Conflict: 1984

[PiNkMeEsEaReRaD]

Hey peeples...I'm in 8th grade & we have this book project & we had to pick a book from a list...soOOooOOo I picked "1984"....very good book, may I mention...but I don't know how to put the "conflict" into words!!! HELP!!! :eek:

<3,
Vee :angel:

[lachlan.plant]

The book, 1984 by George Orwell, is about the external conflict between Winston Smith and Big Brother; and the internal conflict between the two ideas, democracy and totalitarianism. Orwell wrote the novel to show society what it could become if things kept getting worse: he sensed of the expansion of communism when he wrote the novel. The conflict between democracy and totalitarianism at the year of 1945 created two characters, Winston Smith and Big Brother, in orwell's mind. Big Brother is the embodiment of all the ideals of the totalitarian party. In contrast to Big Brother, Winston Smith keeps the idea of democracy emphasizes freedom, he has to hide his own thought because the Big Brother's party will punish him by death if the party finds it out. George orwell criticizes of Big Brother's society by describing it as a dark and a gloomy place. It warns that people might believe that everyone must become slaves to the government in order to have an orderly society, but at the expense of the freedom of the people.
ar'nt you a little young for this book

[feralCoder]

I read the book for the first time in college, and have read it a couple of times since. It is continually becoming more meaningful to me, and as I age I gain more insight and appreciation. It's definitely a profound and mature book.

That's not to say an 8th grader can't get a lot out of it. I'm glad you're reading it, and I hope it keeps affecting you for the rest of your life.

Does it make people feel good to find mental superiority in their age? Way to go, you went another X years without eating any poisons under the sink. Kid, if you see this guy on the street, I hope you punch him in the nose.


Oh, I may as well put in my 2 cents about the book, too. You say it's about democracy vs totalitarianism. I don't think that's quite right. I think it's about freedom vs totalitarianism. If this sounds like I'm nitpicking, I'm not, and this exact point would be great fodder for more 1984 discussions about social programming and propaganda in democratic countries. Propaganda in any political system will focus on the inherent goodness of that system.

I do think you're right about the tradeoff between convenience/security and liberty, but I think the bigger point is that people can be controlled easily. People are shaped by their environment, and whoever controls the environment controls the people. In the book I can think of planned activities, restricted actions, controlled access to information, restricted communication, limited freedom of movement, and of course, punishment and reprogramming.

Bottom line is that when the system IS your environment, everywhere, you better ****ing pay attention to what it is becoming.

[feralCoder]

I didn't put in the ****, the website did.

It's almost like it knows what we're talking about, and is trying to be funny.

[jon1jt]

I really enjoyed reading the interpretations of 1984 above. The story is about the will to live versus the will of death. The will to live is creative, spontaneous, and eternal. The conflict comes from the clash of these opposing forces. Webbed within ourselves are both conditions, which manifest themselves in the very fabric of society, in everything we do, from the laws we make to the way we intuit the world. Winston Smith is the love of the human will incarnate. He represents the best in humankind, but the conflict is too much to bear and in the end, exhausted and beaten, he submits entirely, giving his "mind" over to the collectivity --- symbolism is the subversive and overarching condition imposed by the collectivity in defiance of the self. The collective will, an amalgamative force of self-ing reflected by and imbued in social institutions. This will has a penchant for fleeing from freedom because it sees individuality as alone and disconnected in the world -an aberration (Re: Marx... Religion is the opiate of the masses.") Thus we erect churches and governments to constitute ourselves and bolster and reaffirm hope. But this is illusory, as we know. In fact, we're shipwrecked. Despire, 1984 celebrates individuality and the will to life. Winston's submission symbolizes that the masses are infantile and thereby incapable, most oftenly, of self-liberation.