Rough draft Dystopian novel

The Resistance

Try living in a society for a day, where there are no luxuries, no emotions allowed except hate, and there is no place in the world to go where a person is not under a the scrutiny of another. 1984, written by George Orwell, creates this brutal society where the general population is kept inferior and in constant fear. This society falls under the rule of a party call INGSOC led under the figurehead of a man named Big Brother. George Orwell uses Winston’s physical and psychological rebellion against Big Brother to convey how people desire to control their own lives; this shows that no matter how oppressive the government is, there will always be resistance de to human nature.

The primary ways that Winston fights against society show us that human nature is to rebel against an oppressive government that is in place. The primary reason that he does this I s due to the protest that he feels within his own body. While discussing the truth or untruth of the history texts, he states, “The only evidence on the contrary was the mute protest in your own bones, the instinctive feeling that the conditions in which you live were intolerable and that at some other time they must have been different” (Orwell 63). The fact that he feels this protest in his bones to the oppression that the government puts on him shows us that, although he has never lived in a better time, the instincts of his body are that this is no how he was meant to live. Through this we can see that he is unhappy with his conditions in Oceania and that he wishes for it to be different. The fact that he wants it to be different also shows us that it is in his nature to want to be fulfilled and happy. This is Orwell’s way of showing us that it is in human nature to rebel against an oppressive government that doesn’t fulfill our needs. Winston also shows us that it is in his nature to rebel when he participates in the Two Minutes Hate, “Thus, at one moment Winston’s hatred was not turned against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police; and at such moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies” (Orwell 16). The fact that Winston, instead of hating the enemy of the Party, instinctively turns to feeling hope and love towards Goldstein shows us that it is a natural occurrence to hate the object that is oppressing you, and also natural to love that which stands for your freedom. This demonstrates that the people will automatically rebel against anything that oppresses them. Orwell shows us that this is a natural, good thing to do through Winston’s rebellion.

One of the ways that Winston specifically resists the government of Ingsoc by using his mind. The two ways by which Winston uses his mind in order to fight against the power of Ingsoc is through his diary and the article on the capitalists. The first is his diary. Winston first finds the diary in an old shop in a proletarian market. After buying the item, he committed an act that could lead to his death. Yet, as he mused about a past recollection, “His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large neat capitals - DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER over and over again, filling half a page” (Orwell 19). This is where Winston reveals the first inklings of his hatred of the Party and Big Brother. Even though he had to mask his true intentions, he was still starting to resist against the government of Ingsoc. In the diary, even though he could be killed for writing in it, the book allows him to reveal what he really thinks about the government he serves under. After he writes in the diary, he starts to think of the consequences of the action: a visit from the Thought Police. Winston began to become paranoid at the thought of the police arresting him, and yet does not try to redeem himself with any words of condolence. Instead, he writes further in his diary, stating that “theyll shoot me i don't care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother” (Orwell 20). The passage written reaffirms what Winston previously wrote. Winston could have done many things to reconcile what he has done, from smudging the ink so it was illegible, to burning the book, or “to tear out the spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether” (Orwell 19). Instead, Winston wrote more with animosity towards Big Brother, for he ‘did not care’ whether anyone would find out about the diary or not; the diary reveals Winston’s true thoughts.

Another way that Winston used his mind to resist Ingsoc was through the photo and article on Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford. Winston first comes across the photo in an article that he needed to change in the Ministry of Truth. When he first saw it, he was so overcome with fear over the photo that he pushed it under the other papers that he needed to “fix”. This led to Winston using his mind, since he was able to deduce that “The point was that at both trials all three men had confessed that on that date they had been on Eurasian soil. […] There was only one possible conclusion: the confessions were lies. Even at that time Winston had not imagined that the people who were wiped out in the purges had actually committed the crimes that they were accused of. But this was concrete evidence;” (Orwell 67). The photo was not taken seriously back when Winston first had the photo, he was not completely against Ingsoc yet. But, with the hindsight granted from experience, he would have decided to keep the photo if he was resisting the government during that time. This shows that Winston would like to change events, make it so he could further resist the government. Even while Winston was being tortured, when they showed him the same photo, he cried out “’It exists!’ […] it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it” (Orwell 204). This further proves that Winston resisted the government that was trying to say that the photo did not exist. By proclaiming that the photo did exist, Winston went against what the government was trying to force him to believe.

“To embrace her was like embracing a wooden image” (Orwell 58). Winston’s wife felt no pleasure in having sexual intercourse, and she was part of the anti-sex league. The government wanted people to have sex like Winston’s wife did, they didn’t want people to have pleasure because the people might rebel against the government. They were trying to take all the emotions away except hate. For example, the government wanted to take away orgasm scientifically so that people would not feel pleasure during sexual intercourse, but rather just do it for pro-creation. “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” (Orwell 105). Winston tries to show that he is rebelling against the Party by having sexually intercourse with Julia. The party views sexual intercourse as something that is very wrong and that people should not feel pleasure in doing so. But Winston does it anyways and this quote shows that the action he takes in fact does hurt the Party.

The natural tendencies to physically and psychologically rebel against an oppressive government show that people want to control their own lives. Those people will try their hardest to rebel against the one in charge for as long as possible, since rebelling against the society usually ends up in severe punishment. So, do you think that you’ll be able to survive in the suffocating, totalitarian atmosphere of Airstrip 1?