1984 essay

Nicole Civitarese Civitarese, 1
English 10 Honors/ Mr. George
3/18/09
1984 Essay
Average man

Nobody is perfect, especially not in today’s world. Everyone makes mistakes, and they do not always do the right thing. In the novel, 1984 by George Orwell, the character, Winston lives in a society where the government controls everything including thoughts, so obviously it would be difficult to do the right thing if the government thinks the people are always doing something wrong. If Winston gets arrested every time the government thinks he is doing something he should not be, then how can he make a decision from right and wrong. That would usually cause someone to fail because they cannot do anything for themselves. Some who is average is just a typical or common person in everyday society. Winston may have failed, but he is an average man because he did things he knew he should not have done, he tried to fight against something that was wrong, and failed just like everyone else in his society.
Winston is an average person just like the rest of us. The government he is under is called the Party, controls every aspect of people’s lives. The one figure they center their government around is Big Brother; he is the leader of the Party. The Party uses a telescreen and the telescreen allows them to watch and hear every little thing said and done by the people. There are also people within the government who are trained to understand what people are thinking. Those people are called the Thought Police. They
Civitarese, 2

know when someone is committing Thought Crime, which is when someone is thinking something that is going against the Party. Another way the Party controlled the people was altering the past: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past”(Orwell 34).This means the Party controls anything that happens. If anything that happened in the past contradicts what is happening in the present, they change it. Winston’s job is to change articles, so the article is what the Party wants it to say. He is not the only one with this job or other jobs that have to do with changing the past. Which makes Winston an average person just like the others in his society.
After living through what the Party has done, Winston started to question what they were really doing. He begins to rebel against it, which any average person would do if they did not like what was happening. Winston had a secret diary and he wrote down things that could get him put in prison if he was caught. He rebelled against Big Brother in his diary: “Down with Big Brother”(18). Winston begins to think how the Party could stop having control and has to rebel against it. He meets a woman named Julia, who he falls in love with and the government does not allow men and women to have a relationship like Julia and Winston. When they meet, they must meet in secret causing them to go against the Party. Soon after that they meet a man named O’Brien.
O’Brien is a member of the Brotherhood, which is an organization whose purpose is to defeat the Party. Winston learns that if he wants to help the future he must give a lot up: “You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never see one another again?”(173). For any average person something like that would be hard to give up.
Civitarese, 3

Winston receives a book from O’Brien, and the book is about what the Party stands for. He is still an average man because he is doing none of this alone. Julia was always there pushing him. After Winston read how the Party controls everything, that is when a voice on the telescreen behind a picture repeats what they are saying: “You are dead”(221). Then the Thought Police burst into the room and arrest them. Winston is put into a prison place, tortured, and becomes something he does not want to become. Winston’s attempt to join the Brotherhood shows how much of an average person he is. Many people in his society probably have tried, but failed.
Winston is turned into a normal citizen which is just what the Party wants. He believes and listens to everything the Party says. When Winston is in prison, he learns that O’Brien is the one torturing him and that he was never in the Brotherhood at all. Winston betrays Julia and starts yelling Julia’s name: “Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!”(280). That is what gets him put in Room 101. Room 101 is where they put someone’s worst fear and for Winston that is rats. They have a facemask put over Winston’s face and the cage with rats were attached. As O’Brien started to click the openings of the cage Winston became fearful. Before they could let the rats out, Winston betrayed Julia, “Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!”(286). The Party was happy with this because they made him into a perfect citizen and he starts to believe what the Party says again. He loves Big Brother. Winston may look like a failure, but he really is not because anyone who was in his spot would do the same thing.
Civitarese, 4

It is very easy to say that Winston was a failure or he was a hero. Winston did not fail because he tried to fight against something he thought was wrong. He is not a hero because he did none of this alone, and he is not the only one who tried to do what he did. Many people in his society pictured the failing of the Party and many people probably have tried just like Winston. He was turned into the perfect citizen in the Party’s eyes. That just shows that Winston really is an average person because he failed, made mistakes, and gave up. People in the world today fail, make mistakes, and give up because what they are fighting against overpowers them. That is what happened to Julia and Winston, they were overpowered. They both turned back into perfect citizens and average people.