Response to 1984

In the beginning I thought the book was kind of confusing because I really didn’t know where he was going with it but by the middle of the book things started to come together. The whole idea of big brother and the two parties are a scary way to think about life. I know that a lot of George Orwell life inspires his writing so it almost makes you think about what he has seen in his life.

“One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction. Syme will be vaporized. He is tool intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.” (Pg. 47)

The passage means the inter party want to keep the outer party in the dark. They don’t want them to think for themselves because they will then want better living situation and more freedom and the inter part can’t have that because they would lose their power over them. This passage shows the reader how the party works. It shows the reader that it’s not safe to have too much information, and talk about it. This brings the story together; it really paints the picture of how things are in Oceania. The inter party had rules and one of the rules were no individualism and no independent thinking. This passage shows the reader how serious it was to commit one of these thought crimes it could be punishable by death.

“Do anything to me! He yelled. You’ve been starving me for weeks. Finish me off and let me die. Shoot me. Hang me. Sentences me to twenty-five years. Is there somebody else you want me to give away? Just say who it is and I’ll tell you anything you want. I don’t care who it is or what you do to them. I’ve got a wife and three children. The biggest of them isn’t six years old. You can take the whole lot of them and cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I’ll stand by and watch it. But not room 101.” (Pg 211)

This passage means the inter party will do whatever it takes to keep control over the outer party. The passage shows how far the elite are willing to go in order brainwash and control people. They are willing to subject people to things that will make them turn on their own families in order to get them to follow their rules. This passage shows how scared the people get when they are threaten with room 101 and room was used to get people to become politically reeducated.  

I take this as a warning, a warning that when people get too much power they will use it against other people. It shows us that power and authority is not something that we don’t want in one person or one group’s hands. I also learn that people can try to rebel and do the right thing and loose, we don’t hear that a lot in our society because we always want the good guy to win but it does always happen.

We see the uses of hate and fear mongering in politics today. They are used in order to persuade a certain group to ether vote a certain way or to make a competitor look bad. If we could take the time to do our own research and find out what we want to know reading it ourselves instead of finding out by watching television we might not be so fast at agreeing with one side over the other. Maybe we could use technology like our computers to ask Politian question ourselves face to face so to speak. This would cut down on dancing around question.