1984 by George Orwell: Initial Impressions of Julia

In 1984, George Orwell brings a mysterious character to light and informs the reader that her name is Julia. Before she passes off the note to Winston, I agreed with much of his anger against her. Although Winston’s feelings were outright villainous, anyone who turns others in to the Thought Police is by definition a “bad guy.” I was almost as stunned as Winston when she passed him off the note saying “I love you.” Winston had not even considered that possibility for what the note could say. Although Winston and Julia live in an oppressive society, I cannot approve their behavior. She may be providing a release for Winston’s and her own pent up psyche, but their licentious behavior is not acceptable. There is also something horrid about the fact that Julia has had many indiscriminate relationships with people up to age sixty. She is very selfish as demonstrated by her reaction to Winston’s failure to push his wife off the cliff. Anyone who hinders her freedom of expression, not just the Party, deserves to be destroyed.

For the first part of their relationship, she struck me as a cunning mastermind who worked tirelessly to appear supportive of the government while at the same time plotted against it. Even though nothing has been mentioned about an actual attempt to overthrow the government, Julia is an ardent rebel. Yet her rebellion is a personal one. Her rebellion is shown through her carefree attitude in her treasured places of escape and her willingness to trash talk the Party and its ways. She finds an acute joy in being exactly the sort of person the party does not want people to be. Unlike Winston, she has no belief in the possibility of actually overthrowing the government, but at the same time is far more bold than Winston in private insurrection. She cares primarily about freedom of emotion and does not even understand political freedom. After seeing her careful instructions for directions and her well orchestrated plans of meeting, her apolitical mindset seems contrary to her carefully planned behavior. I wonder if Winston’s interaction with Julia will give him the exposure to the true public mindset and the opportunity to express his views that he needs in order to begin a large scale rebellion.

1984 Predictions After Reading Eight Chapters

            After the first eight chapters of 1984, it is difficult to make predictions about what will happen next because the book seems to be primarily concerned with the explication of the world in which Winston lives and not with actual events. Aside from the existence of Winston, Big Brother’s world seems entirely devoid of hope and Winston himself is merely his pawn, so the future does not look bright. I predict that Winston will get vaporized by the Thought Police, but I do not think that his diary will be his downfall. Although writing a diary is a radical move of rebellion in that society of oppression, it would not make a good book for Winston to die because he wrote a diary. He must commit some much greater crime first. The fact that Winston so seriously wants to get information from the old man in the bar and wants to live in the quaint room of the antique shop with no surveillance show that he is bursting at the seams. He cannot stand the suppression and he considers the ability of the proles to provide the manpower for the rebellion. Unfortunately, Winston has been brainwashed by the Party to believe that “Until [the Proles] become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” In this statement, the circular reasoning implies that the Proles can never rebel, but at some point Winston will realize that he is intelligent enough to bring them back to consciousness. After he makes them rise, he will succeed in making some advances against the Party before being vaporized. It is difficult to tell at this point, but given how extensively the Party uses doublethink, if Winston or some other mastermind set up serious opposition, the Party is probably not actually as hard to destroy as it seems.

Reflection on Privacy Today and in "1984" by George Orwell

            The book 1984 by George Orwell envisions a dark picture of suppression and despotic control. The oppression in this book is so complete that I practically leapt for joy when I finished reading the section and remembered the real world again. The telescreen is the most evident indicator of the invasion of privacy that exists in this novel. It allows the Thought Police to view and hear almost everything going on everywhere. The only freedom is the few square feet that the telescreen cannot see—if you can call that freedom. Almost as bad, the telescreen plays “radio” in the form of propaganda, news, and music 24/7 without an off button. Until reading this book, I never understood how horrible such a society could be. Not that I was not already adamantly opposed to it, but that I now understand its vile nature more fully. The way in which children are used against their parents by the children’s participation in youth programs for indoctrination is quite horrendous. An important part of personal privacy is the right to parent  your own children, and, although the Big Brother would probably deny it, children in that society are really just spies and robots to be programmed according to the government’s wishes. Although such extreme conditions are nowhere near, privacy is an important issue currently. People are concerned that their computers are watching them, that the government should not tell them what to do with unborn children, or that they may be watched by government agencies. In America, these infringements on privacy are worried about too much. Infringements on privacy have been made primarily for the safety of our country’s citizens. As long as the people who are in control can be voted out of office, despotic government observation can be removed. The way it sits currently, the people who are doing nothing wrong have nothing to fear. People who want to do evil tend to complain the most, but the right to privacy does not give people the permission to do evil when others cannot see it. For instance, even though parents should have the right to teach their own children, that does not give them the right to murder their child in an abortion.

"Up-Hill" By Christina Rossetti

            “Up-Hill” by Christina Rossetti has a rhyming pattern of ABAB in each stanza. This helps to contrast the different lines of the two speakers. One speaker generally has the longer lines and the other has the remaining lines. The “A” speaker in the rhyming pattern is a traveler along some journey and the other speaker is someone with a lot of wisdom about the journey. The journey described is most likely intended to be specifically the journey of life. In this case, the poem should be described as an allegory not only because of its definiteness of meaning, but also because it consists of a series of connected symbolic constructions that all relate to one another and to the story of life to which they are being compared. The story-like nature of the poem indicates an allegory. The absence of quotation marks around each line to distinguish the speakers depersonalizes them and makes them seem more representative than specific. The fact that the road “[winds] up-hill all the way” and “[takes] the whole long day” suggests something beyond the literal journey. The unrealistic nature of the last line which indicates that there are “beds for all who come” also clues to the deeper meaning. The road is up-hill the whole way because life is hard and the traveler will need comfort after the strain. More specifically, the journey in this poem is the journey of a Christian. This is indicated by the allusions in the final two stanzas. Jesus tells everyone to knock and the door to heaven shall be opened. On a similar note, in heaven, there is mention of there being ample room for everyone who comes. The traveler also worries that he may miss the inn, but is assured that that cannot happen. The phrase “of labor you shall find the sum” assures the traveler that there will be reward at the end of life for those who make it to the inn. Subtly, there is an implication that all that is required to get into the inn representing Heaven is to know it exists and seek to find it. The voice with all of the answers sounds strikingly as though it is meant to represent Jesus.

"Mind" by Richard Wilbur

            “Mind” by Richard Wilbur is a poem by Richard Wilbur. It contains an extended simile between the mind and a bat in a cave. This is the type of simile in which both the literal and figurative terms are named. This is a cleverly employed simile first of all because the figurative side of the simile is so rare. When bats “weave and flitter, dip and soar in perfect courses through the blackest air” (7-8), Wilbur suggests the ability of the mind to know the valid courses of reasoning and to follow paths of logic in the shapeless and tactless void that is consciousness. The diction and especially the word “soar” affects the feeling that the mind moves freely and is not necessarily governed by reason. At the same time, the mind cannot wander anywhere it pleases because it is hemmed in by “[walls] of stone.” These walls of stone could be considered the logical boundaries, points from which no further reasoning can be made, the limits of sanity, or the scope of thinking possible with a particular mind’s IQ. Curiously, Wilbur comments in his poem about the nature of the similar contained therein. After concluding that his selection is “precisely” (10) accurate, he concedes that the cave is not immutable. Cannot a mind expand its horizons? Wilbur not surprisingly includes the idea of mental expansion, but, astoundingly, he attributes it to a “graceful error” (12) in the “happiest intellection” (11).  Since intellection is the process of understanding when separated from imagination, he believes that growth of the mind comes when the brain happily understands something by making an error in reasoning. Although I do not conclusively rebut his claim, I also think that mental growth comes just as well through the imagination. Wilbur personifies the mind throughout this poem. One may argue that a mind refers to a person by synecdoche and thus invalidates personification, but nonetheless, the effect of viewing the mind as an autonomous personality gives a powerful impression.

King Lear Final Words

In the last scene of King Lear, most of the characters meet their doom, but in their last words they each face death differently. As soon as Regan makes her plans for marriage to Edmund known, she submits everything to her supposed husband to be. “General take thou my soldiers, prisoners, patrimony; dispose of them, of me; the walls are thine. Witness the world that I create thee here My lord and master” (V.III.85-89). After this, Regan repeats the same idea again and complains of her sickness and then dies. Right up to her last few lines we see her natural submission to others. Earlier in the play that was Goneril, but near her end it becomes Edmund. Goneril’s last words are “ask me not what I know” (V.III.194). She wishes to control everything in her life. She does not want to admit her faults, but wants to keep them to herself. She is stubbornly unrepentant and does forces her sister to follow her by poisoning her. If she cannot have her way in a positive manner, she would rather destroy herself and others than submit. Edmund is far different. In this final scene, he has a rapid transformation from one of the worst characters to a respectable person trying to make amends for his faults. He is extremely open and repentant when he says, “What you have charged me with, that have I done, and more, much more” (V.III.196-198). At the end of his life he even broadly admits to faults of which other are clueless. Edmund also spends his last words in lines 302 to 305 to try to save Lear and Cordelia. Rather than a glorious final phrase before death, he commits himself to others benefit for a change. Lear spends his last words lamenting over the death of Cordelia and wondering at her “lips.” This seems rather appropriate because her truthful lips were the most precious part of her. In his last moments Lear has truly realized that Cordelia should have been the prime object of his blessing.