/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14072535]

“Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

[Emonationalist !!HxQhKkNYVzK No.14072548]

Why do Brits like gin? It's almost as nasty as tequila.

[Anonymous No.14072562]

>>14072548
It's all they can afford under communism. 1984 is realistic even in the most subtle ways.

[Anonymous No.14072568]

>>14072548
>tequila
>nasty

[Anonymous No.14072572]

Though the narrator is omniscient, we effectively view Britain through Winston’s jaundiced, petty-bourgeoisie eyes. He clearly loathes the proletarians, hearing their voices as cockney blather, viewing them as a mass of “cattle”, dismissing them as “small, dark and ill-favoured”. But is life so bad for the proles who make up 83 per cent of the population? They are allowed to drink, gamble, and fuck, and live with relative freedom.

Winston asks: “Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?” This is reactionary. Winston is part of that privileged, middle-class minority which works for the government, the “hands” of the “brain” of the body politic. He longs for a capitalist past of small government and opportunities for personal financial advancement, a utopia for the petty-bourgeoisie but not for the working classes.

Perhaps this is unfair. Winston is clearly unwell — so unwell he will eventually be provided with electroconvulsive therapy free of charge on the NHS. He lives in a war zone, after all, and maybe he is suffering from PTSD in the aftermath of a bomb rocket explosion. Near the start of the novel, he remains self-aware enough to realize his thoughts are a “stream of rubbish”.

He is an inverse Quixote, in his delusion re-imagining his vital clerical contribution to the war-effort as a record-keeper as something less noble. Of course, Winston is subject to background checks and review by his superiors, but any government employee handling sensitive material should expect the same level of scrutiny.

It is his paranoia which magnifies these checks and balances into something sinister. The proles themselves do not face the same level of scrutiny — this is why Winston and Julia meet for their trysts in a proletarian area.

Just as he hates the working classes, Winston “disliked nearly all women, and specially the young and pretty ones.” The psychosexual complex which makes him fantasize about raping Julia and “smashing [her] head in with a cobblestone” is further proof that Winston is a very sick man, who again is helped through some tough but effective talking therapy provided free of charge by the state.

His misogyny dovetails with his lust for capitalist individualism. Looking at Julia after she puts on proletarian make-up, he ruminates: “With just a few dabs of color in the right places she had become not only very much prettier, but, above all, far more feminine.” He wants to see her in “silk stockings and high-heeled shoes”, as “a woman, not a Party comrade.” She embodies his counter-revolutionary fantasies.

[Anonymous No.14072585]

>>14072572
wrong

[Anonymous No.14072599]

>'We are the dead,' he said.
>'We are the dead,' Julia echoed dutifully.
>'You are the dead,' said an iron voice behind them.

[Emonationalist !!HxQhKkNYVzK No.14072607]

>>14072562
Touchë
>>14072568
I like drinking things that actually taste good, like pic related.

[Anonymous No.14072615]

does big brother exist?
you donot exist.

[Anonymous No.14072625]

the film ending is much better than the book ending
change my mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjDg3lQGmRs

[Anonymous No.14072783]

>>14072535
>'And in the end, he truly lived in a Nineteen-Eighty-Four'

[Anonymous No.14072838]

>Wtf I love Big Brother now.

[Anonymous No.14072850]

>>14072572
dangerously based

[Anonymous No.14072867]

>>14072535
>tfw it's actually one of my favorite books but can't admit it because of all those redditors comparing big brother to drumpft

[Anonymous No.14073445]

>>14072535
unironically the secret to a happy life