Thursday, May 2, 2013
Winston and Julia's Motives
One thing that I found very surprising in this reading was how selfish and cruel both Julia and Winston are. In this section, they visit O'Brien and he talks to them a little about how their lives will go; he informs Winston that he will spend his life working and following orders until he is caught, tortured, and killed. O'Brien questions both Julia and Winston about what they are willing to do; he lists horrible actions and asks them if they are prepared "to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit forming drugs," and to even "throw sulphuric acid in a child's face" if it would somehow benefit the party (172). Both Julia and Winston readily agree to all of these without question. Winston and Julia are at this point only thinking for themselves; they have no problem harming innocent people. While people often make the argument that some violence is necessary to create a change, I find it alarming how quickly they were willing to agree to O'Brien's demands. Also, they say that they would not be willing to separate and see each other ever again, yet they have no problem committing murder. They are acting in entirely selfish ways. Both are fed up with their lives and the lack of freedom in their lives, so they feel that joining O'Brien will provide meaning. I do not think that either of them truly care about the good of humanity. Rather, they only about themselves. I think that Winston and Julia have lost some of their humanity; their behavior is clearly different than that of the proles. This could just be a coincidence, but it appears then that the Party is succeeding in controlling everyone. As we saw in The Road, a person's humanity is one of the only aspects of life that can provide hope for the future. If the boy in The Road was not so compassionate and good, the book would have been a lot more hopeless. Likewise, reading about Winston and Julia's willingness to be cruel made their position seem more hopeless to me. I lost some hope in them, since it is no longer clear what they are fighting for. They think they are joining O'Brien to help with the rebellion, but I believe that they are doing it for their own benefit. However, whether they actually follow through with what they have agreed to will determine a lot more about their motives.
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I began reading your blog post and was instantly surprised. When I read this section of the reading, I did not think of Julia and Winston as being selfish and cruel. Instead, I thought that they were doing the right thing by joining the brotherhood and agreeing to do whatever necessary to help bring down Big Brother. After reading your blog post, I agree that the actions that are taken to attempt to bring down Big Brother are cruel especially “[throwing] sulphuric acid in a child’s face;” however, I assumed these actions were not a regular occurrence since Winston had never mentioned random incidents of innocent people being attacked (172). Unlike you, I was not surprised that Winston quickly agreed to these terms. He has become fed up with The Party and their control over the history of the country. If I were living in Oceania and was equally annoyed, I believe I would want to join the brotherhood and try to make a difference. While I believe that Winston and Julia want to make a difference and try to overthrow The Party, I agree that they have lost some of their humanity. Winston discusses how “what mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man;” however, the party has eliminated any form of relationship (165). Unless you were previously married and had children, it is impossible to have an acceptable relationship with someone else. Winston discusses how the proles are the only ones who have kept this form of humanity and have “held on to the primitive emotions which he himself had to relearn by conscious effort” (165). I agree with Winston that “[he] [is] not human” (165). Winston and Julia’s emotions have been taken over by the Party. The Party’s actions have caused them to want to rebel and to agree to the terms stated by O’Brien to be part of the brotherhood. Overall, I believe that Winston and Julia may be able to make a difference by joining the brotherhood; however, it could go the other way and they could get caught and killed.
ReplyDeleteYou both seem to touch on some of what Colin mentioned in his post, too: http://ablock1984.blogspot.com/2013/05/winstons-conscience-and-memories.html
ReplyDeleteJackie, you note that their actions aren't selfish; rather, they are the expressions of the pursuit of human relationships, which may be why they refuse to separate. But it's also true that this pursuit of relationships is an entirely selfish act, as Alanna suggests, because we are looking to satisfy our own individual needs rather than the greater good. These needs are largely driven by our past and informed by our individual emotional perspective on the worl.
I think it's interesting that you see this as a way of them losing their last humanity, because it's a hopeful point in the book. At last, Winston and Julia are rebelling, they've found the underground, they're going to act out against this super-oppressive society! That scene has never struck me as particularly selfish or jarring, but you make a good point when you say that, in the very act of becoming true humans, separating themselves from the group to become strong individuals, they also kill some part of themselves, the part that the man in The Road was so intent on preserving. It makes me wonder if there is any way to win in the society of 1984.
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