PaigeSkinner

After reading Book One of //1984// I had many reactions, thoughts, and wonders. My first thought when begging the book was that Oceania was not a lovely place to live. The description left me picturing a broken down citiy that gave off a very dark and cold vibe. The multiple posters of Big Brother definitly set an eerie mood of a life of paranoia. It was definately made clear early on that you were always watched in Oceania and had no privacy. This definately made me start thinking of how much people are watched in our society. I wondered how much the government actually watchs us, through internet and cell phones it can be very easy to hack in to personal information and listen in to phone conversations. It reminds me of the movie Eagle Eye were the government has a secret machine that is connnected to all electronics acrooss America. It can tell everything about a person from there internet activity to cell phone conversations and can watch you from any security camera. In the movie you couldn't hide, just like people in Oceania can't hide from Big Brother. When Winston hid himself in his sevret alcove out of view of the telescreen and opened up a diary and began to write I knew he was definately different from most who live in Oceania. I found it to be a very unusally concept to wrap your mind around that in Oceania to think intellectualy as an individual was a worse crime than murder or theft. To live in a society where your biggest enemy and worst fear is your own mind sounds like worst place in the world. Since what they called thoughcrime was so illegal and writting was such a terrible offense, I believed Winston to be one of the few in Oceania who did not believe in the ways of Big Brother. I started to wonder why it was that Winston had such thoughts, and was able to remember more and have such a feeling that there was something more than the life he was living right now. I began to wonder if there were more people like Winston, if perhaps O'Brien was actually on Winston's side and also had unorthodox thoughts. I wondered if Winstons dream of O'Brien was a vision or just Winston's hope playing images in his subconscious mind. I found the two minutes of Hate to be very disturbing. So many people in a room all expressing so much rage and anger, getting so easily caught up in the rally. And to think that at that time almost everyone with a telescreen in Oceania was experiencing this extreme hate all at the same time giving Big Brother more and more power as his subjects passionatly raged against Big Brothers enemies, conspirators, and praised him. The freakiest thing was how this kind of rallying happens in everyday life when one person starts chanting it is as if everyone must join in and seems like you can't resist joining in, even if you don't feel as strongly about the reason as others may the chanting seems to take over your selfcontrol and the reason seems so much more important. This is a very smart tactic on Big Brothers part in a way to gain peoples loyalty and unit them to the will of Big Brother. I reminds me of how Hitler would speak very inspiringly at rallys and how so many people would fall into the hypnosis of his words. Everything he said seemed so rational and true that is seemed like they had to believe him and carry out his will turning them on the Jews like Big Brother turns people against Goldstein and the Brotherhood. I also found the Parson's children to be a very disturbing part of the strory. There was no sense of family in this society. Children were raised to be spies and would turn in their own parents to the thought police if they had the chance. The Parson's Children were so eager to go see the hanging and when the played it was only of violence. It seemed as if Big Brother had stripped the innocence from all the Children of Oceania and turned them into mindless slaves for his own benifit. In fact, I believe that many of the people in Oceania act more like robots who serve a physical purpose and nothing further. I'm wondering if the proles of Ocenaia will eventually find enough intellect and thought to put forth any energy to start an uprising. I'm definately wondering how this could happen since the only way to start revolution against Big Brother would be for the porles to regain their minds but, this could only be done if Big Brother was brought down. I don't believe that there is really a war going on with Eurasia. I think that is what Big Brother wants people to believe in order to keep them in his control. In times of war and fear people look for protection and Big Brother can provide this as long as there is always protection being needed. I think that the black haired girl following Winston is not a spy. I think she is intrigued by Winston because she knows that he is different and I think she also has unorthodox thoughts and she can't help but want to watch Winston. I think that like Winston, she wants to know that she isn't alone and Winston is her hope as O'brien is Winston's hope.