Orwell Writing
His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper,
printing in large neat capitals.

EVIDENCE WINSTON FIGHTING BB

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

To Orwell Today,

Hello!

I am currently studying 1984 in my school.

In my school, we have been taught that Oceania is a world where humanity is destroyed. So far, I understand HOW the party has destroyed humanity but I sort of think that Winston fights against the party to retain his humanity.

I don't have any evidence to show that he is fighting against the party, but I just think that he does.

Is this interpretation acceptable?

Thank you!
Illumi Quest

Greetings Illumi,

You're right when you say Winston fights against the Party to retain his humanity. Here's the passage from Winston's diary (Orwell's book) proving so:

"He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear.
But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken.
It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you
carried on the human heritage.

And actually, there IS evidence (all throughout the book) that Winston is fighting against the Party - beginning with his courage to speak out against the Party in his writing in a diary, knowing, as he did, what the consequences would be:

"...The thing that he was about to do was open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp.... He dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a second. A tremor had gone through his bowels. To mark the paper was the decisive act....The seconds were ticking by.... His eyes re-focused on the page. He discovered that while he sat helplessly musing he had also been writing, as though by automatic action.... His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large neat capitals -

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was absurd, since the writing of those particular words was not more dangerous than the initial act of opening the diary; but for a moment he was tempted to tear out the spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether. He did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed - would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper - the essential crime that contained all others in itself, Thoughtcrime.

For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in a hurried untidy scrawl: theyll shoot me I dont care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck I dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck I dont care down with big brother -- He was already dead, he reflected. The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. He wrote: Thought crime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.

He wondered again for whom he was writing the diary. For the future, for the past - for an age that might be imaginary. And in front of him there lay not death but annihilation. The diary would be reduced to ashes and himself to vapour. Only the Thought Police would read what he had written, before they wiped it out of existence and out of memory. How could you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically survive?

He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. He went back to the table, dipped his pen, and wrote... [end quoting]

Some further examples of evidence Winston is fighting against the Party can be found in excerpts from themes I've listed below.

All the best in your study of "1984",
Jackie Jura

PS - The photo above is of Orwell (Winston) writing his diary (book)

32.Enemies of the Party (...That was all, and he was already uncertain whether it had happened. Such incidents never had any sequel. All that they did was to keep alive in him the belief, or hope, that others besides himself were the enemies of the Party. Perhaps the rumours of vast underground conspiracies were true after all - perhaps the Brotherhood really existed! It was impossible, in spite of the endless arrests and confessions and executions, to be sure that the Brotherhood was not simply a myth. Some days he believed in it, some days not. For a second, two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of the story. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked loneliness in which one had to live....)

33.Contact (...The conspiracy that he had dreamed of did exist, and he had reached the outer edges of it. He knew that sooner or later he would obey O'Brien's summons. Perhaps to-morrow, perhaps after a long delay - he was not certain. What was happening was only the working out of a process that had started years ago. The first step had been a secret, involuntary thought, the second had been the opening of the diary. He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions...)

35.The Brotherhood (...Winston said: "We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy, some kind of secret organization working against the Party. We want to join it and work for it. We are enemies of the Party. We disbelieve in the principles of Ingsoc. We are thought-criminals."...)

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

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