The first chapter of book two, when the dark-hair girl (Julia) was walking into Winston's direction and she felt. Winston had two ideas that were contradicting each other, which was the idea that she "...was and enemy who was trying to kill him; in front of him, also, was a human creature, in pain and perhaps with a broken bone" (Orwell, 106) At that point, I was actually thinking like Winston, that she could be some sort of spy or something like that, but when she was kind of acting "different" when she felt, I started to think the opposite, that she could be now part of the Brotherhood. However, it would never occur to me that she would send a message with "I love you" written there and that it would change Winston's future and probably the rest of the novel. Her action was completely unexpected for me, and probably of the parts of the book that I had to go back, read it again to make sense!
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Liz Costa
3/31/2013 06:29:17 am
SATISFACTION
“When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. They 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 Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?”
Living is about being satisfied. Some are satisfied with a simple house and a cookie, others are only satisfied if they go grocery shopping in a Lamborghini. Figures… Politics and society play with what makes the masses satisfied. When controlling and abolishing sex the government has direct power upon a tool for satisfaction and redirects the frustration to hate sessions and obsession towards the party and Big Brother. The sexual suppression is an ally of the psychological manipulation that occurs in the Oceania. They agree and resort to the hatred and frustration because they don’t know any better, like any other human being the population wants to feel satisfied. “The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.” It is easier to feel satisfied when you don’t know any better.
“His heart leapt. Scores of times she had done it: he wished it had been hundreds — thousands. Anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild hope. Who knew, perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing iniquity. If he could have infected the whole lot of them with leprosy or syphilis, how gladly he would have done so! Anything to rot, to weaken, to undermine!” The idea that other people are also going against the party gives Winston a sense of hope, he is not alone in his quest against the party. Some of them are like Julia, that although are against some of the party ideals find a way to live with it and don’t find that a rebellion would be at all beneficial. Still, there is hope that some of those infringers are just like Winston, and there is the possibility that Julia is not only one that has had sex without the Party’s consent. Meaning that there is an entire mass that would sympathize with a overthrowing the main party. A new silent revolution.
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Thais Oliveira
3/31/2013 09:26:12 am
June 9th, 1984
I saw my dearest Julia today, we went to our hiding place and she surprised more than ever. She brought sugar, bread, tea, coffee, and milk! Not the nasty things we get, but the real deal the one the inner party has access to. She is so astute and prepared, always getting what she wants. This woman amuses me; she has infected me with her love and given me some light. I long to live with her in our own world she is so lively and feminine I can’t resist her, I wish the world were a simpler place and we could marry and no longer have to hide. We are doomed to die, we are basically dead, but whenever I am around her I feel so alive! The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seem to have got inside of me it is all around me, I NEED her! Not only physically but emotionally as well, I have a deep affection for her. This woman she has put a spell on me she never ceases to surprise me, when she painted her face I was enchanted by her beauty I had never known makeup could make such a difference. And that perfume, oh that perfume was intoxicating! I can no longer live this way I long for her, I have this deep desire I can’t stop it and it is my right to have her. How can she accept this party that attempts to deprive us from our pleasures so they can direct it in their benefit. She believes that if you keep the small rules you could break the big ones, but how can we live with this fear, this danger, we must change it! She doesn’t believe in rebelling only in dodging the rules, but rebelling is the only way to give us a future, at least a future we can truly live in! DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER! DOWN WITH THIS DEPRIVATION! LET LOVE PREVAIL! LET US BE ENTITLED TO LIFE WITHOUT PROHIBITIONS! UP WITH FREEDOM!
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Julia Souza
3/31/2013 11:45:09 am
PROMPT # 3
Redirecting their Anger
In theses chapters we were able to have a better understanding of the dark-haired girl is, her actual name is Julia. Julia in the beginning symbolized to Winston the control of the Party and her chastity belt provoked anger in him. However, when she tears off her Junior Anti-Sex League sash, Winston becomes aroused. However, we notice that Winston is not actually aroused by the woman itself, but what she represents. Julia is also someone that acts against the Party and so she symbolizes hope for Winston. Since she has already had illicit sex with several other men, this means Winston is not alone in trying to confront the party. Apart from symbolizing hope, her character also exemplifies how the party uses sex as one more mean of manipulation. As Julia clearly put it, “when you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. They can't bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time […] If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?” (Orwell 132). The deprivation of sex is encouraged as a way to make sure that the citizens direct all their anger into the enemies of the Party. The Party redirects their anger similar to how they do it with the Two Minute Hate Sessions. It is rather curious how in 1984, the citizens are kept enraged and in Brave New World it is the contrary, the citizens are always feeling happy with their “sommas” and “orgy-porgies”. Nonetheless, being happy or angry, both societies use the emotions of their citizens to manipulate their thought. In Brave New World the citizens are unified by a feeling of ecstasy and in 1984, this unison is maintained with a general feeling of hatred. Finally, in what ways does our society unify us? How are our emotions manipulated and directed towards one common goal?
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Tiago Fonseca
3/31/2013 12:55:39 pm
Prompt #1
Slaves
“’When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They 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 Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?’
That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.” (Orwell 133)
This is a very vital part of the book, since this passage brings some explanation as to why there cannot be sex with pleasure. It works as another tool to control society and keeps everyone being powered by hate in a more beneficial way towards the will of the Party and the Big Brother. Without this passage the reader would only be able to speculate as to why sex deprival is enforced. This passage brings concrete textual evidence as to the reason’s why the Party acts the way it does, “For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account” (Orwell 133). The Party knows that if people are find a way to be happy then they will have something to appease their constant hatred, and that cannot be allowed. Hatred is the leash that guides the society, hatred is also society`s shock collar that rectifies any other type of feeling. Had Orwell altered something in this passage, he might have compromised the explanation of how important sex is as a means to control. He makes a connection between chastity and politics, and by not explicitly stating that connection, the reader might get confused as to why these two different things are entwined.
Yet there is one thing Orwell does not explain in this passage, what is Big Brother hiding? Why so much effort in trying to conceal something? My guess, I believe that the war does not exist. I believe it is another lie to keep people afraid and giving them another object to channel their hatred. The war also glorifies Big Brother as a protector and does not condemn him for the tyrant that he is.
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Nilo Lisboa
3/31/2013 02:11:37 pm
Energy
“When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. They 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 Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?”
Energy is the party’s means to control. Always throughout the book they attempt to foster people’s emotions and prowess for their own uses. Words are eradicated to eliminate the possibility of rebellion, the people are died lust to condition the mind. There is one thing that can be seen from the Party. It wants to create a homogeneous mass of thoughts where hate and anger are prevalent or else everything can fall apart. The reducing of chocolate rations and the abolishment of sex symbolize the destruction of happiness; not only the term, but the feeling as a whole. When people have nothing to be happy about then there will be no happiness. There will be only “unhate” or “unangry”. People will have nothing to compare hate and anger to. With this, they will become the prevalent emotions, or rather, the ONLY emotions. They will always support Big Brother because they hate Goldstein, they hate the Eurasians. When the population is not being hateful towards those, they will be “unangry” and will simply accept all that the Party throws at them. There will be no “Winstons” or “Julias” that will be able to wriggle themselves free from the system. Without such presence, there will be no escape from the system. No flight away from reality, only hate, only anger.
In a time when the world is centralized, where the people are emotionless and the government is all-forbidding, Orwell presents love as a powerful antidote. Even though most citizens do not know what it means to feel anything other than hate--Winston thought he despised Julia, we see that there is still hope of rebellion against the Party.
The power of love is that it works on a vicious cycle. Winston realizes he is in love as soon as he starts to criticize Big Brother and that realization gives way to more criticism. Orwell contrasts the individualizing aspect of love, that makes two individuals so special to each other, with the homogenized society instituted by the Party, where the concepts of self and free will barely exist. Julia and Winston's encounters are their way of knowing they are alive and have an inherent self worth.
Their love story reminds me of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Winston and Julia's determination to remain alive and together is similar to Juliet and Romeo's "misadventured piteous overthrows." What we don't yet know, however, is whether their fate will be the same of those star crossed lovers.
This section of the book raises several questions. For instance, Winston clearly states his goal of "Down with Big Brother". Then, to what extent is Winston's love actual attraction instead of a way of rebelling? Additionally, Julia portrays much more control of the frame of events than Winston. What are her real motives is pursuing this relationship? In fact, given the oppression and fight for survival present in the world of 1984, can express pure and unselfish love for another human being?
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Gaelle
3/31/2013 03:06:07 pm
Prompt #1
RISKING HAPPINESS
I believe the first - and perhaps only - climax of the novel has been reached. The moment the woman in the dark hair, Julia, and Winston willingly dive into the perils of risking happiness and satisfaction, the characters engage in a path with no way out. The importance of this passage is highlighted by the unfolding events that follow Winston and Julia's primary encounter near the lavatory. The succeeding days, "[Winston] felt as though a fire were burning in his belly" (Orwell 108) proving his mixed emotions that were suppressed by the Party's terrifying invasion of privacy. Winston also felt a "desire to stay alive […] and the taking of minor risks suddenly seemed stupid" (Orwell 109). Clearly, the initial will to rape and then kill the woman was drowned by a wave of love that was prominent within him. Julia had fuelled a burning flame within him that could only be appeased by fulfilling his appetite for love and disloyalty towards the Party. The emotions experienced by Winston within the next week are feelings that most teenagers nowadays has experienced and can relate to. However, the tricky and animated part of the novel is that this burning desire has to be utterly appeased in order not to raise any awareness. While in "Brave New World" the people were encouraged to make love and satisfy their desires, in "1984" the Party uses the hysteria induced by the sexual privation and "transform it into war fever ad leader worship" (Orwell 132).
The first time the two characters make love is the moment of climax since it represents the characters' discontent and dissident caused by a lack of entitled rights such as happiness, privacy, individualism, and knowledge. I predict that, now that both characters have a reason to live (for one another), they will unite forces and try to make the corruption of the Party apparent at the eyes of the numerous Party members and proles. Since both characters work in the Ministry of Truth, specifically in the printing of books, and articles, they can possibly change the information on the books, articles, and other publications to raise public awareness of the misery they are all living. The Party hypnotises the people into believing in false expectations, and a fake reality which is displayed everyday as a better country, with more chocolate, more boots produced… etc. Maybe, like Winston said, "perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing iniquity" (Orwell 125). What if Julia and Winston are not the only characters who are unfaithful to the Party, and who pretend to be zealous Party members? What if Julia was right when she said that "if you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones" (Orwell 129)?
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Marina Oliveira
3/31/2013 03:17:17 pm
Prompt #3
Life is simple
During these few chapters we get to know the black-haired girl, Julia. She opens an entire different view and form of resistance to the Party. As it is becomes clear in this quote,“Life as she saw it was quite simple. You wanted a good time; 'they', meaning the Party, wanted to stop you having it; you broke the rules as best you could. She seemed to think it just as natural that 'they' should want to rob you of your pleasures as that you should want to avoid being caught.”(Orwell 131),
Julia breaks the rules of the Party only when the doctrine is interfering in her personal desire and satisfaction. The carnal desires Wilson has put aside and reserved only to the pages of his diary she is very used to, since it is her way of achieving happiness. As she says reflectively, “If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?” (Orwell 133), showing how it is through the lack of sex and the focus of the people’s energy in the hate, that the Party maintains an emotional and physical control. Contrary to Wilson’s revolutionary feelings, Julia seems to be focused in living her life to the fullest due to her self-awareness. Unlike the normal protocol Wilson also highlights the “coarseness of her language” (Orwell 122), demonstrating her liberty from another form of oppression in the novel, which is language. Julia also stimulates Wilson to experience his violation and divergency from the Party’s manipulation. Their sexual encounter, in my eyes, was a way of freeing him, which giving him the desire to remain alive. In a paradoxical way, Wilson is glad Julia has slept with many other man, since it shows him there are others like him, that are opposed to the Party. She, ultimately, eliminates his sense of loneliness.
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Marina
3/31/2013 03:23:59 pm
This makes me wonder if we are in fact manipulated physically by our society? Are we lonely in our fights? Do we fight together? Or do we all want to achieve different goals?
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Andrea
3/31/2013 09:27:06 pm
Prompt 3
All we need is love
In a world where people are lonely, relations are danger, and sex is treated as a “duty to the Party”, love is threat. Part two of 1984 begins to develop what is almost a taboo in the past chapters, love and relationship. We were first presented to Julia in the two minute hate, as a girl hated by Winston, which he thought had something more dangerous about her than just being an attractive woman. Suddenly, the girl whom he wanted to kill, is the only person in Oceania that he can actually connect with. Throughout their encounters we can see that both of them are against the party and feel the need to rebel. However, this in the only similarity, since they differ greatly in the manner of reasoning, and in their future goals.
Winston is a man that wants to be free from the party. He looks for freedom, being it emotional, political, his goal is to think for himself. The vague memories he has of before the revolution, before the party took over, those are the ones he wants to live again. Yet, Julia, she is young, from a generation that has not lived a time before the party. She rebels simply to rebel, because she doesn't know what freedom is, she has always been controlled, and the only understanding she has about the subject is what her grandfather told her when she was very young. Julia can't differ from what is truth and what is a lie. What keeps them together is that both of them are anti Party.
It simply sounds too perfected to me, that in the middle of a depressing and solitary society, Winston suddenly encounters someone who loves him, they begin to have love affairs and the tone of the novel simply changes to romantic and positive. There is something more to this. His first instinct, of Julia having danger hidden inside of her, is true. What if Julia is being controlled in order to incriminate Winston behaving in an unorthodox manner? Love in this case is being used to mask an ideal world, to alter Winston's nervous system, “At the sight of the worlds I love you the desire to stay alive had welled up in him, and the taking of minor risks suddenly seemed stupid”(Orwell 125). Just after his contact with Julia at the lunch table, Winston forgot about all of the speculations of whether she truly loved him, if she was a spy, if meeting her meant death, etc, etc. When he is with her, they talk as if they were free, but what makes Winston so confident that Julia knows the places where there are no microphones, spies or telescreens? The feeling of being loved, of doing something that is prohibited is common to Julia, she has already slept with many other guys and is used to having “Inner Party stuff”. However, for Winston this is all a discovery, it is the first time, besides his “illegal” purchases, that he is making what he writes about a reality.
So, if “no emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred” (Orwell 145), is their relationship true love after all?
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Nevo
4/1/2013 05:01:46 am
Prompt #4
All I Need Is Love!
Dear Diary,
I was walking down to the men's room when that freak dark-haired girl fell down, I couldn't leave her and walk into the men's room, and even with all the fear I had of her being a spy I decided to help her. While I was lifting her up she slipped a note into my hand, I feared what was in it, but in the same instant I opened it. I couldn't believe what I was reading, for all that time I was thinking she was spying me or from the Thought Police, but it was only love. She slipped me a note which was written "I Love You." I couldn't realize what was going on suddenly she became my reason to want to live, the desire of living. Even though it is wrong to engage with the one you love, that women brought me the desire to live. As days passed I couldn't create the courage of breaking some rules and following my heart, until we both managed to sit in the same table during lunch. We had a fast talk and to avoid being noticed we didn't maintain eye contact. I got an address where we could meet with no cameras or police watching us. I know it is wrong, but that what makes me love her more the DANGER and her experience with it. We met in the woods, even though I feared there were microphones in the bushes, we continued our love session. I noticed she was like me, she understood what and how the society was manipulating us. So I decided to tell her about my rebellion spreading idea, and even though she wasn't interested in supporting it, she did understand my point.
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Gabriella Goldenstein
4/1/2013 07:17:42 am
"I love you. For several seconds he was too stunned even to throw the incriminating thing into the memory hole. When he did so, although he knew very well the danger of showing too much interest, he could not resist reading it once again, just to make sure that the words were really there" (Orwell 108).
This quote reveals a new feeling and new subject that is brought into evidence in this section. Unexpectedly, in a systematic and emotionless world, love appears. The feeling that seemed to be so unknown for Winston, except for when he mentions his mother love for him, is reemerged. It is with this simple phrase: "I love you", that Winston's perspective of life changes drastically. After meeting Julia and realizing she is also against the Party, he feels hopeful and alive. Their connection and the time they make love is exactly as Winston has imagined and dreamt about. Finally, he have what he wants. However, he knows the Party does not accept sex for pleasure. As Julia explains, when having sex you use up your energy, and the Party wants everyone to be filled with energy all the time. The reason for that is to be ready for the Two Minute Hate and to have energy for any other thing for the Party. This reveals how their lives are solely for the Party and not for themselves. This section also shows the Party's power and control when the lovers need to hide and go to the country in order to get together.
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Gabriella Goldenstein
4/1/2013 07:18:34 am
Title: Love Generates Hope
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Daniel Pinho
4/1/2013 10:42:50 am
I dare you don't care
Who controls men if not men itself? Authoritarian dystopias such as Oceania’s London in 1984 or the World State in Brave New World only proves the point that men are enslaved by their OWN hysterical need of orderly control everything. Might it be shown by the lenses of Big Brother’s eye or the hallucination on soma, they all are tools of MEN to reach out to other MEN negatively by rule and oppression.
With time, this insane tradition hit people that, like Winston, never had a direct relation to the “problem” which caused everything to be the way they are. They keep doing things “because it was already like this”. Winstons and probably the majority of the Party members are all over the world being day-to-day victims of a system they did not create but cooperate with because they simply CARE. They bother to continue something naturally repelling for the sake of something they do not like, but fear. And that’s the whole issue.
These first chapters of part two makes the reader trip in a whole different state of mind, a whole new way of perceiving things in the book – and I would even dare to say around ourselves. Taking Winston as an example, would the upmost rebellion be the one we do to our own? Thus, under the premise that “caring is contributing”, could it be possible that “not giving a shit” is the furthermost one can go in terms of revolution?
Hate, love, curiosity, authority: they are all forces which attack and propagate inside one uniquely. Nature, as bonding everything and everyone together, answers that for every action, there’s a reaction. When these forces attack, what is it that makes it stronger if not the reaction of a person? As an example, if Winston had thrown the paper Julia gave him away and not reacted to curiosity (or even authority, as he assumed she was a member of Thought Police) love (or hate, compared to what the status quo is) would not be activated as a force inside him. The thing is that everything leads to another thing and wherever one’s force is tuned to, it will disseminate.
Forces like love, curiosity, hate or authority creates a bond between poles (being them the people involved). This bond we could compare to a string strained by two hands (being them the poles). That string is the force. It needs two or more things to attach on to in order to become real. This works with everything. There are always opposing ends to everything, it’s nature: if you dig a hole, you are at the same time mounting up a heap.
For that reason, one cannot fight fire with more fire; it will just intensify what one does not want. Water, in the other hand, is the pole opposite and fights fire effectively – just like if we heat up water (with fire) and it will evaporate. Likewise, hate does not kill hate. That’s why the Part wants less love, less affection, less warmth. We all need love if we want to fight back something hateful. We all need disobedience to fight back servitude. We need to “not care” to fight the ongoing issue of perpetuating things we ultimately don’t want. Julia, which I have deeply fell in love with, sums it up perfectly: “When you make love you’re using energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They 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 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 Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?” [Orwell 133]. And that’s water.
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Alê Silveira (Late! Sorry)
4/2/2013 12:35:19 pm
Love Hate Relationships
The relationship Winston has with Julia is very love/hate, because as the cliché goes, "there's a thin line between love and hate." In the first chapters he hated her without even knowing her, although there were explicit sexual mentions it was more hate than love. Now it's love. Or is it? Is the passion and desire that he is feeling for her actually his love of the thrill of rebelling? It's clear that he has the intention to go all out and be against the regime, so it could be argued that his relationship with Julia indeed isn't based on emotions at all which makes sense when paraphrasing Julia, as she said that the Two Minutes Hate is actually a mechanism that Big Brother uses to release sexual frustration because, “’When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time." (Orwell 133).
This theory actually parallels my current feelings to Senior Year and the PASB administration, but to make things clearer energy is also closely associated to time. Senior Year has left me with NO time, hence NO energy for anything unrelated to PASB itself, which I find to be awfully selfish. Before, there were no detentions. Now everyone has detentions every week. Before practice ended at 4:30, now it ends at 5:30. Before, we didn't have AP English homework at all, now it's all we have. It's almost like PASB doesn't want me to be happy in what is supposed to be the happiest year of my life. Which, may also be a love hate relationship because I love the school, I love the people, I love everything it has done for me but then again I hate how much of it and how overbearing it is. Just comparing 1984 to PASB should be a wake up call to the administration that certain things are getting preposterous to the point of the ridiculous. Then again, Senior Year always is considered "bittersweet"... My Two Minutes of Hate is dedicated to PASB.
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