How hope could be the downfall of humanity

[buckeye12]

It is easy to see throughout the book that Winston's judgement is clouded by hope. When O'Brien invites him over, Winston immediately is suspicious of a trap and yet one little speckle of hope for change was all that was needed for him to go anyway. In the end, hope is what will lead Winston to his dreaded fate. Is it safe to think that Orwell was trying to warn us in that sense too? To watch out for what hope we have and if the hope is worth pursuing?

I feel it is a reasonable threat to our future but i think the key thing is to make sure the decision to pursue the hope is completely reasonable.

:banana:

[Jack Fields]

I would think exactly otherwise. In my opinion Orwell tried to point out, that without hope (for better life for example) you would be just like everyone else (just surviving, obeying the Party rules) . Winston had a hope and he was "the last man".
And maybe my English is not so well, but, "reasonable decision to pursue the hope"? That makes completely no-sense. Hope cannot be coordinated (or regulated) with the reason. That would be just calculating.

[buckeye12]

There's a line between reasonable and stretching it. Winston died because of his hope that Big Brother would fall and what did he really accomplish in his quest to topple their power? Nothing. He didn't make any progress. He jumped on the train that was headed into a cliff when he went to O'Brien's house, even though his intuition told him that it was a trap. He allowed that hope decide his fate. It was definitely not [U]reasonable[U] to follow his hope in that situation. You can calculate whether or not hope will have a bad outcome.