Sunday, November 15, 2015

What are some good quotes from 1984 that comment on the relationship between Winston and Julia? How can I analyze them deeply?

After Julia sends Winston a dangerous note stating "I love you," he desperately wants to see her but does not know how to arrange it (he does not know her at this point). After she does not appear in the canteen for three days, Winston is at his wit's end with longing to see her. His torment is described in the following way:

"Then for three dreadful days she did not appear at all. His whole mind and body seemed to be afflicted with an unbearable sensitivity, a kind of transparency, which made every movement, every sound, every contact, every word he had to speak or listen to, an agony. Even in his sleep he could not altogether escape from her image" (page 111).

Winston has never experienced love before, and he finds the experience strangely painful. In this passage, his love is compared to a feeling of great sensitivity. It's almost as if his heart is so numb that its reawakening causes painful feelings of immense tenderness and sensitivity. Once he knows that he loves Julia (whom he hasn't even really met yet), he finds contact with his dystopian world painful. He wants to recoil into himself and find time to think, but the constant activity and telescreens around him make that difficult. At night, he sees Julia in his dreams, as she is constantly on his mind. 
After Winston gets to know Julia, her influence on him is profound. Her influence is described in the following passage:

"A thing that astonished him about her was the coarseness of her language. Party members were not supposed to swear, and Winston himself seldom did swear, aloud, at any rate. Julia, however, seemed unable to mention the Party, and especially the Inner Party, without using the kinds of words you saw chalked up in dripping alleyways. He did not dislike it. It was merely one symptom of her revolt against the Party and all its ways, and somehow it seemed natural and healthy, like the sneeze of a horse that smells bad hay" (page 122).

Behaviors that would have shocked Winston before, such as cursing the Party, suddenly seem natural to Winston after he falls in love with Julia. Falling in love is a rebellious act, as it is disallowed in the Party, so the process of loving Julia brings Winston closer and closer to rebellion against the Party. He comes to see infractions, such as cursing the Party, as healthy, and he thinks of these acts like the sneeze of a horse. This is a powerful simile, as it expresses the idea that Julia's revolt against the Party is not wrong but is instead a healthy reaction to a kind of disease or something that is wrong and poisonous.  

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