Love

[Raven]

Hi, I'm brand new here, but this looks like just my sort of place, I'm such a bookworm!

I was wondering, what did you guys think of the different types of love in 1984? I'm not talking about just Winston and Julia, but also Winston's mother for her children, the state for Big Brother, Winston and O'Brien...

What are your views?

[IWilKikU]

hmmm I think its been too long since I read it to comment on somthing that specific. Sorry.

[simon]

Hey there Raven,
I found that the love of Winston and Julia was not really love because it was based on the two of them having sex. An act that only held such great importance for them because it was banned, and unacceptable to enjoy. Basically their form of "love" was based on rebellion, and at the end of the book Winston was easily able to denounce Julia and lay all the balme on her, that cannot be the act of someone in a loving relationship.

[imthefoolonthehill]

by eliminating most freedom, they elliminated most love.

[IWilKikU]

The states love for Big Brother wasn't love either. The inner party knew that Big Brother didn't even exist, and the outer party served him out of fear, not love. The last lines in the book, "he loved Big Brother", was only after physical and psychological torture and brainwashing. You can't torture and brainwash someone into love.

[imthefoolonthehill]

so... you are saying he didn't love, but definately thought he did?

[DumbLikeAPoet]

Originally posted by simon
Hey there Raven,
I found that the love of Winston and Julia was not really love because it was based on the two of them having sex. An act that only held such great importance for them because it was banned, and unacceptable to enjoy. Basically their form of "love" was based on rebellion, and at the end of the book Winston was easily able to denounce Julia and lay all the balme on her, that cannot be the act of someone in a loving relationship.

I have to disagree. I believe that Winston did love Julia. Not when they first started seeing eachother but by the time they were captured he did. I think the scene right before their capture where they sleep past the time that they should have provides some basis for this.

As for Winstons Mother he did love her but remember that this was before the society that is talked about in the book.

Jonus

[atiguhya padma]

I think that the idea that just because a relationship ends with betrayal, it cannot then have been a loving relationship, is a typical misconception of both love and relationships. A loving relationship isn't some static singular piece, it is a dynamic flowing movement. You cannot abstract an act from a loving relationship and use it to characterise the whole process. At least not with any credibility. For Winston and Julia, their relationship merely ended in an ugly way. It doesn't mean they didn't love each other. Whether they could have known what love was, is another question altogether. For that matter, it may not even be necessary to know what love is in order to love.

[amuse]

well said

[calendo]

It is essential to Orwell's story that Winston love Julia and that he sells her out in the end. The point of 1984 is not that totaltarian states seek to strip human beings of their humanity. but how easy it is to do so, and how willing people are to bend the knee and be servile. That is the enduring horror of Orwell's distopia.

Think of the torture scene. It wasn't enough for Winston to pretend 2 + 2 = 5 , he had to believe it fully, embrace it, all the while knowing it to be absurd yet happy to be able to believe in an absurdity that served the interests of the state. Orwell is arguing that humanity is fragile, but states are not. In the distopia of 1984, people have been crushed down to the point where they regularly betray their parents and lovers and even kill their mothers (as it is hinted Winston does, without much guilt about it either!).

At the end of the book, Winston is so ruined one almost expects him to bleat, " I regret I had but one girlfriend to give up to my country."

I think the issue of love is central to 1984. Orwell knew that readers coming to his book most likely saw their own humanity as something permanent, incapable of being lost, that of all the emotions human love was the one most weighted with notions of permanence-- love which will conquer all, love as the only thing makes life matter and so forth. Thus, it is important to the story that Winston does indeed loves Julia and that this love breaks down under torture. This makes Orwell larger and more horrific point which is not so much about crushing power of the totalitarian state as the willingness of a brainwashed people to lie down before the steamrolling force. (Winston has no dreams of escaping to a remote island, for instance. Nor does he scheme of disappearing among the proles, pretending to be one of them, something that would require him simply to give up his party membership -- which I get the feeling was a kind of English class thing, it simply wasn't done for men of Winston's education to be workmen, etc)

The nursery rhyme that runs throughout the book sums up 1984 theme in terms of love. The first line sets you up to expect somehitng something warm and fuzzy. But the lines that follow are sinister and chilling:

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me:
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree.

[simon]

Nicely said Cal

[IWilKikU]

Indeed. Welcome to the forums.

[Liina]

I personally think that the thing between Winston and Julia wasn`t really love. It was more like desperate wish for something else than everything their real life was about - meaning no feelings. They weren`t allowed to meet and that`s why they did it. It was forbidden, which means exciting. I have to admit that at first I was quite sure that Winston really loved Julia but when I reached to the spot where Winston wished that Julia was tortured instead of him, I changed my mind. If Winston had loved Julia, he wouldn`t have betrayed her, therefore I`m quite sure that Winston didn`t love her - it was all about excitement.

A little thing about the poem - I think it was the proof that humanity hadn`t been completely defeated yet. Orwell wanted to say with it that there is still hope for human kind as "1984" is a sarcastic image of his (and also our) contemporary world, not only an image of totalitarian society but also criticism of feelinglessness of people. So the poem shows that everything is not lost yet.

The state hadn`t managed to destroy all the humane feelings, including love, yet but in case of Winston and Julia it was mere excitement.

But we can never be sure can we :p

[crisaor]

I personally think that the thing between Winston and Julia wasn`t really love. It was more like desperate wish for something else than everything their real life was about - meaning no feelings. They weren`t allowed to meet and that`s why they did it. It was forbidden, which means exciting.
I think that at first, Winston was in love and Julia wasn't. And then they were both in love. But it's simply a matter of opinion. :)

I have to admit that at first I was quite sure that Winston really loved Julia but when I reached to the spot where Winston wished that Julia was tortured instead of him, I changed my mind. If Winston had loved Julia, he wouldn`t have betrayed her, therefore I`m quite sure that Winston didn`t love her - it was all about excitement.
That's not so. It's not easy to mantain loyalty and love if you're being tortured. They were in love, and that was one of the things the torture was meant to accoplish: to destroy humane emotions as you said, to destroy their love, that emotion that made the regime look unimportant, meaningless, and thus, flawed. O'Brien needs to break them before realeasing them. Otherwise, the "problem" would remain.

[Liina]

See, humane feelings were already destroyed before they could arise. Julia and Winston were deeply affected by the totalitarian regime and therefore there wasn`t love between them, just a desperate attempt to fight the regime. It failed though.

But as you said, Crisaor, it`s all the matter of understanding, there can`t be one and the right opinion when it comes to literary pieces:)