Question 5: 1984

* please choose one passage from the novel that is significant to you. why is this passage meaningful?

Pg 69: "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was the final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true have got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall toward the earth's center. With the feeling that he was speaking to O'Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote, Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows."

This passage was a real eye-opener for me. I found this passage to contain so much about life and free will. Winston makes a complete 180 by the end of the book. At the end he agreed with everything the party said. After finishing the book and then re-reading this passage, I was very discouraged because in this passage Winston seems to be so strong and firm about what he believes and by the end he doesn't believe in anything. His brain becomes an empty shell filled with all of the Party's ideas and laws. I hated to see this happen to Winston.