Journal #3: 1984, Topic C

Topic C
Warnings

George Orwell has many warning signs in 1984, but the one that stood out to me most was his warning that if history keeps going on the same way, humans will lose their qualities. In other words, if we keep on getting into large wars, humans will only care about that, and will do whatever it takes to become the world superpower. Through the description of the buildings and the Party, the government, I could tell that that the society was terrible. The buildings were described as falling apart; they “smelled like rotten cabbage”. By this description, I could tell that the society was poor. What I thought was odd though was that the government was collecting money for Hate Week, which was war related, even though they don’t have enough money to support living conditions. Also, the society is under constant surveillance, suggesting that dehumanization is taking place. This is exactly what Orwell was trying to express, that if humans keep going into wars, then they will suffer.

I believe that Orwell does make this warning clear and believable because of the way he describes everything. Like I mentioned before, the economy is not stable enough to support living conditions, however the government is collecting money to prepare for Hate Week. Along with this, movies and even television are all about war. In the first part of the book, he makes it clear that this is a growing problem because the movie is about a family who is being shot at by a helicopter. The people at this movie laugh too, they are laughing about a mother and a child being killed by gunfire.

I really didn’t catch an alternative to this warning; however there may have been slight hints to alternatives. I guess that thinking for yourself may have been one, but I’m not very sure.

1984 Topic B: Julia

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Topic B

Julia

            Julia is much like Winston, both sharing hatred for the Party.  She is involved in many organizations such as the Junior Anti-Sex League, and displays herself as being a normal citizen of Oceania.  Julia is the ideal citizen on the outside, however on this inside she is a rebel.

            Winston’s first impression of Julia was that he hated her, and wanted to kill her.  She was the kind of girl who was suspicious of being a member of the Thought Police for the Party because she was young and he wanted to “smash her skull in with a cobblestone” (101).  Later, however, he and Julia get to know each other better, and eventually have an affair. 

            Julia rebels against the Party by having sex.  Sex is against the law in this society and is considered to be a terrible thing because the Party “was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it” (66).  This is because the Party does not want people to rise up and question the authority.  They want people to stick as a unit, and be happy with the life that they are providing for them.  This is somewhat successful in a vague sense seeing how they keep this going for a while.  But in the end, they were caught, and consequently they are sent to the Ministry of Love where they removed from society.  This ultimately shows that the Party is in control of the society.  Through this, one can come to the conclusion that in this society, the government has complete dominance over the citizens, making the society a Dystopia.

Journal #1: 1984, Topic A

            “That’s coral, that is,” said the old man.  “It must have come from the Indian Ocean.  They used to kind of embed it in the glass.  That wasn’t made less than a hundred years ago.  More, by the look of it.”

            “It’s a beautiful thing,” said Winston.

            “It is a beautiful thing,” said the other appreciatively.  “But there’s not many that’d say so nowadays.”  He coughed (…) But who cares about genuine antiques nowadays-even the few that’s left?” (Orwell, 95)

            The society in 1984 is seen as trying to move on from the past.  Throughout the first section of the novel, Winston notices that mostly everything from the past is either gone, or ignored.  This is because the Party (which represents the government) hides things from the public, making up lies to cover for the things that they don’t want to be released.  They do this to prevent rebellion among the citizens.  The proles (people who do not work for the Party) have the only items remaining from the past.  The Party members do not have such items because the Party does not want rebellion to

            This can be shown through the passage because when the old man says, “But who cares about genuine antiques nowadays-even the few that’s left” he implies that the Party has removed things from the past.