Glimpse into the Past?
We just read about a time when Winston is searching through children books for some sort of reliable evidence as to what really happened in the past, as if it could serve as a key to what life was like before the revolution. The Party claims that Oceania has a reduced infant mortality rate, increased literacty rate, and much more food compared to years ago. Without reliable official records though, there is no way to know if this is true. Winston has no way to prove either side, since the history books are written entirely by the Party itself. The government is made up of lies and secrecy, and Winston continually seems to discover something that makes him question them even more. This reminded me of an incident in which he saw a few, (very elderly) governmental leaders sitting at the Chesnut Tree Cafe. A song played in the background- "Under the spreading chesnut tree / I sold you and you sold me" (80). Shortly after, one of the leader/party members began to weep. I want to pose the question about what the song refers to and the relevency regarding the situation around it. I realize that we need to read more of the novel in order to understand the meaning of the song; however, do you think that we have been given insight into the past and how things used to be?
I do think that we have some insight into the past since Winston sometimes remembers certain things and/or moments. Sometimes, he all of the sudden looks at a place and realizes that he remembers something very vaguely. Also the fact that he says, after he visited the antique store, that he could hear the church bells, even though he couldn't remember ever hearing the sound of church bells, or even remembering a church. Orwell gives us these little moments in order for us to find out what existed and what didn't. Orwell does this on purpose in order to make us think about our own life, is everything we know and see actually true? And since Winston basically tells the reader that he questions the past and that he remembers how ''good chocolate used to be'' it gives us a representation of the past. It also shows that what the Party tells the citizens that they way of life basically increases, even though most people contradict this specially Julia). So, a couple of questions:
ReplyDelete-Do you believe that the Party lies?
-Do you think that these vague moments Winston has are actually memories?
-Do you think that Julia is actually in love with Winston?
It's interesting to compare the Party's version of the past (the received version) and Winston's own memories. The Party's version is quite vivid and almost cartoonish: the rich flogging the poor with cat o' nine tails, tophats, gangs of lackeys, and champagne. It seems like some some strange, absurd mixture of Monopoly and Braveheart. Clearly, the Party has taken elements of capitalism and exaggerated them to the point of satire. But satire does not attempt to present itself as truth, while the Party seems to be quite earnest in presenting its "history" as fact. As I already noted, it's all a bit silly ... but it's not. More contradictions and paradoxes.
ReplyDeleteAs for Winston's memories, they are (as Helen pointed out) on the whole rather vague, but two struck me as quite vivid and poignant. The first is during the bombing when Winston crouches with his family in a tube station and watches an old man "suffer under some grief that was genuine and unbearable" (35). Winston presumes the man has lost someone he loved, perhaps a granddaughter. Winston's dream about his mother and his memory of her are also painful to read: "His mother's memory tore at his heart because she had died loving him, when he was too young and selfish to love her in return, and because somehow, he did not remember how, she had sacrificed herself to a conception of loyalty that was private and unalterable. Such things, he saw, could not happen today" (32).
In Winston's present, the strongest emotions we see are fear and hate, and these are typically experienced alone or in a group (but directed at a screen). In his past, it appears that people felt and were able to express love and loyalty. Bonds between individuals existed and these bonds were strong enough to cause pain and sacrifice.
Helen, I definitely see where you are coming from when you say that we're givin insight into the past through Winston's thoughts. Can we be completely sure that these memories are real though? If we think about it, Winston works at a place where one of his main jobs has to do with the alteration of the past and different time eras. The Party's view on the past is completely a lie, changing it in a way that reflects the world they presently live in. It is natural that, after a certain amount of time, Winston could have confusion between the fiction of the past and the reality of it. It is not as difficult as we thought to determine which one of these he truly reminisces on though. As Ms. Cox pointed out, most of the memories, in one way or another, have an expression of love and loyalty. The only feeling even close to these two, that the Party would allow in text books or history re-caps, would be the love towards Big Brother.
ReplyDeleteJust a tiny segue,
ReplyDeleteI've read past the comments a little bit and as stated in one comment posed by Helen, she said, "some insight into the past since Winston sometimes remembers certain things and/or moments..." That makes me wonder a little bit, why is it that Winston is unable in remember these things? Winston seems like a man perfectly capable of understanding his surroundings and having the memory capacity to remember his past. But I'm speculating something else doing on in the Party. We've know from all that we've read in Part 1, that Winston knows a little too much. He knows things that the Party definitely doesn't want him to know. With that knowledge that he posses, wouldn't you think that the Thought Police have already caught him by now? He is very cautious and careful with what he says, but I would think that the Thought Police have already abducted Winston. Could there be something else, much more secretive that we know from just reading the first part of the novel, going on in the party? Literal brainwash maybe?
But to relate back into Sandy's question, the significance of the Chestnut Tree Cafe, and the song being played in the background. It's struck me to as significant. I would argue that there is much more to this song that just a simple tune and lyrics. "Under the spreading chestnut tree..." I would reference this back to the expansion of the brotherhood. The brotherhood is expanding and as the map introduced by Tristan in another post, it seems that even with all the land that they occupy, they still want more. The Brotherhood to me seems like the nasty villain in a comic book, where their number one priority is world dominance. Because, in one of the beginning chapters, Oceania were in war with Eastasia, or Eurasia, forgive me but the two continents are very similar, because of their different beliefs. The other nation wants to abolish slavery, which they do not believe to be freedom, the other nation runs of our society's perception of what's right and what's wrong. So with the first part of the lyrics, I definitely would like to pin point the song to a big brother type of propaganda.
ReplyDeleteWhat's also interesting is the second part of the song, "I sold you, you sold me". When I first read this, I instantly thought about, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. It seems like the brotherhood plays around. They advertise the fact that they are honest and fair, they treat everyone alike, with the same amount of freedom, which does not correlate with what we define freedom as, and the same amount of respect. When actually, it's a huge load of propaganda from a higher power.