1984 August 9, FR

George Orwell created a perfect setting to fit into the plot of 1984. A hostile city of future London is constantly bombed and under absolute control of the Party. The mood of the broken down and destroyed city fits the war based mentality of the government. The main reason Winston begins to rebel is that he feels oppressed by all the rules and regulations of the Party. The author constructed the complex character of Winston, who any person reading this novel today would agree with. Although, in the world Winston lives, he is a minority. The change Winston’s character endures through the course of the story plays a major part in the plot. Starting out as a person who hates the Party, Winston is slowly becoming happy with the life he is trying to create for himself. In the end, Winston finds that it is impossible for him to rebel from the Party, and after “reintegration” loves Big Brother and everything that he does for the public. George Orwell uses symbols during the novel as a means of expressing how things changed in the characters and the plot as the story progressed. Symbols such as the glass paperweight and picture of St. Clemens church are representative of the past that Winston hoped was there and the time in which he wished he lived. In the room above the antique shop, the picture of St. Clemens hid the telescreen that monitored Winston and Julia’s illegal activity. When the Thought Police arrested Winston and Julia, the glass paperweight shattered making the small piece of coral on the inside vulnerable to the outside world.

1984 - David Bowie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scgDWLewgQk