Wednesday, April 10, 2013

1984 Response

After reading 1984 i was honestly confused and a little angry. I hated the way the book had ended, especially the fact that Winston ended the book with "loving big brother" it was almost like the whole book was for no reason. One of my favorite passages from the book was when Winston first saw the note from Julia. "I love you" the note read. I was so shocked and it was so ironic to me that she was randomly in love with him and Winston, just the night before, contemplated killing her. I knew the book would be very different from that moment on because i figured that she would probably have a lot of the same views that Winston himself had shown the readers already thus far in the book.

Another passage that I liked in the book is the passage about Winston first writing in his new diary, which in itself was a crime: "He began writing in a hurried untidy scrawl: they'll shoot me i donn't care they'll shoot me in the back of the neck i don't care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i don't care down with big brother" (pg 21). Not only did Winston commit a crime with the purchase on the diary, but he determined his fate once he wrote those words. I liked this passage because i knew from that point on Winston would do whatever he could to rebel against the party and i thought that would be very entertaining to watch. 

I personally think the book was supposed to be read as a warning. I think the author was trying to tell us that too much power for anyone, especially a government, is never a good thing. I think the author wanted us to see how dangerous and unjust a society could be if people simply just rolled over and accepted everything as fact and law without questioning anything for themselves. A big thing i took away from this author and book is that the government needs to be constantly checked and challenged in order to have a successful country/ state. Without citizens who stand up for their beliefs and question the government i think a society like Winston's could be compared to a modern day North Korea which is obviously a bad thing for many reasons. The people in Korea are at the mercy of the government, the government makes all of the decisions and the people have to accept it for what it is. North Korea is a dictatorship and that is exactly what Winston's society was i believe. A dictatorship ruled by Big Brother, even though "Big Brother" never actually showed himself and may have not even existed. Which is even scarier to think that a made up person could rule a country without question. 

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