Luring the Victim

I honestly have no words for what is happening right now in the book. Winston gets swept away by pretty much his only fantasy, in which the girl he is horny for says she LOVES him and then takes him to a secret place to have sex. 

And he says to her: "I wanted to rape you and then murder you afterwards."

Her response is to laugh.

I feel like Orwell's intention was to make this relationship the most twisted possible in the eyes of the viewer, such that the one sanctuary in the book was this demented beast. He also made the power dynamic such that Julia was objectively better than Winston (what does that say about his gender ideals?)

This is a tactic used a lot in dystopian books: take something often viewed as sacred/pure/good to most humans and degrade it to create dystopia. For example, in Brave New World, Huxley destroys the family. In the Hunger Games, children are literally pitted against each other so they become murderers. In Divergent, having a personality with more than one trait is persecuted.

However, in these cases, it is always the functioning of the society which causes the damage. The author pretty much blames it on the government or whatever ruling order. Unfortunately, I think in our world, these same things happen but on a more individual basis. We, as humans, have the capability to destroy. A relationship like Winston and Julia probably exists somewhere in the world already; the difference is, they don't have a Big Brother to defy.

Do you think generalizing humanity's problems to entire societies (like dystopian books do) is an effective argument? Is it just as bleak to think about how these things happen in a more realistic setting? How does the dynamic of people-government change the story?

Comments

  1. KeshavFebruary 22, 2021 at 7:38 AM

    For me, the paradigm of "person vs. society" raises the stakes of a story. Being pitted against multiple people makes it feel more suspenseful and exciting, but I also feel like the character is in an even sadder position. However, I do think bleak stories can be created based on our realistic world, but a lot of them will still have societal implications and could be framed through a person vs. society lens.

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