This particular reading revolved around a topic that every AP English student dreads...sex. Passages that involve sex are always the sections that we all try to work around and avoid when discussing the book in a seminar. But, of course, there is always some meaningful theme or motif related to it and it must come up at least once in conversation...and that is usually by the teacher. And the response is always either inappropriate or silence. Thankfully, typing a blog post on the subject matter is much easier than discussing it with my peers.
In this section, a lot of background was developed. I learned much more about Oceania's history and the time prior to the Revolution. There was also more character development. Up until this point, Winston was the protagonist and the only prominent character in the novel. Now, Julia plays a much bigger role. She is young, powerful, independent, and oddly hopeful.
Julia was introduced earlier in the book as the girl with dark black hair. Despite the fact that Winston did not know anything about her, he was drawn to her. For a while, he feared Julia was a member of the Thought Police. As his rebellious thoughts increased, Julia was seen as a threat. Winston's belief was tested when he received a secret message from her that said, "I love you." Was it a trap? Was it true?
After taking the risk and meeting Julia outside of work, Winston learned her feelings were true. The two begin to have a secret "affair" of sorts, fueled by their mutual hatred for Big Brother and sex.
In this section, you learn about many regulations within Oceania and the government's goals/reasoning for setting them. One regulation is on sex. The government's goal is to completely rid the population of the instinctual behavior. Eventually, the hope is that all children will be born through artificial insemination. In the time being, Big Brother is working to disassociate pleasure with sex.
Julia tells Winston what she thinks the reason behind eliminating sex is:
"When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. [The Party] can't bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three Year Plans and the Two Minutes of Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?" (Orwell 139.)
Whenever Julia and Winston meet, they discuss the corruption of Big Brother and have sex. However, for them, sex is not a declaration of love, but a form of rebellion.
"...you could 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." (133)
The affair between Winston and Julia is an example of how Winston's defiance is rising. It began with simple diary entries and progressed to sneaking around and defying the Party. They both share this insubordination, but Julia's is much more hopeful than Winston's. Julia holds onto the belief that the Party will be overruled, that her life will change. Whereas, Winston has accepted defeat and believes things will never go back to the way they were. It will be interesting to see if Julia has the power or influence to change Winston. If she can get him to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But interestingly enough, Julia hopes for change but she sees the reality of the matter too. She is aware that more likely than not, she will be caught by the Thought Police some day, however, she continues to keep her mind open.
The regulations put fourth by Big Brother are all ways that the government is making the population believe that 2+2=5. Simply put, the Party of Oceania wants everyone to mindlessly consume their lies. Their efforts to abolish sex, saying that it is dirty and disgusting, is an example of their manipulation. Personally, 2+2=5 is the perfect definition or description for Big Brother. Everything about the government is false or altered, but people absorb it as the truth. And that seems to be a strong commentary on our society today. People are inclined to believe everything they hear and assume all sources are reliable. As a society, we question and argue less. Less and less people do their own research or consider more than one point of view. And I think this is a prominent theme within 1984; one should never be skeptic or naive, one must achieve a happy medium.
Ah, sex. The topic students never want to talk about. However, you've done a nice job discussing the meaning of sex in this book. It reminds me an awful lot of the use Atwood made of sex in The Handmaid's Tale, since sex is for reproductive purposes only but becomes an act of rebellion for Offred.
ReplyDeleteMost important, though, is the lesson you discuss at the end of your blog post. We are, it seems to me, mindless consumers of information, but we just consume it, and rarely question or think about it, which means that we might not even care if it's true. As long as it agrees with what we think, we re-post or re-tweet. We need to not just consume information but consider it. Critical thinking is, for me, the most important skill we can teach.
Yes, I completely agree with your view on critical thinking. I wrote my research paper last year for Comp 11 on the dangers of social media/networking, and lack of critical thinking was one of my main points. Simply put, I find firsthand that opinions nowadays are very iffy. People no longer have the evidence or rationale to support what they believe. Largely because people read something on twitter or facebook and believe it to be true before checking the reliability or bias. And constant exposure to biased, argumentative posts is causing people to simply accept one side of an argument without a thought, rather than looking at both sides objectively.
DeleteI agree that, now more than ever, it is extremely important to teach the skill of critical thinking in school, but I can only imagine how hard it must be. Reading 1984 has opened my eyes to the manipulation that can result from a lack of independent thinking. And although the government in 1984 is obviously very extreme, after reading the book, the current decline in critical thinking skills is frightening.
From reading your post, I was reminded of Brave New World, in that sex is no longer the norm in the futuristic society and that artificial means are used to procreate. Did you find this same point of connection while reading?
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