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George orwell (Click to select text)
Body: George Orwell was the pen name of the English author, Eric Arthur Blair. Blair was born June 25,1903 in Motihari, India. He was educated in England at Eton College. After service with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922 to 1927, he returned to Europe to become a writer. He lived for several years in poverty. Orwell hated totalitarianism and in 1936, joined the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was critical of Communism but basically considered himself a Socialist. Later, the Communists would attempt to eliminate their allies on the far left. Orwell fought against them and was forced to flee Spain for his life. During the Second World War, Orwell wrote a weekly radio political commentary, designed to counter German and Japanese propaganda in India. His wartime work for the BBC gave him a solid taste of bureaucratic hypocrisy. Many believe that this experience provided the inspiration for his invention of "newspeak," the truth-denying language of Big Brother's rule in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Throughout his lifetime, the great English author continually questioned all "official" or "accepted" versions of history. At the conclusion of the war in Europe, Orwell made the following comment in his book Notes on Nationalism, "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear… Is it true about the gas ovens in Poland?" Orwell died at the early age of forty-seven of a neglected lung ailment. He left behind a substantial body of work and a reputation for greatness. George Orwell is best-known as the author of Animal Farm and 1984, and these books gave the language the overused adjective "Orwellian." However, these books were written relatively late in his life, and followed an impressive body of work that included accounts of his experiences as a soldier in the Spanish Civil War, and as a "down and out" tramp roaming the English countryside We are first introduced to Winston Smith, Party member and civil servant, comes home to the ramshackle Victory Mansions in the capital of Airstrip One, which used to be called England. The London of Orwell's near future is very like London after World War II, with its bombed-out buildings and its shortages and power failures. What's different are the posters of a huge face with eyes that seem to follow you everywhere, and bearing the legend: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, and he is. Winston knows it. A TV screen dominates his room, and in addition to bringing war news and exercise classes, the thing sees everything within range. It is watching Winston. He keeps his back to the screen in case the Thought Police tune in. From his window he can see the Ministry of Truth, where he works. On the building's face are lettered the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH Was London always like this? Winston can't quite remember. What he knows is that the government is everywhere. Lighting a Victory cigarette and taking a slug of watery Victory gin, Winston unveils an antique book he bought illegally in a "free" store (one the Party does not run). Risking capture and death for committing a private act, he begins a diary. Winston has questions and is thinking about them at work. Who is the dark-haired girl, and why is she following him? What was O'Brien, the burly, urbane and powerful Inner Party member, doing in their sector during the Two Minutes' Hate today? Everybody in the section was taking out pent-up emotions on Emmanuel Goldstein, the rebel leader on the television screen when Winston found himself distracted. The Party uses Goldstein to focus members' hatred. Like the Nazis, the Party whips up anti-Jewish sentiment - Goldstein is a Jewish name - along with hatred for the superpower they're currently at war with. When everybody's hatred is at a high pitch, the Party channels this hatred into love for Big Brother. There are four parts to the government of Oceania and they are: Minitrue, the Ministry of Truth, or propaganda arm. This is where Winston works. Minipax, the Ministry of Peace, which makes war. Miniplenty, the Ministry of Plenty, which arranges shortages. Miniluv, the hated and feared Ministry of Love, the center of secret Party activities. Today Winston was distracted by the nearness of the dark-haired girl, whom he hates because he wants her but knows he can't have her. Worse yet, in the few seconds before the Two Minutes' Hate wrought its inevitable magic and everybody present loved Big Brother, Winston hated Big Brother. He was even more excited because he caught O'Brien looking at him. He thinks O'Brien may be part of the Brotherhood pledged to overthrow Big Brother. In a unique mixture of sex and politics, the Party channels sexual frustration to its own purposes. He looks down and finds to his horror that he has been writing, over and over: DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER. Winston has committed the unforgivable Thought crime. He knows his action will lead to capture and punishment. Thought Police will drag him away in the middle of the night (just the way Nazis in World War II took people to concentration camps). He will end up in the mysterious Ministry of Love, where terrible things happen to people who oppose Big Brother. He will be vaporized. There is a knock at the door. Winston fears the worst. Instead of Thought Police, the person at Winston's door is his neighbor, Mrs. Parsons. Depressed and anxious, Winston retreats to memories of a dream in which someone said, quietly, "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness." He is sure it was the voice of O'Brien. And this is important: "Winston had never been able to feel sure... whether O'Brien was a friend or an enemy. Nor did it seem to matter greatly. There was a link of understanding between them…." In his loneliness and isolation, this hope is enough for Winston. Current history and his memories do not coincide. Oceania is and always was at war with Eurasia in alliance with Eastasia, according to all the books and papers, but this isn't the way Winston remembers it. The records are changed. In Winston's case, a leader has been created. As he remembers it, nobody had heard of Big Brother before 1960. Now that he's a figurehead, history has been backdated so that there are tales of Big Brother's exploits as far back as the 1930s. Winston is at work in the Records section of the Ministry of Truth, engaged in the kind of revision that keeps the Party going. In his cubicle is a "speakwrite" (today it would be a computer terminal); a tube for written messages and one for newspapers; and a "memory hole," in which he destroys obsolete documents. Today Winston would probably complete his entire operation on his handy word processor. As messages came up on the screen, he could note the necessary changes and record over them, erasing history with the touch of a button. Daily, Winston destroys the old documents and creates new ones to cover policy changes. All these changes have to be incorporated into new editions of back newspapers, books, and all written records; these are destroyed and replaced to keep up with "history." Today Winston is faced with a challenge. He receives a note stating "The reporting of Big Brother's Order for the Day in the Times of December 3rd, 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory and makes references to nonexistent persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your draft to higher authority before filing." Winston settles for a simple invention that calls for the fewest changes in records: he makes up Comrade Ogilvy. Winston, presents a Party paragon who from infancy refuses all but military toys, turns in his uncle to the Thought Police at eleven, organizes the junior Anti-Sex League, and at age seventeen designs a grenade that blows up thirty-one prisoners at one pop. He dies gallantly, and, according to this revised speech by Big Brother, he was the model Party member. In the canteen, Winston lines up for lunch along with Syme, who works in the Research Department. Syme is preparing the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak dictionary. Winston prompts Syme to talk about the Eleventh Edition, which he does, saying happily that he is busy destroying thousands of words, along with the works of Shakespeare, Milton and others. In comes Parsons, a completely different kind of Party member. Parsons is collecting money for the neighborhood Hate Week; he can't wait to start decorating. He apologizes for his kids' harassing Winston, but he's clearly proud of their Party passion. All hands listen to a joyful announcement from the Ministry of Plenty that the chocolate ration has been raised-from thirty grams to twenty. It makes as much sense to Winston as the contrast between the ill-fed, funny-looking Party members and the Party ideal of handsome blonde stereotypes. Uncertain about how many of his rebellious thoughts show in his expression and gestures, Winston breaks into a sweat when he discovers he's being watched. Winston records his last sexual encounter in his diary. Being caught with a prostitute might get Winston five years in a labor camp, but the real crime is "promiscuity" between Party members, which at the moment Winston finds unthinkable because of his Party conditioning. The aim of the Party, Winston believes, is to remove all pleasure from sexual acts. Winston's remembered prostitute took him to her room where he discovered that she was old, ugly, and made him feel dirty. He took her anyway. Winston wakes from another dream. His dream takes place inside the paperweight, which is an emblem for the past. In the dream he discovers that the arm gesture made by the refugee mother in the newsreel is one his mother made. Until this moment he had believed that he caused his mother's death. He recalls a childhood spent hiding out in Underground stations during air raids. They are hungry all the time. He remembers badgering his mother for food; he takes food from her and his baby sister because hunger is the strongest thing he feels. In one last guilty act he steals chocolate from both of them, and runs away. Winston remembers his mother protecting his baby sister, and thinks: "The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account…." He admires his mother for making the protective gesture in spite of the fact that she knows her family is doomed. The proles, he thinks, still harbor such emotions. They are human, whereas Party members have their emotions suppressed. "We are not human," he says. Julia is awake now, and they agree that the best and safest thing would be to separate and never come here again. Yet they both know they can't and won't separate. They talk about the loneliness of capture. Julia points out that yes, they will confess, but nothing can make her stop loving him. Winston hopes he will feel the same way. "They can't get inside you," he says. "If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them." Winston has brought the woman he loves to the command post of the Brotherhood. Winston is impressed. It's a far cry from the squalor of Victory Mansions and the shabby room above Charrington's shop. They smell good food and real tobacco; they are intimidated by the Asian servant in the white coat. O'Brien is at his desk. He delivers a final message to the speakwrite and turns off his telescreen. Winston is astonished. "You can turn it off!" This is a privilege. At the glimmer of a smile from O'Brien, Winston declares himself. In fact, he declares both of them. He and Julia are enemies of the Party, he says, thought criminals and adulterers who want to join the Brotherhood. He is saying this so they will be at O'Brien's mercy; he wants to make it clear that they are trustworthy. As he finishes speaking, the servant enters. O'Brien tells Winston not to worry, the servant is "one of us." O'Brien pours them glasses of wine, a rarity in the days of Victory gin. They drink to Emmanuel Goldstein, who, O'Brien tells them, is a real person, not a Party fabrication. According to O'Brien, Goldstein is still alive and the Brotherhood is a reality. O'Brien tells Winston something: he should have been smart enough to know that it was dangerous for the couple to come together. They have to leave separately, Julia first. Ignoring Julia, taking it for granted that Winston speaks for both of them, O'Brien leads Winston through a strange litany that almost echoes Christian baptismal ceremonies. They agree to give their lives, commit murder, commit numerous alien acts on behalf of the Brotherhood, to commit suicide, to part forever…. "No!" the lovers cry, and O'Brien praises them for telling him how they truly feel. Dismissing the servant, O'Brien offers quality cigarettes and tells the couple they will be working in the dark, obeying orders without knowing why. They'll never know who the others in the Brotherhood are. The success of the organization, O'Brien says, depends on secrecy. After they drink to the past (Winston's choice), O'Brien dismisses Julia. In exchange for Winston's disclosure of his secret hiding place, O'Brien offers to send him a copy of the bible of the Brotherhood, rebel leader Emmanuel Goldstein's book. Perhaps we will meet again, says O'Brien; and Winston answers at once, "In the place where there is no darkness?" Winston is "gelatinous" with fatigue after putting in a ninety-hour week. Right in the middle of Hate Week, history took an abrupt about-face and Oceania was not at war with Eurasia at all. Oceania was at war with Eastasia; Oceania and Eurasia were fighting side by side. You can imagine how much alteration of records this involved, including quick changes in the middle of one Inner Party member's speech. As the people listen to this "little Rumpelstiltskin figure, contorted with hatred," they realize that the enemy has changed and that they're carrying the wrong signs! Hate Week goes on. Winston is anxious to do as good a job as he can because he's conscientious about his work; he's even proud of a good job well done. He's also the secret rebel who is disgusted by outrageous doublethink of this kind. He is, furthermore, carrying Goldstein's book. After work, Winston retreats to the room at Mr. Charrington's, where he leafs through the book and waits for Julia to arrive. He's thrilled to be reading The Book, called The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Winston wakes to a cold stove and to the prole woman singing in the courtyard. Julia joins him at the window and together hey stare down at her. "It had never before occurred to him that the body of a woman of fifty… coarse in the grain like an overripe turnip, could be beautiful." Now it does. He slips his arm around Julia's slim waist, and laments that they will never have a child. He imagines the woman bearing children, grandchildren, in a sort of "mystical reverence" that extends to the sky and all the people under it. Winston believes that the proles are immortal and that in the end they will awake and build a new society. But even in this mystical reverie, he seems somewhat condescending to the lower orders. "Out of those mighty loins a race of conscious beings must one day come," he says. "You were the dead; theirs was the future." "We are the dead," say both Winston and Julia. And then a third voice knifes into the room, saying, "You are the dead." This is the voice of! doom Winston foresaw when he started the diary. The telescreen was behind the picture of St. Clement's Dane that Winston was so fond of, and that Julia had wanted to take down and give a good cleaning. The print crashes from the wall and Winston thinks: "It was starting, it was starting at last!" He seems excited. Outside is the tramping of boots. A thin, cultivated voice Winston thinks he recognizes completes the old nursery rhyme: Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head! A ladder crashes through the window and troops enter, uniformed in black, wearing iron-shod boots and carrying clubs. Winston is kicked; Julia is beaten and carried away, her face already yellow and contorted. Winston is confused by the old-fashioned clock; because it's numbered one to twelve, he doesn't know whether it's "twenty-thirty" that afternoon or "nought eight-thirty" the next morning. The past has ceased to be of use to him. Mr. Charrington now appears; it was his voice that completed the nursery rhyme. He's no longer dear old Mr. Charrington; he has shed his disguise and revealed himself as a member of the Thought Police. Winston is now caught and thrown in a cell. Winston's cell is bright and bare and monitored by four telescreens. Voices bark instructions whenever he moves even when he puts his hand in his pocket for food. He has lost track of time. He hasn't eaten. Winston can't concentrate. Beaten by his captors, he can't keep his mind on Julia. The Brotherhood is supposed to send a razor blade to members who are captured - this would let them escape through death. He understands that in this place the lights are never turned out. So here at last is the "place where there is no darkness!" A procession of prisoners now passes through this cell, including Winston's tubby neighbor Parsons, who is grimly proud that his daughter turned him in for Thoughtcrime before he did anything worse. Winston fears for Julia and believes but does not "feel" that he would double his own pain to save her. "In this place," he realizes, "you could not feel anything, except pain and the foreknowledge of pain." The door opens and O'Brien enters. Winston assumes O'Brien has been caught, but O'Brien says ironically, "They got me a long time ago." He isn't a prisoner, he's one of the captors. "You knew this," he tells Winston. "Don't deceive yourself… you have always known it." Winston knows this is true. When a guard smashes Winston's elbow, he realizes he could never wish more pain, even to save Julia, because in the face of pain there are no heroes. He falls to the floor. An amount of time which Winston cannot measure passes. During this time he is beaten and tortured. All the things that he thought he once knew are gone, and he relearns everything that he doesn't know he forgot he once knew. He begins to relearn his childhood the way the Party says he remembers it. Before it's all said and done, two and two could make five, or twelve, or orange if the Party so liked. Between his sessions of torture, O'Brien tells Winston how the Party operates, how it thrives, how it maintains its control over people by altering both the memories of those who know and the records for those who don't. O'Brien points out that the Party's real power is not over things, but over men, and that its power is both exercised and demonstrated by making them suffer. O'Brien's theory of power is not based on happiness, as in most Utopian visions of the perfect society. It is based on sadism. Winston thinks it is impossible for civilizations founded on fear, hatred and cruelty to survive. He has to believe that something - the human spirit, perhaps - will defeat them. O'Brien tells Winston that his kind is extinct. He may be the "last" man, but he is completely alone and by no means superior. He makes Winston strip and then leads him to a mirror. For the first time since his capture, Winston sees himself naked and cries out. Winston looks at himself and weeps. He blames O'Brien for bringing him to this awful state. O'Brien points out that nothing has happened that Winston didn't foresee. When he defied the Party by beginning the diary, he brought destruction upon himself. Winston has been broken and humiliated, but he has not betrayed Julia. In spite of all his confessions, he hasn't stopped loving Julia. O'Brien admits that it may be a long time before they shoot Winston, since he's such a difficult case. Everyone is "cured" sooner or later, he says reassuringly; and in the end they will shoot him. Weeks or months have passed. Winston is getting fatter, his room has been made more comfortable. He dozes, dreaming happily of the Golden Country, of his mother, of Julia and O'Brien. He is relatively content. Being fed, clean, and unmolested. He has now learned to love Big Brother. I don't know what else to say about this book it was a great book, that had a lot of meaning behind it. I would recommend this book to anyone, at times it is a little hard to follow but if you continue to read everything falls into place. I think this book was better than his other book Animal Farm because in that book I really thought that the ending kind of died but in this book it keep my interest from front cover to back. There was never a dull moment. I really don't know what else to say but it was really well written and mad a lot of sense. It was not completely thing that could never be true most of the ideas he had are quit possible, or just a little out of reach.
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