Physical Jerks Extract "1984". How does Orwell make you strongly sympathise with Winston at this moment in the novel?

Moving on from the physical pain Winston endures during the morning exercise in this extract from George Orwell’s ‘1984’, the reader is forced to strongly sympathise with Winston through the humiliation he endures during the morning exercise. The instructress of these morning exercises through screaming in a shrewish voice proclaims, “You can do better than that. You’re not trying.” This forthwith forces the reader to strongly sympathise with Winston through as aforementioned above the complications with his health. Winston physically cannot perform these exercises without experiencing severe pain, and so for him to be humiliated publicly in front of his colleagues and then not being able to defend himself out of fear from the party is both upsetting for Winston and the reader. From there the next humiliation stems from the instructress belittling in a way Winston over him not enrolling in the army; “Remember our boys on the Malabar front!...Just think what they have to put up with.” During WW1 and WW2, ‘The Order of the White Feather’ was used to encourage women to pressure the men in their life to enrol in the army, belittling those that ‘refused’ to enrol. Winston being in effect trivialized for not enrolling by the instructress is very similar to the white feather order. It displays clearly George Orwell’s attempts to convey sympathy strongly towards Winston through him being belittled and made light of during this part of the extract by women. This further flaunts a second of several angles from which George Orwell forces the reader to strongly sympathise with Winston in his novel ‘1984’.

In this extract Winston takes his mind back to a distressing part of his life; “Just once in his whole life he had held in his hands unmistakeable documentary proof of the falsification of an historical fact”. Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, therefore he as his job rewrites, forges and changes as depicted in this extract government documents if not get rid of them completely if necessary to match the constantly changing current party line. The document as mentioned is one he particularly holds shame from destroying, holding indisputably a true historical fact that gleamed a fragment of life before the party of which he destroyed. He was coerced into destroying that document though, and the reader is forced to strongly sympathise with Winston through his sheer disappointment in himself for doing so. The reader knows it isn’t Winston’s fault—it’s the party’s—and it creates a sort of yearnful energy inside the reader in the sense they want to scream at him that it’s not his fault but they can’t; a nervous energy is created from this part of the extract through the adrenaline released from the dramatic irony. Hence, this once more unequivocally displays the intensity of George Orwell’s intellect, and is why the reader strongly sympathises with Winston instead of merely sympathising with him. The connection between reader and character created by Orwell is enthralling. For the final time this flaunts a third of several angles from which George Orwell forces the reader to strongly sympathise with Winston in his novel ‘1984’.

In conclusion, I feel the ways in which George Orwell conveyed strong sympathy towards Winston through forcing the reader to feel melancholy from each of all his pain, humiliation, and awkward feelings was both splendid and classically George Orwell. Orwell’s somewhat journalistic style of writing provides a very relatable connection between reader and character through the empathy caused by the strong sympathy forced upon the reader. In Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’, he similarly through proficient allegory writes about the dangers of society at the time, containing dark settings with themes relating to communism and the Soviet Union in the same way ‘1984’ relates to unchecked capitalism in todays Russia. These of which all force the reader to feel strong sympathy over the subjects at hand and reminisce a time in history so dark it almost pushes itself to the back of most of our minds, and Orwell hiding such history in his novels is extremely powerful because of this.