1984 Reflection

            Overall, I really liked 1984.  I thought that it was really suspenseful and the concept of the book was really interesting.  Just when I thought the book couldn’t get more suspenseful, it did.  I had a feeling that Winston and Julia would be caught because their situation was too good to be true.  I was skeptical of O’Brien when he was explaining The Brotherhood to Winston.  It sounded a lot like The Party in the sense that members don’t really know what they’re doing or why they are doing it.  It was blind faith and willing to agree to do horrible things such as killing, lying and cheating which are all aspects of The Party.  I had a feeling that O’Brien was a liar.

                What was most surprising for me was Winston’s betrayal.  In the second section of the book he seems to be really focused on humanizing himself.  He has the epiphany about his mother and what love is: “If you love someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love” (168).  I thought that this realization meant that he would be willing to die defending Julia.  He is able to tolerate all the abuse and torture in jail but when he is confronted with the rats he sells her out and says “Do it to Julia!  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!” (297). This was such a change in attitude because before his love for Julia and his desire to stay “human” sustained him in his cruel society.  Looking back on the reading, I realize that it was only natural for Winston to be selfish and sacrifice Julia but when I read it I was surprised.  I had been skeptical of their relationship because I didn’t think that love could exist in their society.  Winston’s feelings for Julia changed so much throughout the book.  He went from wanting to rape her to wanting to kill her to using her as an act of rebellion to falling in love with her.  His feelings for her were never really stable.  What was most surprising for me was her understanding.  She isn’t mad at him because she betrayed him in exchange.  She realizes how The Party has dehumanized her and taken away her feelings and says, “They threaten you with something…you can’t stand up to…and then you say ‘Don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else…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…..You want it to happen to the other person.  You don’t give a damn what they suffer.  All you care about is yourself” (303). 

Proving to prisoners that they have no regard for others is what The Party intended on doing all along, and for me that is the saddest part of the book.  Although I obviously would have wanted an ending where Winston and Julia are able to cling on to their humanity, I’m glad it ended the way it did because it was realistic.  The book really shows how people’s morals can become compromised.  On page 168 Winston realizes that “The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you those mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account”.  The Party succeeds in doing this and that is why after all the sacrifices they have made, Winston and Julia ultimately betray each other.