Motifs: Orwell uses the motif of food to represent Winston's hope of a better way of life. The higher quality of the food coincides with his beliefs that people are supposed to live a better life. In the beginning of the novel, for example, the quality of the food is very bad. Him and his Party members live off of stale bread and thin soup. This low quality food relates to Winston's belief at the time that their way of life was worse than it should have been, and he believed that at some point in the past it had been better. Later in the book, when Winston starts meeting up with Julia, she starts to smuggle in higher quality food to their hiding place. It is at these times that Winston believes that their style of living was how people were supposed to live. "He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, making love when they chose, talking of what they chose, not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply lying there and listening to peaceful sounds outside" (146). This thought of Winston's comes after he had some of the higher quality food. This prompts him to think that his present lifestyle is of a better quality than what he had previously been experiencing, and that all people should be allowed to live like him. Later in the book after Winston was captured by the thought police, a starving man is placed in the cell with Winston. Another inmate tries to offer him food but the guards stop him. This shows how the Party is controlling the quality of life in the prison. Good food has represented a better, freedom filled lifestyle for Winston so the thought police are depriving him of that by putting him under constant surveillance and depriving him of food altogether. Orwell uses food to represent Winston's hope of a better way of life. The quality of food changed throughout the novel, showing Winston's struggle to find a better way of life, his success in finding a better way of life, and then his loss of that lifestyle when the thought police captured him. Orwell uses food to show this because it is something that is essential for human life, and he believes that a free lifestyle is essential as well.
Setting: The setting in the last third of the book is very restricting. Winston is either physically restricted or under surveillance at all times. This differs from the first two thirds mainly because Winston is now in prison, where he can no longer avoid the eyes of the thought police. The oppressive state of the prison is shown in the first page of part three as Winston is examining his cell. "Concealed flooded it with cold light, and there was a low, steady humming sound which he supposed had something to do with the air supply. A bench, or a shelf, just wide enough to sit on ran around the wall, broken only by the door and, at the end opposite the door, a lavatory pan with no wooden seat. There were four telescreens, one in each wall" (231). The connotations of the words concealed and cold gives off a very oppressed feeling, and that feeling is verified by the fact that there is four telescreens watching Winston at all times. The loss of his ability to express himself due to the restrictive setting takes away Winston's individuality, and allows him to ultimately be brainwashed like all the other Party members. After a long time in confinement, he starts believing the things O'Brien tells him because he doesn't have the option to oppose any argument that he is given. Through this restrictive setting, Orwell is trying to show the reader that an oppressive society is bad because it takes away people's individuality, making them prone to the brainwashing that happens in Totalitarian societies. Orwell included this because he saw parts of the world heading in that direction, and he wanted to warn the world of what might happen.
Language: Orwell uses irony in the description of O'Brien to express the irony within the whole society. Winston has always viewed O'Brien as an intelligent individual who had the mental capacity to see through the lies of the Party. He believes this even more once O'Brien reveals that he is on Winston's side in the battle against the Party. Yet in the end, O'Brien really was with the Party all along, and was blind to the lies which the Party portrayed. Winston first realizes this when he is being interrogated by O'Brien. O'Brien had just destroyed an incriminating piece of paper, and Winston responded "'it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it.''I do not remember it,' said O'Brien. Winston's heart sank. That was doublethink" (255). Winston discovers that O'Brien practiced the Party term doublethink, and therefore is not even aware that he is practicing it. This is ironic because O'Brien is portrayed as a very insightful and intelligent man, yet he is blind to how the Party has brainwashed him. This irony is present in the rest of the society in 1984. The people in the society constantly celebrate the successes of the Party, but in reality the quality of life has been deteriorating. Orwell, through his use of irony, has shown how a Totalitarian government could corrupt and brainwash even the most intelligent people into believing the government's ideals. He shows that a whole society could be corrupted as well, and therefore be blind to the fact that their quality of life is slowly getting worse. Orwell opposed Totalitarian governments because of this, and he wrote this book as a warning because he saw such groups as the British Labor Party, USSR, and the Nazis as exhibiting the start of the behaviors that he wrote about in his book.
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