1984 Symbol Essay

Throughout the whole book Winston has been keeping a diary. He writes his diary in a hidden corner of his home where Big Brother’s huge telescreen cannot detect him. Winston needs to keep this as a secret because expression is a deathly crime in Oceania. Winston’s main purpose while writing in his diary is reflecting his hopes for a future world where humans do not lack humanity. Winston writes his desires, angsts and memories, but most importantly, he writes about the truth; for example: “ Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two equals four. If that is granted all else will follow”(). The reader is able to see how Winston uses his diary as a source of rebellion towards a government that decides to deny reality. By finally expressing these thoughts he loses a lot of weight from his shoulders. The diary is a very important symbol in 1984 because Orwell is really representing his own thoughts and warnings about the future through Winston’s

In the novel 1984, George Orwell relates the tension between outward conformity and inward questioning by allowing the reader to see inside of the mind of Winston Smith. Orwell uses Winston’s rebellious thoughts to counteract his actions in order to show the reader how a dystopian society can control the citizens. Although Winston is in an obvious state of disbelief in the society, his actions still oppose his thoughts because of his fear of the government. Winston’s outward conformity and inward questioning relate to the meaning of the novel by showing Winston’s fight to truth being ended by the dystopian society’s government.

The language of this passage, illustrates Winston’s frantic thoughts and worries, by having long, and sometimes grotesque sentences, describing life, death, and suicide, the current topics circulating Winston’s mind. Prior to this passage, Winston’s had just had an encounter with the dark-haired girl, where he believing her to be a spy who was following him, contemplated killing her, but found himself unable to. In this passage he’s very overwhelmed by this past event and his thoughts are portrayed in long, sentences, that show the current hopelessness he feels. He thinks to himself; “On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues you are fighting are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralyzed by fright or screaming with pain, life

Like Bradbury, Orwell incorporates the mutual theme into his novel in various ways. “The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal” (Orwell 147). Winston had purchased the glass paperweight to rekindle his relationship with the past. The paperweight is his attempt at trying to get things back to the way it used to be. Later on in the story, the paperweight breaks. This shows that the world Winston is living in will never change, and all the power will constantly remain in the hands of the Party (Oceania’s government). Not only does it show that things will never go back to the way they used to be, it also shows that the relationship between Winston and Julia will not last. Hope for a better future no longer remains with Winston. Another symbol that relates to the theme featured in 1984 is the telescreen. Orwell first introduces us to the telescreen when he says, “The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard” (Orwell 3). The government in 1984 uses new technology, such as the telescreen, to keep an eye on everyone. The Party is clearly afraid of rebellion, or the fact that someone may do something they do not like. The telescreens are used to make sure that people like Winston cease to exist, the Party does not want the citizens of Oceania to have a mind of their own, but rather to have a mind operated by the Party itself. Orwell’s description of the symbol is one of many reasons why his style differs from the styles of other authors. Orwell describes the symbol very vividly,

One of the major characters is Winston Smith. He is thirty nine years old. Winston is thin and frail. Winston Smith is very rebellious. Winston is rebellious because he hates the government. An example of this is when he writes in his diary, “Down with Big Brother”. Another character of the novel 1984 is Julia. Julia has dark hair and is beautiful. She becomes Winston’s lover in the novel. Julia and Winston both hate the government. Another character in the novel is O’Brien. O’Brien is a powerful member of the inner party. He goes to Winston Smiths jail cell to brainwash him. During the process O’Brien admits that the Brotherhood was a lie and he was pretending. Another character that is important in the novel is Big Brother. Big Brother is the ruler of Oceania. There are posters of Big Brother that say, “Big Brother is Watching You”. There is also a Big Brother images stamped on coins and the

Winston is immediately attracted to the coral paperweight because of its obvious hoariness. As Mr. Charrington claims, it “wasn’t made less than a hundred years ago” (84). The paperweight’s appearance of “belonging to an age quite different from the present,” distinguishes it from all the objects Winston encounters in his everyday world (84). The Party has already purged London of relics from the days of Capitalism, successfully destroying most of the artifacts from the time before its existence. For Winston to possess a little scrap of the past, however small it may be, gives him something unique, grants him a little individuality- something that is constantly denied to him by the Party. Also, Winston’s possession of the paperweight, one of the few objects remaining that was created before the Party’s rise to power, gives him a tangible clue to answering the question that has been continually

Once the paperweight is smashed by the Thought Police, the reader knows that all Winston’s freedom is gone, and that there is no hope left. Moreover, it essentially states that Winston is doomed. From that point on, Winston is tortured until he has the Party’s ideals implemented into his brain; however, he proves to be a difficult case. At the end of the novel, Orwell writes “But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself.

To begin with, Winston buys a paperweight in an antique store in the prole district that comes to symbolize his attempt to reconnect with the past. Inside the paperweight there’s a piece of coral, the coral paperweight is a literalized image of A Memory, every time Winston stares at it he could go back in his own memory and revive moments of his life. To Winston, this fragile object, a piece of delicate

He wants to understand how and why “the Party” exercises absolute power. Winston realizes that “the Party” is preventing people from having the freedom of the mind but he does not understand why they want or need that absolute power. As the novel progresses we see how much Winston hates “the Party”. In the process of realizing how much Winston hates the world he lives in, the we see the budding rebellious streak within Winston grow. By questioning Big Brother and the party, Winston is commiting a crime punishable by death, thoughtcrime.

It is inevitable to sustain the ability to feel and experience love and compassion, two of the predominant human emotions. Giving love allows one to have a close connection with people who are the most precious to them because of how valuable they are, in the sense that they make up a big part of your life and contribute to the core of who you are. In 1984, Winston finds a strong meaning in a paperweight that he purchases in Mr. Charrington’s store. The paperweight represented his powerful and intimate love relationship with Julia; “the paperweight was the room [Winston] was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal” (Orwell 130).

In literature, symbolism is used to convey an idea or meaning using an object or action. In George Orwell’s book, 1984, set in a dystopian version of England, the Party is the tyrannical group that presides over of the city of Oceania. The Party uses the omniscient symbol of Big Brother to invoke not only fear, but also safety in the people of the city; it keeps the citizens in line and makes sure they never go against the law. This symbolism shows that when the government has all the power, individualism and personal freedoms are lost.

His journal and relationship with Julia occupy the ‘few cubic centimetres’ of private space inside his skull. Although his rebellion ultimately ends in his vaporisation, the process of rebelling was not a complete loss for Winston. From rebelling Winston is able to release the tension and stress that has been building up inside him caused by the constant monitoring of the telescreens. Winston is filled with life through rebelling.

One idea of symbolism in the book is the glass paperweight. Winston’s job is in the Ministry of Truth, where he rewrites the past to make it suitable for the Party. This makes it virtually impossible to have a connection to the past because the past is always changing to make it suitable to the Party. When Winston goes to the shop were the paperweight is from, he is astonished by how beautiful the paperweight was. Winston says, ”What appealed to him was not so much its beauty as the air it seemed to posses an age quite different from the present one” (Orwell 95). Winston is intrigued by the paperweight mostly because it came from the past, before the Party came to power. Throughout the book Winston wonders if the world was better before the Party came to power. Winston soon comes to realize that the world was better off without the Party. Throughout the book, Winston has dreams about the Golden Country, a place in where he meets Julia and is a place safe from the Party. Winston longs to be in the Golden Country. Bloom’s Literature, which does critical essays on novels, states,”The large image of Winston's hope is the Golden Country; the small is the glass paperweight which he buys from Mr. Charrington. Winston is attracted to the paperweight in the first place because it comes from an older time, from what he calls the ancient time, as does the magnificently careless gesture of the girl with the dark hair who becomes Julia in the present. But, again like the Golden Country, what represents the past becomes

Envisage a world where the past is never set in stone and all truths are rewritten. In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four: A Novel, Winston Smith struggles with the dictatorship of Oceania’s Party and the ever-present, watchful Big Brother. The surrounding society is under total control, and every act is highly scrutinized. Challenging the precepts of the Party, Winston purchases and begins writing in a diary and engages in an unorthodox relationship with a woman named Julia. These actions lead to his torture and brainwashing, as well as the splintering of his spirit. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four: A Novel depicts three major symbols of unaltered history in the dystopian society: the glass paperweight,

George Orwell’s 1984 is set in a totalitarian society that has brainwashed residents of Oceania. The Party of Oceania, and Big Brother, the face of the party, have this kind of control over the people because they are able to alter information and history by rewriting the content of all newspapers and records. Amidst this regulated society, the main character, Winston Smith, purchases a glass paperweight that is a great symbol of his past, present, and future. In George Orwell’s 1984, the paperweight defines Winston Smiths undivided fate throughout the book, and is continuously used throughout this dystopian novel to fortify the themes of suppression and control.