1984 Section 1 Reading

The thing that pops out to me first is the elimination of the right to choose. Winston never comes out and says, "Oh, no, we don't get to choose how we feel," but it's there. Every time Winston is in a room that contains a telescreen, he carefully monitors his facial expressions, and even seems to do it subconsciously. This shows that the right to choose what your facial expression is is gone, completely. The people, especially the younger kids, aren't really allowed to choose whether they want to be a part of the various propaganda groups such as the Spies, they are just thrust into them quickly before they are even able to think for themselves. Another really noticeable inability to choose that I noticed was that the telescreen cannot be turned off. It can be turned down, but it's always on, spewing propaganda 24-7. That way, people can't choose whether or not they have to listen to the news or the patriotic songs or whatever other thing the Party decide to play at that time.

There's also a section, starting on page 55, which talks about Winston's dealings three years prior to the story, with a prostitute. He spends the next couple pages musing over how it's illegal to deal with prostitutes, but that it was only punishable with five years of hard labor, and therefore not that horrible of an offence. He then goes on to say that "the unforgivable crime was promiscuity between Party members." The next paragraph is spent speaking about how all of the women of the Party are part of an organization called the Junior Anti-Sex League, and that the Party has more or less managed to make sex and relationships such as marriage only necessary in order to make babies. At the point in time when this book takes place, relationships seem more or less taboo, at least between Party members, which of course is one of the points that utopias tend to get rid of to end conflict.

There's also a couple of mentions of religion, but mostly that it's something that the Party never completely got rid of from the Proles. When Winston speaks of it, religion itself carries the tone of something that is just employed to make people happy, and therefore religion does not seem to play too heavy a part in the lives of the Party members. What is really noticeable to me is that the people don't really seem to be happy. They are brainwashed to think that they are happy, but they don't give me the impression of people who are actually happy or who actually seem to be happy, and mostly just make me think of zombies. This is of course talking about the Party members, as the Proles don't get dealt with near as much, and are only instilled with enough patriotism to keep them useful.