WHO CONTROLS WINSTON'S MIND?

Jackie Jura answers reader:

Greetings SR,

...I do not agree with your premise that Winston and Julia were pawns on a chess board being moved around by O'Brien, and that the dream of the dark-haired girl was put there by O'Brien and then the dark-haired girl was later made to appear (ie Julia).

Winston knows the difference between true and false memories, and true and false dreams. That's the whole problem. O'Brien wants to wipe all the true stuff out and replace it with the false. Winston is putting up strong resistence. 1984 represents the battle for Winston's mind - the battle for THE LAST MAN IN EUROPE. Who will eventually control him, God or anti-God? That is the question. I discuss that a bit in the essay WINSTON DIES INSIDE.

Actually, the whole point of 1984 is to represent a battle between the thinking human being and the non-human organization which is out to control him. At the end of the story it is up to the reader to decide for themselves whether or not Winston has lost, but at the beginning Orwell tells us that the Party has definitely not got control of Winston's mind.

"At home and in bed in the darkness you were safe from the telescreen so long as you kept silent...the few cubic centimetres inside your skull were still your own."

"He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking. Perhaps that was less true when you were actually in their hands."

Over and out,
Jackie Jura

PS: I put an essay up the other day entitled JFK & JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY in regard to another issue raised by the Oxford essay.

TORTURING TO FIND GOD (people to be tortured & brain scanned to see if faith is there). MSNBC, Jan 12, 2005. Go to 42.The Party Tells Why & ORWELL SAW GOD IN MAN

JULIA'S FATE (reader wonders about Party doctrine on Julia's kind of thinking)

Go to READERS' EMAIL to read discussion in full and to 28.Reality Control and 2.Big Brother

Jackie Jura
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~

email: orwelltoday@gmail.com
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