Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Response to 1984

"In the old days he thought, a man looked at a girl's body and saw that it was desirable, and that was the end of the story. But you cold not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act."

This passage shows that very thing that the Party is trying to instill in the people is that sex is not a desirable act. In fact, that are trying to instill that any feeling other than fear and hatred is no acceptable. The act of Winston and Julia making love and embracing each other is mainly just rebellion against the Party. It allows them to feel as though they have conquered something without the Party's interference, and that they have done so on their own will. Though this act makes them feel superior, it eventually leads to something deeper between them; something the Party also will not accept.

"Sometimes...they threaten you with something-something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, 'Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.' And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself."

This passage show how the Party always wins. No matter how much you may think care about someone, and think that with all your heart you will never betray them, you're wrong. Some way, somehow, the Party can get inside of you. They can make you do anything they want. And in the end, all you care about is yourself. This is exactly what the Party wants, and this example show that they will get it.

I read this book as a warning that stronger powers can take over before we know it's happening. We could easily be succumbed to such a world where we are constantly being monitored, and where we have no free rights to do as we wish. We could be being watched or heard right now and not even know it, because that is how much our technology is growing and enhancing. This books shows that we need to be aware of what is happening in the government, and what is happening around us. If we're not careful, we could put ourselves in the kind of world where we are also controlled, and have no way of escape.

You can see the industrialization of sex all around you; in movies, on the news, even in your own life experiences. Sex is supposed to be an intimate bond between two people who share each other's love. Instead it has become something of lust that people take no mind to, and sleep with as many people as they wish. There are brothels all around the world, degrading women and using them as sex objects. Sex is no longer a sacred act, but rather an act of one's desires and sexual urges. We can avoid this, however, if we can find a way to do away with these such places. If we can create an image of sex that is more intimate, then maybe our future generations will take that into account and leave the other urges behind. It would not be something that would happen over night, of course, but over time, maybe,

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