1984, The Party: An Analysis

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Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” This idea is exactly what the ruling power of Oceania in George Orwell’s book 1984, The Party, is trying to avoid. 1984 is a futuristic novel set in London, where all people are under constant surveillance by The Party whose ultimate goal is to maintain power forever. The main character, a 39-year-old man named Winston, rebels by having a love affair with Julia, and the story unfolds through The Party punishing him as a result. In the book, The Party embarks to punish all citizens, including Winston, by limiting their individual thoughts, physically abusing them, and by restricting their ability to love others. Throughout 1984, …show more content…

The Party does this by trying to eliminate love. They believe that when people are in love, they make bad decisions and have more loyalty towards their lover than anything or anyone else. Winston had a lot of loyalty to Julia, which was especially obvious when he stated that “Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter, only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you - that would be the real betrayal.” (173). This demonstrated a huge commitment and loyalty to Julia, which was dangerous for The Party because it caused Winston and Julia to have a reason for rebellion. If someone loves someone and The Party restricts their time together, then those people will rebel. If no one knows what it is like to love or have no desire to be in love than the chance of rebellion decreases. An example of The Party trying to terminate love was when Winston stated “But you could not have pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred.” (133). The Party was provoking fear and hatred in order to keep people distracted from the idea of love. They made the citizens suffer emotionally, all for the purpose of keeping their position in