1984 Question

Stranger_On_A_Train · October 24, 2009, 3:59pm

Winston describes looking forward to the bullet in the brain in an interior monologue after seeing Julia, but then they both rush into a crowd that is celebrating a victory of Oceania over…er…Eastasia. I mean, Eurasia. Wait, which one are we at war with, again?

Great movie. I recommend the Criterion release so you can compare the chopped American cinematic release, the full length European release, and the “Love Conquerers All” network television version.

Sam Lowry: Excuse me, Dawson, can you put me through to Mr. Helpmann’s office?
Dawson: I’m afraid I can’t sir. You have to go through the proper channels.
Sam Lowry: And you can’t tell me what the proper channels are, because that’s classified information?
Dawson: I’m glad to see the Ministry’s continuing its tradition of recruiting the brightest and best, sir.
Sam Lowry: Thank you, Dawson.

Stranger

Gorsnak · October 24, 2009, 4:12pm

The one we’ve always been at war with, of course.

OttoDaFe · October 24, 2009, 4:45pm

Such people are unpersons: they don’t exist, they never existed. So no harm, no foul.

In retrospect, I should have said “knowingly allowing a member to die with a criminal thought intact.” Yes, I know it’s all semantics; but the combination of doublethink and crimestop takes care of things quite handily.

As to the original question, my take on it is that Winston is be undone by his instincts, both as a human being and a Party member. As a human being, he (like the vast majority) freezes in the first moments of a crisis. At the point where this first reaction might pass away, the instincts of a Party member — raised from infancy (or in Winston’s case, from adolescence) to automatic obedience to the telescreen — take over. (In fact, Winston remarks on how unthinkable it would be to disobey.) Finally, when the guards enter the room, a different motivation comes into play: the desire to give them no excuse to hit him. At that point it’s all over.

The fact of the matter is that Winston, for all his idealistic talk, is a coward (at least in the sense that he fails to take action when doing so might have made a difference). I can’t be too hard on him, though: this just puts him in the same boat as the vast majority of the human race — including, most definitely, yours truly.

Captain_Amazing · October 24, 2009, 5:09pm

The State knows everything, though, so you are oldthinking. Your statement is crimethink and against the principles of Ingsoc.

Koxinga · October 24, 2009, 5:30pm

You, sir, are a doubleplusgood duckspeaker.

OttoDaFe · October 24, 2009, 9:48pm

Unfortunately, you are correct: I unbellyfeel Ingsoc.

Now with that said, you’ll have to excuse me: there’s a trim black-uniformed figure with a face like a wax mask at the door asking me to accompany him to the loo. At least, I think that’s what he said — with a face like a wax mask, he wasn’t articulating very well.

msmith537 · October 25, 2009, 1:28am

This is the film ending I remember. Although if you say there are two endings it must be so.

Qin_Shi_Huangdi · October 25, 2009, 1:35am

Also another question; how did Britain’s working class who in 1948 (when Orwell wrote the book) was highly educated (well compared to the rest of the world anyways) and strongly involved in politics become no better then Russian serfs in the space of a generation?

Bryan_Ekers · October 25, 2009, 1:49am

They were technically American serfs. Oceania was the result of American expansian, Eurasia grew out of the USSR and Eastasia the Chinese.

Some of Winston’s fragmentary childhood memories describe an atomic war in the fifties:

Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war, but it was evident that there had been a fairly long interval of peace during his childhood, because one of his early memories was of an air raid which appeared to take everyone by surprise. Perhaps it was the time when the atomic bomb had fallen on Colchester. He did not remember the raid itself, but he did remember his father’s hand clutching his own as they hurried down, down, down into some place deep in the earth, round and round a spiral staircase which rang under his feet and which finally so wearied his legs that he began whimpering and they had to stop and rest. His mother, in her slow, dreamy way, was following a long way behind them. She was carrying his baby sister – or perhaps it was only a bundle of blankets that she was carrying: he was not certain whether his sister had been born then. Finally they had emerged into a noisy, crowded place which he had realized to be a Tube station.

There were people sitting all over the stone-flagged floor, and other people, packed tightly together, were sitting on metal bunks, one above the other. Winston and his mother and father found themselves a place on the floor, and near them an old man and an old woman were sitting side by side on a bunk. The old man had on a decent dark suit and a black cloth cap pushed back from very white hair: his face was scarlet and his eyes were blue and full of tears. He reeked of gin. It seemed to breathe out of his skin in place of sweat, and one could have fancied that the tears welling from his eyes were pure gin. But though slightly drunk he was also suffering under some grief that was genuine and unbearable. In his childish way Winston grasped that some terrible thing, something that was beyond forgiveness and could never be remedied, had just happened. It also seemed to him that he knew what it was. Someone whom the old man loved – a little granddaughter, perhaps had been killed. Every few minutes the old man kept repeating:

'We didn’t ought to 'ave trusted 'em. I said so, Ma, didn’t I? That’s what comes of trusting 'em. I said so all along. We didn’t ought to 'ave trusted the buggers.

But which buggers they didn’t ought to have trusted Winston could not now remember.

That could have been a sneak Soviet attack or even an American one.

Chronos · October 26, 2009, 3:21am

Also note that it wasn’t necessarily a single generation: There’s no way of knowing what year the book takes place in (yes, the year is called 1984, but does that mean anything?).

Bryan_Ekers · October 26, 2009, 10:33pm

Orwell makes that point explicitly in Chapter One:

I can imagine it being 1982-1986, but it’s a little less likely to be 2024.

Lamia · October 26, 2009, 11:29pm

I was once in a video rental store and saw a copy of 1984 on the shelf.

In the Romance section.

I thought it must have been incorrectly shelved, but I checked the box and it was tagged as belonging in Romance. I guess someone had a…unique…interpretation of the film.

Qin_Shi_Huangdi · October 27, 2009, 1:31am

Winston clearly remembers a capitalist society and a revolution thus it’s probably sometime in the 1980s. Also the old prole does remember the Hyde Park, capitalists, top hats, and so on.