2007년 6월 1일 금요일

1984-#3


* Who are the main characters in the novel? Do you like them? why or why not? What is special about them? What do they reveal about the universal human experience?

The major characters of the novel 1984 include Winston Smith, Julia, and O’Brien.
The central character and the protagonist of the book is Winston and people and objects are described in his view.
Winston tries to rebel against Party, antagonist. With Winston, Julia is against the Party. However, while Winston tries to make difference in society, Julia seeks ways out to be free under blindsides of the Party. This difference is mainly caused by how much they have memories of past, where things were better. Winston was born during the war and Julia was born after the Party was created. Therefore, Winston realizes that society he is living in is wrong and past was better, while Julia does not have anything to compare with and is not interested in one. She is rather interested in entertaining herself and her unconcerned attitude toward finding out about the existence of Brotherhood and reasons for constant war is shown when she falls asleep while Winton reads her “The Book” given by O’Brien. She has a rebellious personality and simply hates being controlled.
O’Brien is on the side of antagonist, and actually is one of the Inner Party members. He traps Winston by lying to him that he is a member of the anti-Party group. He later “cures” Winston by physical and mental torture. Throughout the book, which is written in Winston’s view, the character of O’Brien is like a teacher for Winston. At first, he leads Winston to Anti-party group by giving him “The Book” and later he “cures” him to a character with no thoughts, a character that party wants.
My favorite character throughout the book was Winton. He, while others believe and give the Party absolute obedience, has questions and doubts about it as he revises history in Ministry of Truth. He is not a hero that saves the society from the Party, but later is captured in Ministry of Love and is “cured” as a complete zombie. After he is released, his mind, which was full of defiance and hostility toward Big Brother, turns into dull mind full of love toward the Party. As he possesses intelligence with sharp intuition toward reality, he was very attractive character. After seeing Winston being changed to a person with his head and mind only filled with love toward the Party, I realized that human emotions and their experiences can be erased with torture. In the end of the book, he thinks that his childhood memory is wrong and such thing never has happened. It was a shock for me to think that someone is forced to deny their past. I was in agony of this question: Is human memory and experience reliable? After the dreadful experience, the main character does not dare to stand up against the antagonist. He does not even think about hating the Party.

댓글 1개:

Stephanie Chun :

I didn't like Winston much..I actually had no one I like lol.. I thought that Winston is showing to the readers how weak humans are.

I was also shocked and felt sad that people have to deny their past. Wow we are really lucky that we don't need to =)