Essay/Term paper: Another 1984

Essay, term paper, research paper:  George Orwell

From the very beginning Winston and Bernard make

them enemies of their society. These characters risk their

lives to try and recapture what we take for granted today.

Winston and Bernard try to keep their individuality and

recapture through their jobs, and the way they live. Both

1984 and Brave new World show us that we must be

careful to protect our ideas and way of life. Through the two

main characters, Winston and Bernard, the authors show the

readers that once tyranny takes hold reality and individuality

are lost. Winston attempts to keep in his individuality through

the apartment he rents. The apartment, which was rented

from the owner of the antique store, is one way he makes

himself different. The antique store owner could sense how

Winston was different from the others, and he showed that

when he said, "There"s another room upstairs that you might

care to take a look at." (81) Winston is instantly charmed by

the rooms nostalgic look and furnishing.! At first it was, "a

wild, impossible notion, to be abandoned as soon as though

of."(82) One thing that leads to him later renting the

apartment is the fact that their is no visible telescreen. The

owner told Winston the he never had one because, "Too

expensive. And I never seemed to feel the need of it

somehow."(82) In truth their was a telescreen behind the

etching, which leads to the capture of Winston and Julia. The

apartment was a huge symbol of the past to Winston. The

apartment is decorated with relics of the past: a double bed,

a metal etching of a church, a bookshelf filled with ancient

tomes. Winston and Julia use these items as constant

reminders of the past they are longing for. They believe that

they can safely enter this world, separate from the one of the

Party and Big Brother. In their mind it is a safe haven, in

reality it is a rat, pest and filth ridden slum. It is not even safe

from the Party. As it turns out there was a telescreen in the

apart! ment. It was hidden behind the etching of the church,

that Winston thought was so nostalgic. In the end Winston

and Julia could not control their own lives, just like society

where no one has a control. Bernard didn"t have a nostalgic

apartment, what he had was a way of life contrary to others.

No one in his world wanted to worry about anything. They

would drown their worries in the pleasure drug Soma. What

Bernard would do is think about his problems, tell them to

his friend, and find other ways to deal with them. Bernard

refuses to run away from his problems. In fact the way he

lives causes him to take on the problems of the society along

with his own. Things like flying just to see the scenery and

look at the moon. For Bernard it was not where he lived,

but how he lived. One of the biggest similarity between

Bernard and Winston is their jobs. The positions they hold

allow them to hold links to the past and reality the way it

was. Winston would constant! ly review records about the

past as they actually happened. He would have to correct

past articles to delete people that had been vaporized. He

would then know exactly who was dead. Though he did not

know how, he could only guess how those people had died.

They had not been 100% faithful to Big Brother. Bernard"s

job as a hypnopedia specialist allowed him to see why

people behaved the way they did. He knew that everything

was actually conditioning. He realized that everything was

fake and programmed. He saw the methods by which

people were programmed. This caused him to question the

methods. He saw how drastically these sleep treatments

changed people. He also knew how people were breed,

engineered and treated to be a certain way. He wanted to

question the predestination. That was the reason that

Bernard wanted to go to the savage reservation. He wanted

to see that way people used to live. How he believed people

should live. However, the very real feeling of van! ity and

fame caused him to lose sight of his goal to change society.

That was what both Winston and Bernard really wanted to

do. They wanted to change society back to the way it was.

The way it is today. Winston articulated this so much better.

He was able to put down his feelings in his dairy. The diary

was an old, yellow paged, ancient book purchased from the

owner of the antique store. It was supposedly a book

created before the great revolution and this is symbolic. It is

symbolic because most books created before the revolution

were destroyed. The best articulation that Bernard could

come up with was his feeble attempts to make the director

of the hatchery feel bad by going to the reservation over his

objections. Bernard tries to fight society and embarrass his

enemies, making them mad. He should have tried to show

the masses why the establishment is wrong. He should have

used the savage to show how a different life can mean

happiness. It should be fa! irly plain to the readers of

Orwell"s 1984 and Huxley"s Brave New World that

Winston and Bernard are warnings over what society is

heading towards. A time when only a very few will have

their individuality and sense to question the establishment. A

totalitarian society in which thoughts, actions and feelings are

controlled. A time were I has no meaning, and the debate

over freedoms will cease. We live in an imperfect society,

where people do wrong and make mistakes. The worlds in

which Winston and Bernard live do not even allow them to

make mistakes. They can only do what their leaders see as

right. In the end Winston and Bernard fail to achieve the

great change for society. They do make their great change

for themselves. They may end up in bad situations, however,

it was by their choice and doing. Something the rest of

society didn"t have. I take this as a message to cherish the

most important thing we have in our society, CHOICE.

Orwell, George, 1984, New Americ! an Library, New

York, 1981 Ibid. Ibid.