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Thoughtcrimes In George Orwell's 1984

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The book, 1984 by George Orwell is a fictional story that begins by introducing the main character Winston Smith, who is a low-ranking, Outer Party member of the totalitarianism government Party that controls London. Privacy is a privilege that few individuals know. Nearly every home in Oceania has a telescreen which allows the government to have an inside view of the lives of citizens. Not only this, but posters depicting the symbol of the Big Brother Party are pasted throughout the city to remind people that they are constantly being observed. Oceania is completely government controlled. Citizens are not given access to unaltered historical events or books. Their language, dubbed Newspeak, has been manipulated by the government through restrictions …show more content…

Winston expresses his frustration towards oppression and the Party by writing thoughtcrimes in an illegally purchased journal. Winston is employed by the Ministry of Truth (Miniture), where he alters historical documents to fulfill the needs of Big …show more content…

Winston was uninformed that the proprietor of the shop, Mr. Charrington, a member of the Thought Police. The shop owner reports the unlawful act to the authorities. Shortly after, soldiers apprehend Winston and Julia. The couple is separated and Winston is forced into the Ministry of Love (MiniLuv). O’Brien makes an appearance and reveals that he concealed his legitimate identity, he is a Big Brother spy, in order to deceive Winston into committing an open act of rebellion against the government. O’Brien spends months torturing and brainwashing Winston, nevertheless, Winston resists temptation and reframes from abandoning his principles. Winston finally succumbed to the abuse after a particularly gruesome technique is employed and pleads that Julia be the one to suffer the torment. Lastly, O’Brien releases Winston back into society and he conforms to the expectations of Big

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786 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout the story, Winston commits various “thoughtcrimes”, which are punishable by death, against “Big Brother” in order to escape its tyranny. We see the things he commits these crimes with, specifically with his diary and Julia, to be what he cherishes most. At the start of the book, Winston’s first “thoughtcrime” was writing in his diary. In this society, expressing thought is against the law and

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779 Words | 4 Pages

He begins his illegal love affair with Julia, once again defying the government. However, when he is taken by the police to the ministry of love and punished for this crime, he betrays his lover. Julia and Winston built a trustworthy secret relationship via their mutual hate for the government, but Winston gives it all up when he is threatened in room 101. Big Brother succeeds in pushing Winston to his breaking point, in which he exposes Julia to save himself. He yells to his torturers, “Do it to Julia!

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467 Words | 2 Pages

Eventually, Winston is caught and sent to the Ministry of Love, just like O’Brien said. After being there for a while, he shows up in his cell. Winston believes he’s been arrested, but O’Brien says “They got me a long time ago. Don’t deceive yourself, you did know it”, implying Winston should’ve known O’Brien had been tricking him. He then goes on to torture Winston into confessing everything he’s done so he can convert him back to a party member.

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458 Words | 2 Pages

Winston was never a devoted follower, constantly questioning the world around him. Even when in custody, Winston continued questioning motives and denouncing the Party and Big Brother, despite the futility. He knew no societal changes would result from his actions, but desperately wanted to share his ideas with someone, and since he was already being tortured, he was capable of speaking freely in the jail area. The purpose was to rid him of his rebellious mindset, and to do so, O’Brien needed to know everything Winston honestly thought in order to ‘correct’ it fully. For example, O’Brien forced Winston to recognize that whatever the Party said was true by holding up four fingers and saying there were five, “But there had been a moment- of luminous certainty, where each new suggestion of O’Brien’s had filled up a patch of emptiness and had become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily five, if that were what was needed (Orwell 258).

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498 Words | 2 Pages

After several days of continuous torture, O’Brien states, “We make the brain perfect before we blow it out” (George Orwell 210). O’Brien’s statement foreshadows Winston’s death later in the novel. In addition, O’Brien’s statement makes Winston realize the horrid situation he is in and he slowly begins to grow paranoid about how soon he would be put out of his misery. As the seemingly endless torture continued, he begins to hope for the promised bullet to blow his brains out and kill him.

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659 Words | 3 Pages

The Ghettos In the fall of 1941, many Jews in Germany occupied countries of Austria and Czechoslovakia were deported to Poland.(book) They were forced to live in the ghettos , which were set up in a major towns there.(book) These were enclosed by walls and guarded at night. The jews were only permitted to take a few personal items with them to the ghetto, in the process being stripped of the homes and property that they had left behind.(Daily Life in Ghettos) Jewish councils, made up of elders, who were community leaders, were responsible for organizing the day-to day affairs of the ghettos.(book) The people working for the Jewish council forced a very difficult task.(book)

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874 Words | 4 Pages

Winston’s realization of the Party’s morally wrong actions gets him to start rebelling against him. The first instance of a rebellion is when he purchases a diary from a store, which is prohibited. He secretly writes down any anti-Party suspicions, knowing that he is going to get captured for it. In the first act of 1984, Winston continues to write in his diary.

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632 Words | 3 Pages

When Winston and Julia are arrested and tortured, O’Brien finally reveals his true identity. “‘Don’t worry Winston; you are in my keeping. For seven years I have watched over you. Now the turning point has come. I shall save you, I shall make you perfect’ (Orwell 244).”

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404 Words | 2 Pages

The word humanity refers to the human race as a whole and the qualities that make us human, such as the ability to love and have compassion. In our modern world, we take human nature for granted, but in George Orwell’s 1984, he shows us a society in which there is no humanity, and those that fight for it die trying. The totalitarian government, known as the Party, uses isolation, fear, and lies to destroy the humanity in their citizens and maintain absolute power over Oceania.

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1551 Words | 7 Pages

Julia, who he thought was someone he would never be able to betray. He says to her “‘ Only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you – that would be the real betrayal ”’(166). O’Brien represented the rebelliousness and friendship that Winston had been seeking. He let his guard down around O’Brien and O'Brien ultimately betrays

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1108 Words | 5 Pages

At this job, Winston starts to become alienated from the Party and their set of beliefs. The first way Winston rebels against the Party is he buys a notebook and a pen off the black market and painfully writes about a newscast he watched where the army of Oceaniania purposefully sinks boats full of refugees including, "...a lifeboat full of children…" (Orwell 8). After getting over the fear of being caught, he then writes multiple times, "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER" (Orwell 18). Winston even having these thoughts is considered a crime by the Party, by voicing his options in writing Winston is actively going against the Party's narrative which is considered a serious crime in Oceania. Under the threat of being reported to the Thought Police (the Party's secret police system) and being sent to the Ministry of Love (the Party's prison system), Winston hides his dissenting thoughts from the rest of the world.

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796 Words | 4 Pages

George Orwell’s 1984 is a precautionary tale of what happens when the government has too much control in our lives. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is at odds in a world in which he is not allowed to counter the government’s surveillance and control. Perhaps more striking is the noticeable relationship between the novel and modern society. In George Orwell’s novel 1984 the book predicts the surveillance of Big Brother in modern day societies.

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1420 Words | 6 Pages

The struggle between O'Brien and Winston at the end. O'Brien is attempting to condition Winston into loving big brother but Winston's resistance lies in the fact that big brother may be able to control people but they cannot control his thoughts. For Example “He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the pen. The next moment he started violently.

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968 Words | 4 Pages

After a cautiously planned meeting initiated by Julia, they started to see each other more often in secret. Over time, a romantic relationship started to develop, not solely based on physical and sexual attraction, but also as a result of their similar views centered around their hatred of the Party. Although both characters complement each other in terms of their views of Big Brother as Party members, their values and approaches to this issue fundamentally conflict in terms of morality and ethics, history, and politics. With regards to morality and ethics, Winston and Julia’s judgment and beliefs greatly differ. Winston, characterized as an idealist, deeply suffers from the existent totalitarian authorities and their full control of everything.

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878 Words | 4 Pages

In 1984, George Orwell writes about a dystopian society called Oceania with a totalitarian government. Winston, the main character, is an Outer Party member and works for the government who is under the rule of “Big Brother” and the Inner Party. The Party’s purpose is to rule Oceania with absolutism and have control over its citizens by using propaganda, censorship, and the brainwashing of children. Today, many modern-day countries use these techniques to maintain their power including: North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Nazi Germany. First, North Korea and Oceania use propaganda to encourage patriotism to make themselves look better to citizens in order to keep a totalitarian rule.

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