1984: The Journey of Hope or: how Winston learned to Stop worrying and Love the bomb

Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. (King, 1982)

       
In my reading of 1984, I found several, perhaps not superficial, but indeed more explicit themes, hence more frequented in the literature as well, to argue about here. In the end, instead, I decided to discuss a rather more hidden and existential one, which appears to have been scarcely studied: hope. The purpose of this piece of writing is to follow the journey of hope throughout the novel 1984 by George Orwell, analyzing the shifts it suffers in terms of direction (WHAT is actually hoped) and sources (WHERE hope comes from) while referencing Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, establishing some links between the Party's fight for unlimited power and the foreplay for a possible nuclear war between the US and Russia during the Cold War.

1984 presents a world controlled by a no-longer-existent person, Big Brother, who has become an abstract ideal for the English society over time, his power, managed by The Party and materialized in four ministries, the Ministries of Love, Peace, Truth and Plenty, which are in charge of delivering hate, war, lies, and scarcity, respectively. By this means, as stated by Kellner (1990, p. 226), "The society in 1984 is "totalitarian" in that a centralized party state and its bureaucratic apparatus totally controls every area of life from labor, to culture, to thought, to language, to sexuality and everyday life." The English society was divided into four segments, as shown below:

The Inner Party consisted those who were strong proponents of the political system and were highly involved with it, they were a rich class who had a lot of benefits and were not monitored. The Outer Party included those who did work for the government but were somewhat more sheep-like, lacked benefits and were in sum the working class of the system. The prole were the poor people of England (which were, by the by, an 85 percent of the population) (Orwell, 1949, p. 71). Many of them were forced to prostitute themselves to survive, and they were all excluded from political life.

Hope, faith, prospect, or however you wish to call it is NOT a central topic in the story. Anyhow, it is an intrinsic feature of our protagonist, Winston Smith, and its presence largely determines the development of the plot, as him being, apparently, the only human being (excluding the Inner party and non-existent Brotherhood) aware of the terrible situation, his faith that the world may, some day, go back to normal -whatever that means- is the only thing that gives him the strength to live day after day, but just like in real life, it constantly changes as he experiences new things, so hope's dynamicity is a key factor on his decisions.

The first ray of hope appears when he reflects, for the first time, on writing in his diary, when thinking that he knows a truth that nobody will hear, but the mere act of writing it is a living proof that humanity has not been fully broken, so he writes: "To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone..." (Orwell, 1949, p. 28) as he poses that there is a chance -regardless of how lesser it was, since he also considers himself a dead man- that someone will read the diary some day. This first act of rebellion, despite it is still purposeless, is the beginning of a long journey Orwell will have us go through.

Shortly afterwards (the distance between symbols of hope grows exponentially throughout the novel), Smith dreams of his mother. He does not know if either of them is alive, neither does he know where they are if so, all he is capable of remembering is that their lives were sacrificed to give him a chance to live he would not have had otherwise. Sacrifices no longer exist under the reign of Big Brother; there is no love, there is no family, there is no "us," this deep scene teaches Winston something. Society is rotten, but it was not always this way, he knows an act of love so beautiful that even after nearly 30 years still gives him hope.

The government in England has several ways of monitoring its citizens, such as the telescreens and the Thought Police, but Syme, a Winston's "friend", lets us know that they are working on a far more powerful weapon of mass control: Newspeak, a new, simplistic language whose purpose is to limit thought by limiting vocabulary -after all, without a way to express hope, we would all be hopeless-, a strategy based on DETERRENCE, which can be defined as the action of preventing somebody from doing a certain thing by either difficulting it or by threatening. (Dictionary, Cambridge, 2008), or as Dr. Strangelove would say: "the art of producing in the mind of the enemy (...) the fear to attack" (Kubrick, "Dr. Strangelove, or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb") when he describes his strategy for supremacy in a tense situation between Russia and the US, in which the US permanently has a fleet of 18 megaton nuclear bombers minutes away from Russia's main cities. Then, we are shown a hint of what Winston's theory of the flaw of Big Brother's plan: the prole is so far away from the party that they would never be affected by this so-called newspeak.

'Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?'

'Except --' began Winston doubtfully, and he stopped.

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say 'Except the proles,' but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that his remark was not in some way unorthodox (Orwell, 1949, p. 54)

Note how the Dr.'s expression fits into the sadist description of the WHY the party does what they do.

"If there is hope (...) it lies in the proles." (Orwell, 1949, p. 71) Wrote Winston in his diary as he rediscovered the power of people, believing more and more firmly that it is the prole that is bound to topple the Party. For not only were they isolated from the mesmerising, mind-controlling influence of Big Brother, but they also represented the vast majority (85%) of the population of England, enough to outpower any opposing force. Nevertheless, Orwell makes fun of this situation by emphasizing how impossible it is that the prole becomes aware of their situation, as there is a security dilemma, thus a power dilemma as well, because the only link (and which could lead to disaster) between Big Brother and the prole is the Outer Party. There is, therefore, a sort of arm race between Big Brother and them; the more power the Party has over people's minds, the fewer chances of rebellion there will be. A rather identical case occurs in Dr. Strangelove, as very clearly states Lindley (2001) "The most important theme of the film is that it makes fun of the sad, perverse, and absurd reality that the U.S. and the Soviet Union could destroy each other within 30 minutes. Unlikely and improbable, yes. Possible, yes." Just like the prole could wreck the Party in 30 minutes.This thought is the first one Winston has about actual real-size rebellion, the first harmful idea, so to speak, as it is not a mere individual way of proving oneself one's opposition like keeping a diary -which is very femalish by the way-.

Mind his left eye

A couple of steps further into the novel, the figure of O'Brien finally interferes in our dear Mr. Smith's life when they have this symbolic talk about the Tenth Edition of the Newseak Dictionary -or rather, "The Book"-. In this talk, O'Brien SETS UP a date with Winston to talk about Goldstein and the Brotherhood, which ultimately means that Winston's hope shifts from being a matter of looking through a window or of expecting something to happen to actually becoming part of the change; of acting, or, in the words of the narrator, "The conspiracy that he had dreamed of did exist, and he had reached the outer edges of it." (Orwell, 1949, p. 161)

But soon enough he and Julia would be caught with the book in their hands, as it happened, the warm room in the antique shop was no more than a façade of the Thought police, and they would both be taken to the Ministry of Love to suffer uncountable methods of torture. Winston was not flexible, and often thought of O'Brien "with a flickering hope," (Orwell, 1949, p. 232) knowing that he must have noticed his disappearance and tell the Brotherhood about it, but nobody ever came. It was just a matter of time before Winston got to know the truth: it was O'Brien all along who was in charge of this operation, and he was now in charge of administrating his torture, he was "who decided when Winston should scream with pain." (Orwell, 1949, p. 248) After this epiphany, all of his hope came down, as though hit by a wrecking ball: nobody was coming to save him.

After giving up hope, it was only a matter of time before he gave up everything else; his brain was washed, his hope had vanished, his life was lost. And so, at the time of his final torture, in Room 101, which was rather similar to a Boggart from Harry Potter's world, taking the shape of whatever he feared the most, he gave up Julia as well. After all, "He could not fight against the Party any longer. (...) how could the immortal collective brain be mistaken?" (Orwell, 1949, p. 282)

But the story does not quite finish at the "THE END" mark, as Orwell, in an act of tremendous genius, makes one last shift in terms of hope: the hope Winston once lost is transferred to the reader as he reads the Appendix, where we are shown a post-Big Brother world and explained how it was their ultimate weapon, Newspeak, that caused the government to fall into pieces. The narrator has changed -it is no longer a third person filtered through Winston's knowledge- but the information is scarce, and we are not given enough clues to know what really happened in the end. It could have been that Winston took part in the process... or after it. Do you think the appendix could be the remnant of Winston's diary?

References:

You probably didn’t read the most telling part of Orwell’s “1984”-the appendix. (n.d.). Retrieved December 11, 2015, from http://qz.com/95696/you-probably-didnt-read-the-most-telling-part-of-orwells-1984-the-appendix/

Kubrick, S. (Director). (1964). Dr. Strangelove, or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb [Motion picture]. Columbia Pictures Corporation.

Lindley, D. (2001). What I Learned Since I Stopped Worrying and Studied the Movie: A Teaching Guide to Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. Political Science & Politics, 34(03), 663-667.

Kellner, D. (1990). From 1984 to one-dimensional man: Critical reflections on Orwell and Marcuse. Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 10, 223-52.

Dictionary, Cambridge. (2008). Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

King, S. (1982). Different seasons. New York: Viking Press.