George Orwell 1984 - Themes

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1984 Themes

  Winston has no family, and we are told that when he did, he had only a mother and a sister. Both Big Brother and The Brotherhood offer competing visions of fraternity. One signifies loyalty to the state. The other represents, for Winston, loyalty to his brother men. As an double-agent of both, O'Brien becomes the closest thing that Winston has ever known  as a brother. 

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Fraternity

Love

Orwell's 1984 is a loveless world.  Before she offers Winston the note, he has fantasised about attacking Julia, believing her to be an agent of the Thought Police.  (Similarly, he later fantasises about killing his estranged wife, Katherine, so that Winston and Julia might be married) The romantic and sexual love they experience seems more like acts of sedition and boredom than the coupling of soulmates. This is confirmed by Winston's thoughts on the glass ornament, an idealised representation of the couple that can never really be reached. Winston's colleague, Tom Parsons, is betrayed to the Thought Police by his own children. Therefore, familial love is as illusory as romantic love in 1984. This idea is repeated by Winston's last, unhappy memory of his own mother and sister, who he betrayed. This betrayal is ultimately repeated in Room 101, when Winston gives up Julia.  In the end, Winston professes to only love Big Brother. 

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Propaganda

The Party uses soldiers to wage the war outside Oceania, and uses propaganda to wage the war within. In the Ministry of Truth, where Winston works, he witnesses and partakes in the state's efforts to rewrite history: Mistakes become victories. Heroes become criminals. Language becomes a weapon. With the use of telescreens, Big Brother relentlessly reinforces the messages which demand loyalty from the people to the Party. 

Identity

In a totalitarian state, government control is, as the name suggests, total. Members of the Outer Party dress the same way, eat the same things, exercise at the same time, read only what is proscribed, sing only what is allowed. With the advent of newspeak, individual modes of expression become increasingly difficult. By attempting to have a forbidden relationship, Winston and Julia are expressing their humanity in the most basic and primal way possible. That they do this, knowing all along that sooner or later, they will be caught, shows how desperate their actions are. In the end, all traces of individuality are obliterated from Winston. He is a vassal of the state. 

Appearance v Reality

For Winston, the wish to find like-minded allies is made more difficult by the near impossibility of telling friend from foe. Julia, who he believes to be a member of the Thought Police, becomes his lover. Though she wears the sash of the Anti-Sex League, she is, in reality, sexually promiscuous. O'Brien, who Winston believes to be a friend, is really loyal to the state. Likewise Charrington. The wars of Oceania may be false-flag exercises.  Winston's 'dead' mother may be in prison.  Emmanuel Goldstein may be a fiction. Appearance and reality are never certainties in 1984

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