(1984) - Reading Journal 3

When part 3 starts, the reader is on his/her toes. The reader is eager to find out what happens to Winston and Julia. They have been taken to the Ministry of Love. In the Ministry of Love, Winston meets O’Brien, who identifies himself as an agent of the Party and of the Ministry of Love. At the Ministry of Love, they are tortured over and over again until they break. Winston is told by O’Brien that the Party controls everything, and you can’t do anything to stop them. O’Brien eventually breaks Winston into turning on Julia when he threatens Winston to have rats eat his face and body. He has now become one of the other sad citizens who blindly follow Big Brother. The story shows how the government will control us. No matter how bright the future is, Winston’s “revolution” for example, if the government is in control, there is no hope. The reader is devastated by the end of the book. His/her perception of government declines as the book ends. Orwell’s depiction of society also shows a shift in belief. In the beginning we believed in strong governments with monarchy. Then as we adopted revolutionary ideas we started this idea that governments needs to be ran by the people or have an extremely weak government. Then we eventually got to a point where our governments were too weak to help us so we had to gradually increase the power of the government. We, of course, were extremely cautious and thus far have kept them completely controlling us. According to Orwell though, there is a point where we won’t be able to stop them. I don’t think Orwell’s title 1984 is supposed to guarantee that this will occur in 1984, but just the general future since he wrote it in 1949.