Prompt: In "Book Two," Winston Smith is torn between his personal guilt over commitment to his job and his traditional trust/belief in the One State, and his overwhelming curiosity which is fueled by other relationships and a yearning for something more/better. In your opinion, why is Winston having a difficult time buying in to what Big Brother and the State are selling? Explain and support. Are his small acts of defiance (questioning) a form of protest? Why/Why not? Compare/contrast Winston's small rebellion to a more current act of rebellion within the United States (think Tea Party Movement, Occupy Wall Street, Anti-War Protests, etc.) in all facets - what they are fighting for, who they are rebelling against, the way their protests seen by the government, the way their protests are seen by the masses. Ultimately, the purpose of this blog is to examine how Orwellian we have become.
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Winston's having a difficult time buying into what the state is "selling" because it conflicts with his grasping at ancestral memories and innate feelings that he can't seem to suppress. Julia brings non-Victory coffee to one of their trysts and Winston cannot help but recall some innate urge to believe that this is how coffee was supposed to look, smell, taste, feel, despite that it conflicts with everything the Party would have him believe. He can't suppress the dreams of his mother, the shielding arm that guarded him, much like the one he'd seen at the "flicks" earlier, but as far as the Party was concerned no mother of Winston had ever existed in the first place. The Party declared her not a person; therefore, she was not a person. Still, in spite of all the external forces pressuring him to believe otherwise, within his internal space his mother did exist. There did exist a world were coffee had been of quality, a world where the paperweight had come from, a world where 2+2 had indeed always equaled five and there was not a single doubt about it. The question that Winston struggles with near the end of book two is whether concrete truth actually exists if it is only present within the mental space of one individual; he comes to the conclusion that it is, and that "sanity is not statistical". In other words, truth is not determined by what beliefs are popular at the time, and facts are still facts even if only one person knows them. Winston's latching onto these beliefs is what keeps him from ever truly assimilating into the Party mindset.
The other question Winston struggles with is the importance of effectual/ineffectual actions - whether doing something is actually worth it if it has no direct, identifiable result or leaves no mark on history. Julia answers that ineffectual actions are meaningless, but O'Brian claims that the only forms of protest that the Brotherhood can manage are indeed ineffectual; they primarily exist only in thought form and have no direct, material consequence. Therefore, in the mind of Winston and the Brotherhood, these questioning thoughts, although mostly ineffectual, do constitute as a form of protest. These questioning thoughts alone are grave offenses, as the Party's ultimate goal is complete, utter, wholehearted belief in the reality they purport.
The Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street protests, though identified with members of opposing parties, are fundamentally similar in what they aim for: to weaken the superfluous power and influence of the "higher-ups" in our society. They are both unabashedly vocal about their beliefs, and never seem to back down despite occasional pressures from the government. Like Winston's rebellion, they represent the "lowers" on the social scale protesting the actions of the higher-ups. Unlike the rebellion we see in 1984, however, they do not have to censor or conceal what they aim for, and their achievements are acquired through action. In 1984, protests are events of the mind and not outward action, and must always be concealed from the watchful eyes of the Party.
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