Nineteen Eighty-Four is a fiction novel about totalitarianism and the destiny of a man who tried to escape from a political power. The book was written by George Orwell in 1948 and had the Soviet Union as a prototype of the government described in it. In the book, betrayal is a recurring theme. Every single character in the book has betrayed one another throughout the story. A Nineteen Eighty-Four society is very untrustworthy. Orwell explores various kinds of betrayal, including the main character’s self-betrayal, to heighten the mood of loneliness and alienation. Through the Two Minutes Hate, the daily telescreen propaganda and Junior Spies, citizens of Airstrip One are filled with fear of the Party, independent thinking is destroyed, …show more content…
Initially, Winston believes she is deeply connected to the party, but once she approaches him, they begin a love affair. Their actions and feelings of hope and love are a symbol of the Party’s weakness. Their love affair is a direct rebellion to what the Party allows. It was not just the simple act of being together, but everything that it involved. Winston had to rent a secret room from the shop owner, Charrington. This meant that not only did he trust Charrington, but that he had a safe haven away from the eyes of Big Brother. Until Winston met Julia, he believed no one could be trusted. He saw betrayal in everyone, including neighbors and children. He even believes at one point that he may have murdered his own mother. However, Julia was very carefree. Her rebellion to the Party was not for the intent to overthrow it, but simply for her own amusement. While she was a member of the Anti-sex league, she secretly had affairs with many men. Winston’s affair with Julia gives him the courage to approach O’Brien about the Brotherhood, an underground group trying to overthrow the Party. However, eventually, both Winston and Julia are captured by the Thoughtpolice because Charrington was secretly a part of them. Orwell details the torture of Winston and the great lengths that O’Brien has
The relationship that was formed between Winston and Julia is another example of betrayal between the characters. After their arrest, Winston and Julia were separated and forced to betray each other. When Winston asked O’Brien what happened to Julia, he replied, “She betrayed you, Winston. Immediately-unreservedly. I have seldom seen anyone come over to us so promptly. You would hardly recognize her if you saw her...It was a perfect conversion, a textbook case" (Orwell 259). However, Winston did not betray Julia right away. Naomi Jacobs, a Professor and Interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences wrote, “For we know—as, of course, did Orwell himself—that minds do not always break under torture, that some people suffer appalling pain and fear and yet refuse to betray their loved ones and their comrades in arms” (14). Unfortunately, it was inevitable that the
At first, Winston felt no true attraction to Julia, but in their second time making love, Winston felt the physical loyalty that is involved in relationships. Winston was in love with Julia and they had created a bond of loyalty together which is very dangerous to do so
Tired of feeling the way he is, with the monotonous struggle of everyday life Winston decides to oppose the party in more real ways; and begins to deviate from certain set behaviors to free himself from this bondage of the party. “To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone-to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone”(25-26). He has realized what the government does to people; how everyone is made to be the same, where no one is allowed to think on their own. The party is omnipotent in all affairs and he will not go along with it anymore. Winston has made up his mind; he is going to do everything he can to bring down the party. He and Julia go to O’Brien’s apartment one afternoon, and Winston’s true hatred is revealed. “We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy, some kind of secret organization working against the Party,
While interrogating Winston, O’Brien tells him, “[Julia] betrayed you Winston. You would hardly recognize her if you saw her. All her rebelliousness, her deceit, her folly, her dirty-mindedness – everything has been burned out of her” (272). Through systematic torture, Big Brother was able to change everything Julia believes in and who she is as a person. When placed in Room 101 and faced with his greatest fear, rats, Winston exclaims, “Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!” (289). Winston loved Julia, but has been tortured and broken to the point where he is willing to betray her to save himself. As Winston looks up at a picture of Big Brother on a telescreen, he feels happy and safe and acknowledges that “he loved Big Brother” (300). Winston once passionately loved Julia and hated Big Brother, but torture has changed him to accept and love everything the Party says and
Even though he is married, he and Julia have an affair that combines their personal desires as well as their desire to fight against the Party as it is explicitly stated in the novel. Winston and Julia both willingly participate in the affair because they are both moved to action by the Party’s acts of injustice. Winston is aware that the Party has blatantly outlawed “love” and Winston wants to feel romance in order to spite the Party. Both Julia and Winston would do anything to spite Big Brother. In addition to the love factor, Winston isn’t just participating because Julia is youthful, more so because he is drawn to the act of power. Winston isn’t just resisting power, he feels the need to hold
Authors often use their works as a way to express their own opinions and ideologies. However, it is the skill of the author that determines whether these ideas are combined with the plot seamlessly, making a creative transition of ideas from the author’s mind, to the reader’s. There is no doubt that George Orwell is a masterful writer, and one of his most popular works, 1984, clearly expresses his negative views of the Totalitarian government. A common theme in the dystopian society in 1984 is betrayal: The Party is very intolerant towards any form of disloyalty, and anyone who plots against them or Big Brother will eventually either betray their own mind and accept Big Brother as their leader, or be betrayed and revealed to The Party by
Described as “young”, “free-spirited”, and “practical”, Julia differs from Winston in many ways. She is open about her sexuality, and sleeps with several party members before she meets Winston. Although these acts are frowned upon in the eyes of The Party, Julia doesn’t intend them that way, and tells Winston that it is only to satisfy her own desires. Julia only “..questioned the teachings of the party when they in some way touched upon her life”(153). She was too young to remember a life that contradicted The Party’s teachings, and because she believed all Party propaganda to be lies, Julia had no interest in what those teachings were anyway.
novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Society in the novel had to face surveillance and
Before Winston met Julia, his body was wasting away and he believe he didn’t have anything worth living for. He started a journal and wrote “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” all over a page, even though he knew he would be killed for committing thoughtcrime (19). However, when he sees “the words I love you [on Julia’s note,] the desire to stay alive had welled up in him, and the taking of minor risks suddenly seemed stupid” (91). Not only has Winston’s appetite for life returned because of Julia’s affection, but he becomes physically healthier as well. He “had grown fatter, his varicose ulcer had subsided… [and] his fits of coughing… had stopped” (124). Julia’s love strengthens Winston. After detailed planning to assure the Party could not eavesdrop on their date, Julia and Winston spend a whole afternoon in the countryside together and make love (98-106). This adventure is even more special to them because it is an act of rebellion against the Party, though they realize the fact they are able to be together is all that is important. Through each of their rendezvouses, Winston and Julia’s relationship grows stronger. Whenever they meet, “they [sit] talking for hours” (108). All the time they spend together leads
Believing that O’Brien is a member of the Brotherhood and he too is opposed to the Party, Julia and Winston pay him a visit at his apartment. O’Brien tells the two that they must be willing to lose their own lives in order to take down Big Brother; however, when he asks if they would be willing to betray one another, they refuse. Winston’s hatred for Big Brother has accumulated so much that he is now willing to die solely for the sake of taking down the Party. At the start of the novel, Winston could not stand the thought of his own death. The thought haunted him, and he was not prepared for that to happen. As the story progresses and Winston is being oppressed in more and more ways, he despises the Party more than ever, and eventually is
Julia is first shown as a sexless figure since she is a member of the Anti-Sex League. When Winston first sees Julia, he does not know her name. He only knows that she works in the Fiction Department. Winston “disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy” (10). This demonstrates that at the beginning of the novel, he does not like Julia. He thinks that she is dangerous, and wants to get him in trouble. He thinks that she is a member of the thought police and that she will turn him in. This proves the assumptions of men and how Winston just assumes that Julia is dangerous. According to Meia, a writer for Medium, “Winston started out hating Julia simply because he wanted to have sex with her. In knowing, or assuming, that that would never happen, Winston finds himself cheated out of something that he feels he ought to have” (Meia). Winston does not like Julia because he feels like she will get him in trouble, but he has an attraction toward her. With her Anti-sex League sash, he thinks that she will follow the rules of the Party. He feels like if he would have sex with the young and beautiful Julia without getting caught, then that would be the ultimate rebel and they will defeat Big Brother. Winston thinks that all women in Oceania are all complete followers of the Party and will not disobey the laws. However, Julia's appearance deceives Winston, and he finds out that she is unorthodox and has the same intention as he
Winston fell in love with a woman he worked with named Julia. He and Julia shared the same beliefs and frustrations with the government. They both felt like they needed to rebel against the country's regulations. Winston wanted to outwardly rebel against the government. He wanted to make life better for future generations with freedoms and individuality. Julia knew that cooperating with the party outwardly and rebelling in
Many authors bring in the theme of politics into their work in order to make their creations more appealing and as a form of expressing their personal views. George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-four” is a novel that contains many political messages to the world. Orwell felt that part of his role as a writer is to serve as a voice of conscience to our society by trying to express the truth as he saw it. The novel was written in a crucial time period in modern history after the Second World War and at the beginning of the Cold War. One can see that the book was influenced by current events of its time mixed with Orwell’s standpoint. He focuses on three major political issues that effect society, which are the dangers of war, class differences
George Orwell focuses his belief of the “[disbelief] in the existence of the objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer”. He envisions the decay of future society and implements his ideas through his creation of “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Indications of a psychological fear are examined initially through the progression and change of the human mind, which is built upon the oppression of the Party. Through the construction of a world with no freedom and individuality, the human mind adapts the change of truth and pay utter submission from the Party, to escape the presence of their ultimate weakness. With those who are rebellious of the rules of the Party gradually brings out the ugly nature of humanity. Through the fragility of the human mind, it reinforces Orwell’s idea of a corrupted society, as there no longer remains a variety of human emotions for the next generation to pass onwards. Thus conclusively portraying the defeat of human mind unable to withstand the physical and mental tortures from the Party.
George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is the ultimate negative utopia. Written in 1949 as an apocalyptic vision of the future, it shows the cruelty and pure horror of living in an utterly totalitarian world where all traces of individualism are being abolished. This novel was composed to denounce Hitler?s Germany and Stalin?s Russia and to create a warning to the rest of the world. It takes the reader through a year in the life of Winston Smith as he transforms from a rebel to a fanatic of totalitarianism.