Defeating the Party

You should consider reading this book as a satire, as it will help you detach emotionally and better recognize the book’s main themes. Because some of you won’t be able to detach so easily, I will start with three ways Winston could have defeated the party. This way you will have answers to the pessimistic thoughts that may arise.

1. The power of love: Fear is caused by the wish to avoid pain or death. Winston already experienced the maximal physical pain imaginable and didn’t give up love for Julia, so all he had to do to overcome room 101 was realize that his fear of rats is caused by fear of pain. Whatever it is that you fear, it is due to pain (physical, emotional, or psychological) or death (which he accepted), and by realizing this you become immune to it. True love cannot be destroyed no matter the amount of torture.

I believe you could truly embrace suffering to a degree that it no longer feels “painful”. You can do it by analyzing the feeling of pain until there is nothing left other than the present moment. 

2. The power of hope: Hope or faith, is the thing that helps us keep fighting, keep believing even when there is no ground to stand on. Winston lacks hope, the feeling of faith that you may question, but that always prevails.

Without hope no change is possible, and defeat becomes inevitable. His belief that one day he would get captured and tortured became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But the party wouldn’t have defeated Winston if only he had faith that change was possible. Not even through torture, because that belief would help him fight through the pain. 

3. The power of consciousness:

Winston was first defeated on the physical level, through restrictions on his movement and privacy. Through to process of Doublethink the Party took away his psychological freedom; even accepting the fact that 2 + 2 = 5, which confirmed that his mind was no longer his. In the end, they broke him emotionally as the only love left in his heart was not for Julia, but for Big Brother.

Now, let’s assume that nobody’s brain could have resisted the methods of torture that were used. There is still one level of existence that the party couldn’t, didn’t, and never will be able to break. That is his consciousness, the state of existence that is left once you cut down all of your physical, psychological, and emotional attachment to the world. The indestructible state of enlightenment. Winston never arrived at that state during his life but it awaits him after his death. I wholeheartedly believe that no amount of torture could have affected him if he had reached enlightenment before his capture. I am not saying he would have become immortal, but that he would be capable of withstanding torture to the level that his body was capable of. It wouldn’t be his mind that gives in, but the body. Only possible outcomes are that either he dies, or they change his brain to the extent where no evidence of Winston could be found. For more information about consciousness and the idea that I just briefly unpacked, check out my post Consciousness, Ego, and the Self.

Finally, if you still aren’t convinced, you should read the book and my summary of Man’s Search for Meaning. It is a great example of how real people survived conditions similar to the ones described in 1984. 

 “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”

—Nietzche

Themes

Three levels of control

The Party controls its subjects with psychological stimuli designed to overwhelm the mind’s capacity for independent thought. The giant telescreen streams constant propaganda and also monitors the behavior of all the citizens. On top of it all, there are big signs all over the city reading “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”, which only adds to the paranoia. 

The Party also undermines family structure by indoctrinating children through organizations like the Junior Spies, which brainwashes and encourages them to spy on even their own parents. But this isn’t too surprising because the feeling of love towards the family is replaced by the love towards the big brother. 

But the worst of all is that individuals are thought to suppress their sexual desires, treating sex as merely a procreative duty whose end is the creation of new Party members.

Control of Information and History

The Party controls every source of information, managing and rewriting the content of all documents, newspapers, and evidence that could represent the party in a bad way. Individuals are not allowed to keep records of their past, such as photographs or documents and as a result, memories become fuzzy and unreliable, and citizens become perfectly willing to believe whatever the Party tells them. By controlling the present, the Party manipulates the past, and by manipulating the past, the Party can justify its actions in the present.

Language as Mind Control

The importance of language lies in the fact that human thought is structured and limited by the ideas that individuals are capable of formulating and expressing. If control of language were centralized in a political agency, such an agency could alter the very structure of language to make it impossible to even conceive of disobedient or rebellious thoughts because there would be no words with which to think them. This idea manifests itself in the language of Newspeak.

Loyalty

The Party seeks to ensure that the only loyalty allowed is loyalty towards the Party. Neighbors and coworkers inform on one another, and Mr. Parson’s own child reports him to the Thought Police. Customer and merchant relationships aren’t safe either, as Winston is betrayed by the man who has sold him the very tools of his resistance and independence. Of course, that man was an officer of the thought police, but the fact that even there he had no safety shows the level of paranoia required to fight against the Party. Even O’Brien, who was supposed to be a high-ranking member of the rebellious group turns out to be a devoted Party member. Winston’s relationship with Julia is the ultimate loyalty that is tested by the events of the book and in the book Winston tells Julia, “if they could make me stop loving you—that would be the real betrayal.” In the end, the Party does make Winston stop loving Julia and love Big Brother instead, the only form of loyalty allowed.

Independence and Identity

While the Party’s primary tool for manipulating the populace is the control of history, it also controls independence and identity. Winston does not know how old he is, he does not know whether he is still married or not, whether his mother and sister are alive or dead. All Party members wear the same clothing, smoke the same brand of cigarettes, drink the same brand of gin, and so forth. 

Most of Winston’s significant decisions can be interpreted as attempts to build a sense of identity. His decision to purchase a diary and begin recording his thoughts is an attempt to create memory and history. His decision to purchase the paperweight is something that would be his own and would resemble a time before the party. His relationship with Julia further establishes his identity as an individual. However, in the Ministry of Love, his individuality is disassembled and deconstructed to a point where he has lost all independence and uniqueness and has become part of the Party’s faceless collective.