a convincing speaker who dominates the lesser classes of animals with quick speeches and powerful words. He in many ways represents the propaganda disseminated by all totalitarian states.
Squealer is an intriguing character in Orwell's Animal Farm. He's first described as a manipulator and persuader. Orwell narrates, "He could turn black into white." Many critics correlate Squealer with the Pravda, the Russian newspaper of the 1930's. Propaganda was a key to many publications, and since there was no television or radio, the newspaper was the primary source of media information. So the monopoly of the Pravda was seized by Stalin and his new Bolshevik regime. In Animal Farm, Squealer, like the newspaper, is the link between Napoleon and other animals. When Squealer masks an evil intention of the pigs, the intentions of the communists can be carried out with little resistance and without political disarray. (“Animal Farm”3)
The most important of the things that mimic the evolution of the Russian Revolution happens quite early in the book. When Mr. Jones and his friends attempt to recapture the farm from the animals, they are defeated and driven off. For their bravery both Snowball and Boxer are given awards, and Napoleon receives an award even though he does not fight. When Napoleon and his dogs drive Snowball from the farm, he explains that Snowball had been working for Mr. Jones the entire time, and was a traitor to the revolution.
The dogs drive Snowball from the farm, and Napoleon explains that Snowball was in fact co-operating with Mr. Jones. He also explains that Snowball in reality never had a medal of honour, that Snowball was always trying to cover up that he was fighting at the side of Mr. Jones. (“Animal Farm”3)
By doing this, Napoleon is erasing the accomplishments of Snowball from the records of the revolution, and in doing so is following in the direct footsteps of Stalin. After the death of Lenin in 1923, the deposition of Trotsky, and the purges of both the army and the communist party, Stalin developed a way to control the thoughts of the people: if someone did not exist then you can take over the positive things that they did. You can teach that you did these things to the children and the impressionable proletariat and the party followers and leaders, and they will either fall in line, or be crushed by the waves of counter-opposition. You can use your “dogs” to control through fear.
As the satire unfolds, the parallels to the USSR become ever more apparent. First the pigs, having now totally polarized the leadership positions of the town, begin to grow fatter and fatter, all the while telling the other animals that they need more food because they are managing the “forward progress” of the farm. Next the pigs decide that they must break one of the sacred commandments, though unwritten, and trade with the surrounding farms
The common animals are very upset, because after the revolution, there has been a resolution that no animal shall make trade with a human. But the pigs ensured that there never has been such a resolution, and that this was an evil lie of Snowball. (“Animal Farm”3)
From then on, the revolution is swept away, with the totalitarianism of the pigs now revealed. They move to the farmhouse, and when the animals question them and point to the commandments, they see that they have been changed to fit what the pig’s desire. Now instead of “No animal shall sleep in a bed,” its “No animal can sleep in a bed with sheets.” Now the other commandments read instead of “No animal shall kill another animal”, its "No animal shall kill another animal without reason", or from “No animal shall drink alcohol” to "No animal shall drink alcohol in excess.” Now the commandments are just another tool to aid in the subjugation of, and complete hypocritical destruction of, the freedom of the working class. Another tool of suppression is the windmill, which represents the five-year plans used to speed build Russian industry. Though first adopted by Snowball, it was proposed again by Comrade Napoleon after Snowball was forced out, and work was commenced. Twice, once during a storm and once during another attack by Mr. Jones was the windmill destroyed, yet twice the pigs ordered construction to begin again. All during this the food ration is dropped lower and lower as more and more animal power is used on the construction.
As the book moves into its ending phase, much time has passed and the proletariat, represented by boxer and clover, the carthorses, and most loyal party followers among the animals has begun to break down from lack of food, and basic old age. Boxer collapses and is sold to a glue factory. Napoleon tells the animals that he is sending Boxer to a hospital, and that he dies there. At this point in the story one of the two final major characters is revealed. His name is Old Benjamin and he is a donkey. He represents the cynical older generation, which is too inactive politically to do much, yet when he hears of what is going to happen to boxer, he tries to get the animals to move against Napoleon, or at least attempt a rescue. He is much like many of the nobility, upper class, and older generations of Russia that understood the plight of the Czars and did nothing until it was to little, to late.
The other final major character is Moses, Mr. Jones’s pet raven. He is the only animal that did not hear Old Major’s speech in the beginning, and is the only animal to not work. The special part about this raven is that he represents the Orthodox Church, in all its glory.
Orwell narrates, "The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the words put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr. Jones's especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place." (“Animal Farm” 3)
Eventually the pigs exile Moses to the farmhouse, and he is forgotten. Yet as Napoleon becomes more and more like Mr. Jones in his demands and the work that he needs the animals to do, such as finish the windmill while taking a food cut, Napoleon, who now lives in the farmhouse, unleashes Moses on the animals. Orwell in this respect believed that the church was just a tool of the dictatorships, and so therefore Moses is used in this way. He not only tries to inspire the farm animals, but also along with the pigeons, spreads the message of equality to other farms in the area.
Now that the windmill has been completed and the pigs are totally isolated in the farmhouse, the story comes full circle and ends.
Three years later the mill was finally completed. During this time Napoleon deepens the relations with the neighbor farm, and one-day Napoleon even invites the owners of this farm for an inspection. They sit inside the farmhouse and celebrate the efficiency of his farm, where the animals work very hard with the minimum of food. During this celebration all the other animals meet at the window of the farm, and when they look inside they can't distinguish between man and animal. (“Animal Farm”3)
Now Comrade Napoleon has become Mr. Jones, and the story ends, having given its lesson to anyone that has read it. Human nature is undefeatable, and to try is to bring either destruction on yourself or more power then you could ever handle into your hands.
The second of the two books Orwell is most know for, and his last book that he wrote, as he was dying of tuberculosis as he finished it, is called 1984, which is backwards for 1948, the year he began writing it. This book is about the future of the world if the United States had not joined the war, and there had been no aid to Europe, no defeat of Japan. In the 1950’s the Germans fled to England, Russia having occupied all of Europe, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Urals. They did this using nuclear weapons, having no other way to decisively defeat the German army without the west. The world is then crushed by the force of three great super states. The first, Oceana, represents The United States, The British Empire, and the rest of the Americas. The Second, the USSR, or Eurasia, is the USSR plus what I assume from the text is the nuclear blackened remains of Europe, having been ripped from the hands of the Germans, who fled with what they could to Oceania. The Third state, Eastasia, is the Japanese Empire, which includes everything they did capture, and all they wanted to, including the interior of China, and the border with India and everything else. He three states all use the same political philosophies, and are in many ways, exactly the same. They all mirror the USSR, their inspiration taken from Stalin and other communist rulers throughout the world. Big Brother even looks like Stalin. All of the things, from the use of children to control thought-crimes, to the thought police, to rations, and the state of perpetual war, are all things that were present and built upon in the USSR.
The Story starts, as the title tells us, in the year of 1984, and it takes place in England or how it is called at that time, Airstrip One. The country is ruled by the Party, which is led by a figure called Big Brother.
The population of Oceania is divided into three parts:
1.The Inner Party (app. 1% of the population)
2.The Outer Party (app. 18% of the population)
3.The Proles (app. 81% of the population)
(“1984” 5)
The main character of 1984 is Winston Smith, a member of the OuterParty. Working in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, his job is rewriting and altering records, such as newspaper-articles, of the past, and then throwing them down the, “Memory Hole, where they are burnt.” The beginning of the book is mainly just Winston describing the world in which he lives, it being so foreign to anyone western concept of society. In this society, the party controls all of the thoughts of the party members, using many different techniques that pervade and influence every thought of the members. They use telescreens o monitor very sound and every action, they forbid the use of books for personal dissemination of knowledge. They use propaganda like the Two Minutes Hate, or Hate Week to influence thoughts, and they use the secret police of the ministry of love to contain and manipulate dissent.
Winston rebels against this control, attempting to win back control of his life from the party. He goes into a bookshop and buys an empty book, for a diary. This is expressly forbidden, as it is personal dissemination of knowledge. As he writes in the diary, you can see that his thought continue to be molded by the party, yet he has begun to have thoughts considered unacceptable. When thinking of his mother and sister, he maintains the party line that they died because he was too greedy. Yet then he thinks of O’Brien, a member of the inner party that Winston sees during the Two-Minute Hate, whom he thinks may stand critic to the regime. After the reflection, he finds that he has written the sentence: “Down with Big Brother” all over the page. The next day Winston thinks about his childhood and his life before what he has now, and can only remember the time before and during the war. It seems that the party rose to power at the end of the war, and took control in Oceania right after its end. At the time of their takeover, the party began the arduous task of changing history permanently to their own benefit. One example of their control of the minds of the Outerparty members happens in the dining hall.
At dinner Winston Smith meets Syme, a philologist, who is working on the 11th edition of The Newspeak Dictionary (see Newspeak - Political System), Syme explains the main character of their work on this dictionary. During their conversation the telescreen announces that the chocolate ration has been risen to 20 g a week, whereas yesterday it was cut down to 20 g a week. Winston wonders whether he's the only person with memory, that isn't inflicted by Doublethink. (“Summary of 1984”4)
By far the most important of the things that are clearly defined in 1984 are the lengths that the party will go to change history and reinvent the past. It was once said that he who controls the future, controls the present and he who controls the present controls the past. The party uses this to full effectiveness. They distort events on a daily basis, they destroy key events, or make them party events even in times when the idea of the party did not in anyway exist. Much like in animal farm, they take over the accomplishments of others, and use former allies as permanent enemies of the state, to be blamed if things go wrong. Instead of it being the parties, or Napoleons, or Stalin’s fault, it is the fault of the “enemy.” Every totalitarian state must have an enemy that it must face. Whether it is a people, a person, or a group, propaganda and order thrive when there is someone too blame and someone too hate. One very clear example of the control that the party have over the people is the fate of the physical leaders of the revolution.
They were Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford, the last three survivors of the original leaders of the Revolution. They were arrested in 1965, and confessed all kind of sabotage on trial, they were pardoned, reinstated but not long after were arrested again, and executed. During the brief period Winston has seen them in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. In the same year a half page torn out of The Times came to Winston trough the transport tube in the Minitrue. This page of The Times showed the three men in Eastasia on a certain day. But Winston remembered clearly that they have confessed being in Eurasia on that day (At this time Eurasia was at war with Oceania, and Eastasia was an allied). So Winston could proof that the confessions were lies. But Winston had sent this paper down to the Memory Hole (a kind of paper basket) (“Summary of 1984”4)
Freedom to think is also being crushed in 1984, as shown by the incessant propaganda, spying, and reeducation, but by the destruction of the English language and its replacement with a language that limits expression of thought, and therefore thought itself. This newspeak, set to replace the supposed oldspeak completely in 2050, is in itself a form of total domination.
The purpose of Newspeak is not only to provide medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits, but also to make all other methods of thought impossible. Another reason for developing Newspeak is, to make old books, or books which were written before the era of the Party, unreadable. With Newspeak, Doublethink would be even easier. Its vocabulary is so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. One could in fact only use Newspeak for political unorthodoxy, by illegitimately translating some of the words back into Oldspeak. For example "All mans are equal" was a possible Newspeak sentence, but only in the same sense in which "All man have the same weight" is a possible Oldspeak sentence. It did not contain a grammatical error, but it expressed a palpable untruth i.e. that all man have the same size, weight ..... The concept of political equality no longer existed. In 1984, when Oldspeak is still the normal mean of communication, the danger theoretically exists that in using Newspeak words one might remember their original meanings. In practice it is not difficult for a person well grounded in Doublethink to avoid doing this, but within a couple of generation even the possibility of such a lapse would have vanished. A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no more know that equal had once had the secondary meaning of "politically equal" (also free,....). There would be many crimes and errors which would be beyond of the power to commit, simply because there were nameless and therefore unimaginable. It is to be foreseen that with the passage of time Newspeak words would become fewer and fewer, their meanings more and more and more rigid, and the chance to put them to improper uses always diminished. So when Oldspeak had been once and for all superseded the last link with the past would have been severed. (“Summary of 1984”4)
Winston writes in his diary is that freedom is to say that two and two makes four. If this is granted everything else follows.
Winston and a girl from the office eventually fall in love, and she finds a way for them to meet in secret. They kiss and he learns her name: Julia. They have something expressly forbidden to anyone of the party members. Winston realizes what their affair really means to the fate of the future.
She leads him to another place where they cannot be observed. Before she takes off her blue party-overall, Julia tells Winston that she is attracted to him by something in his face, which shows that he is against the party. Winston is surprised and asks Julia if she has done such a thing before. To his delight she tells him that she has done it scores of times, which fills him with a great hope. Evidence of corruption and abandon always gives him with hope. Perhaps the whole system is rotten, and will simply crumb to pieces one day. The more men she had, the more he loves her, and later as he looks at her sleeping body, he thinks that now even sex is a political act, a blow against the falseness of the Party. (“Summary of 1984”4)
One day while at the office, Winston sees a man from the inner party that he has always suspected of being against the party. This man, O'Brien, walks over and speaks to Winston in the Ministry of Truth. He refers, obliquely to Syme, the philologist, who has vanished a couple of days before, and is now, as it is called in Newspeak an unperson. In doing so O'Brien is committing a little act of thoughtcrime. O'Brien invites Winston to his flat, to see the latest edition of the Newspeak dictionary. Winston now feels sure that the conspiracy against the Party he had longed to know about - the Brotherhood, as it is called - does exist, and that in the encounter with O'Brien he has come into contact with its outer edge. Winston’s greatest fears and excitements have now collided. He has made his move against the party, and from now on is subject to the will those that he is working with. Just like other political prisoners, he is now trapped in the world of distrust and misjudgment. One false step and everything that he did could easily be undone by the party. Though Winston’s prior actions, thoughts and age do not reflect Old Benjamin the donkey, his current movement against the party that he previously was at the least ambivalent too.
Some days later Winston and Julia meet each other to go to the flat of O'Brien, which lies in the district of the Inner Party. They are admitted to a richly furnitured room by a servant. To their astonishment O'Brien switches off the telescreen in the room. (Normally it is impossible to turn it off) Winston blurts out why they have come: they want to work against the Party, they believe in the existence of the Brotherhood, and that O'Brien is involved with it. Martin, O'Brien's servant brings real red wine, and they drink a toast to Emanuel Goldstein, the leader of the Brotherhood. O'Brien asks them a series of questions about their willingness to commit various atrocities on behalf of the Brotherhood and gets their assent. They leave, and some days later Winston gets a copy of "The Book", a book written by Emanuel Goldstein, about his political ideas. Now it is Hate Week and suddenly the war with Eurasia stops, and a war with Eastasia starts. This is another example of the extreme power of the party. When the announcement is made that Oceania is fighting Eastasia, the people turn into a bloody rage destroying all the previous propaganda against Eurasia, yelling and screaming, with only slight encouragement from the party, that Emanuel Goldstein had tricked all of them. They are suddenly sure that he planted the posters in order to spread dissent, and never stop to consult their own minds. They let the party do they’re thinking for them.
Despite all the work this meant for Winston, having to totally rebuild and erase huge parts of recent history, he still finds time to read the book. The book has three chapters titled, "War is Peace", "Ignorance is Strength" and "Freedom is Slavery", which were also the main phrases of the party. This book is the cornerstone of the resistance, and the strength of humanity resides in it. If there is any hope of one of the party members rising up and leading the lower classes to victory over the party, it is almost solely contained within this book.
The main ideas of the book are:
1: War is important for consuming the products of human labour, if this work would be used to increase the standard of living, the control of the party over the people would decrease. War is the economy basis for a hierarchical society.
2: There is an emotional need to believe in the ultimate victory of Big Brother.
3: In becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The continuity of the war guarantees the permanence of the current order. In other words "War is Peace"
4: There have always been three main grades of society; the High, the Middle and the Low, and no change has brought human equality a millimetre nearer.
5: Collectivism doesn't lead to socialism. In the event the wealth now belongs to the new "high-class", the bureaucrats and administrators. Collectivism has ensured the permanence of economic inequality.
6: Wealth is not inherited from person to person, but it is kept within the ruling group.
7: The masses (proles) are given freedom of thought, because they don't think! A Party member is not allowed the slightest deviation of thought, and there is an elaborate mental training to ensure this, a training that can be summarised in the concept of doublethink.
(“Summary of 1984”4)
Despite all of his reading, Winston never gets to read the chapters telling why the party has arisen, or what it will take to destroy the party. He then falls asleep, and when he wakes up the thought-police break down the walls and capture them.
Winston is in a cell in what he presumes is the Ministry of Love. He is sick with hunger and fear, and when he makes a movement or a sound, a harsh voice will bawl at him from the four telescreens. A prisoner who is dying of starvation is brought in, his face is skull-like. Later the man is brought to "Room 101" after screaming and struggling, and even offering his children's sacrifices in his stead. O'Brien enters. Winston thinks that they must have got him too, but O'Brien says that they got him long time ago. A guard hits Winston, and he becomes unconscious. When he wakes up he is tied down to a kind of bed. O'Brien stands beside the bed, and Winston feels that O'Brien, who is the torturer, is also somehow a friend. The aim of O'Brien is to teach Winston the technique of Doublethink, and he does it by inflicting pain in ever-increasing intensity. He reminds Winston that he wrote the sentence:" Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four". O'Brien holds up four fingers of his left hand, and he asks Winston how many there are. Winston answers four a couple of times, and each time the pain increases (this is not done to make Winston lie, but to make him really see five fingers instead of four). At the end of the session, under heavy influence of drugs and agony, Winston really seas five fingers. Now Winston is ready to enter the second stage of his integration (1. Learning, 2. Understanding, 3. Acceptance).
O'Brien now explains why the Party works. The image he gives of the future is that of a boot stamping on a human face - for ever. Winston protests, because he thinks that there is something in the human nature that will not allow this, he calls it "The Spirit of Man". O'Brien points out that Winston is the last humanist, he is the last guardian of the human spirit. Then O'Brien gets Winston to look at himself in the mirror, Winston is horrified what he sees. The unknown time of torture has changed him into a shapeless and battered wreck. This is what the last humanist looks like.
(“Summary of 1984”4)
Winston takes heart that he has not given into the power of the party, and has not given them what they want, he has not betrayed Julia.
Yet slowly he is broken, without him even being conscience of it. Winston is much better now.
For some time he has not been beaten and tortured, he has been fed quite well and allowed to wash. Winston realizes that he now accepts all the lies of the Party, that for example Oceania was always at war with Eastasia, and that he never had the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford that disproved their guilty. Even gravity could be nonsense. But nevertheless Winston has some unorthodox thoughts that he cannot suppress. But now it is time for the last of the three steps, reintegration.
(“Summary of 1984”4)
Winston is taken to Room 101. O'Brien says that the room 101 is the worst thing in the world. For each person it is his own personal hell. For some it is death by fire or burial alive. For Winston it is a cage containing two rats, with a fixture like a fencing mask attached, into which the face of the victim is strapped. Then there is a lever, which opens the cage, so that the rats can get to the face. O'Brien is approaching nearer with the cage, and Winston gets the bad smell of the rats. He screams. The only way to get out of this is to put someone else between him and the horror. "Do it to Julia", he screams in a final betrayal of himself.
Winston is released, and he is often sitting in the Chestnut Tree Café, drinking Victory Gin and playing chess. He now has a job in a sub-committee, that is made up for others like himself. On a cold winter day he meets Julia, they speak briefly, but have little to say to each other, except that they have betrayed each other. A memory of a day in his childhood comes to Winstons' mind; it is false, he is often troubled by false memories. He looks forward to the bullet, they will kill him some day. Now he realizes how pointless it was to resist. He loves Big Brother! (“Summary of 1984”4)
"On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed down from the wall. It was one of these pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath ran." - from Nineteen Eighty-Four (“1984” 5)
In the end Winston succumbed to the power of the party. In many ways his situation was hopeless. None of the people that try to do what he did in the USSR were successful until economic and outside political pressures forced her collapse. They crushed his mind, telling him things over and over, things that he would never accept; yet he subconsciously did. Before he could react, his mind had already been defeated. Orwell shows just how powerful the force of the party is. Yet 1984 does contain hope, and that is the power of the individual to secretly resist, to enjoy, to savor, and to fight, deep down. To hole up these emotions, and allow human nature to feed off of them. In the end, while the party may be all-powerful in the minds and hearts of its victims, the human soul cannot be conquered. No propaganda can break it, no hatred is too powerful for its influence, because in the end, the human spirit lays not in the domain of humans, but in the hands of God himself, that made them in his image so that they could worship him, and who he gave his only begotten son so that they could find salvation.
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