1984 Hero's Journey
1984 is a novel about a man who lives in a country called Oceania. He is part of a party who is not allowed to think for themselves. They are constantly being monitored via a telescreen, Winston, the main character of this dystopian novel does what he is not supposed to do. He gets into a relationship with a girl named Julia. They meet in a room on top of a store where Winston bought his diary to write down his crimes. Winston and Julia eventually end up getting caught. Winston gets tortured and brainwashed. As he is about to get rats put on his face, he screams and pleads to put those rats on Julia. He is liberated and now is loyal to his party. His feelings for Julia were gone. So to all this how is Winston a hero, or not a hero? Winston
…show more content…
broke the rules of a dictatorship government when he was raised and forced to not think for himself. If he would of never thought with his own thoughts who would of? Who would've ever realized that the world they were living in was all lies; that the history was being rewritten in a completely different way. Heroes are people who go way out and beyond to do something for someone or something. Winston was a hero who had the courage to break the law. The definition of hero can very from person to person. In my opinion, Winston is a hero because he starts realizing that he should have rights. Although he doesn’t save everyone or Julia, he could still be considered a hero. A hero's journey starts with something not feeling right.
Winston feels uneasy about always being monitored by the thought police. Everything in their life is controlled by Big Brother. They are not allowed to have their own thoughts. They must do everything the telescreen tells them too. Nobody else questions this, but Winston does. “Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black mustachioed face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at streetlevel another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. …show more content…
(1.1.4)”
The call to adventure begins when Winston starts having thoughts of his own. Which is breaking the law. He starts wanting to do stuff he’s not allowed to do. As he stated in the following quote, “ Party members were supposed not to go into ordinary shops ("dealing on the free market," it was called), but the rule was not strictly kept, because there were various things, such as shoelaces and razor blades, which it was impossible to get hold of in any other way. He had given a quick glance up and down the street and then had slipped inside and bought the book for two dollars fifty. At the time he was not conscious of wanting it for any particular purpose. He had carried it guiltily home in his briefcase. Even with nothing written in it, it was a compromising possession. (1.1.13)”. This quote clearly states him breaking the law, and how the government controlled almost everything the citizens of Oceania would want, or need such as shoelaces among other things. He starts fearing that he will get caught.
He begins to feel paranoid. At this point, WInston doesn’t back out. He keeps breaking the law when he meets Julia. They both give in and fall in love with each other. They both meet O'brian, which leads them to want to join Brotherhood to overcome Big Brother. As Winston has crossed the threshold, he is caught by the thought police. He is punished for his actions, “With that first blow on the elbow the nightmare had started. Later he was to realize that all that then happened was merely a preliminary, a routine interrogation to which nearly all prisoners were subjected. There was a long range of crimes – espionage, sabotage, and the like – to which everyone had to confess as a matter of course. The confession was a formality, though the torture was real. How many times he had been beaten, how long the beatings had continued, he could not remember. Always there were five or six men in black uniforms at him simultaneously. Sometimes it was fists, sometimes it was truncheons, sometimes it was steel rods, and sometimes it was boots. There were times when he rolled about the floor, as shameless as an animal, writhing his body this way and that in an endless, hopeless effort to dodge the kicks, and simply inviting more and yet more kicks, in his ribs, in his belly, on his elbows, on his shins, in his groin, in his testicles, on the bone at the base of his spine. There were times when it went on and on until the cruel, wicked,
unforgivable thing seemed to him not that the guards continued to beat him but that he could not force himself into losing consciousness. There were times when his nerve so forsook him that he began shouting for mercy even before the beating began, when the mere sight of a fist drawn back for a blow was enough to make him pour forth a confession of real and imaginary crimes. There were other times when he started out with the resolve of confessing nothing, when every word had to be forced out of him between gasps of pain, and there were times when he feebly tried to compromise, when he said to himself: ‘I will confess, but not yet. I must hold out till the pain becomes unbearable. Three more kicks, two more kicks, and then I will tell them what they want.' Sometimes he was beaten till he could hardly stand, then flung like a sack of potatoes onto the stone floor of a cell, left to recuperate for a few hours, and then taken out and beaten again. (3.2.3)”. Winston's reward is his liberation. Although was is brainwashed again, he gave up what O’brian wanted all along. His loyalty toward his party was stronger than ever before.
In conclusion, Winston is a hero. He went through the whole hero journey, although the outcome wasn’t expected his still realized that that was not how life had to be lived. He sacrificed himself to figure out the real truth. He questioned the fact about why did history have to be re-written. When nobody else did, or nobody else had the courage to question it themselves.
broke the rules of a dictatorship government when he was raised and forced to not think for himself. If he would of never thought with his own thoughts who would of? Who would've ever realized that the world they were living in was all lies; that the history was being rewritten in a completely different way. Heroes are people who go way out and beyond to do something for someone or something. Winston was a hero who had the courage to break the law. The definition of hero can very from person to person. In my opinion, Winston is a hero because he starts realizing that he should have rights. Although he doesn’t save everyone or Julia, he could still be considered a hero. A hero's journey starts with something not feeling right.
Winston feels uneasy about always being monitored by the thought police. Everything in their life is controlled by Big Brother. They are not allowed to have their own thoughts. They must do everything the telescreen tells them too. Nobody else questions this, but Winston does. “Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black mustachioed face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at streetlevel another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. …show more content…
(1.1.4)”
The call to adventure begins when Winston starts having thoughts of his own. Which is breaking the law. He starts wanting to do stuff he’s not allowed to do. As he stated in the following quote, “ Party members were supposed not to go into ordinary shops ("dealing on the free market," it was called), but the rule was not strictly kept, because there were various things, such as shoelaces and razor blades, which it was impossible to get hold of in any other way. He had given a quick glance up and down the street and then had slipped inside and bought the book for two dollars fifty. At the time he was not conscious of wanting it for any particular purpose. He had carried it guiltily home in his briefcase. Even with nothing written in it, it was a compromising possession. (1.1.13)”. This quote clearly states him breaking the law, and how the government controlled almost everything the citizens of Oceania would want, or need such as shoelaces among other things. He starts fearing that he will get caught.
He begins to feel paranoid. At this point, WInston doesn’t back out. He keeps breaking the law when he meets Julia. They both give in and fall in love with each other. They both meet O'brian, which leads them to want to join Brotherhood to overcome Big Brother. As Winston has crossed the threshold, he is caught by the thought police. He is punished for his actions, “With that first blow on the elbow the nightmare had started. Later he was to realize that all that then happened was merely a preliminary, a routine interrogation to which nearly all prisoners were subjected. There was a long range of crimes – espionage, sabotage, and the like – to which everyone had to confess as a matter of course. The confession was a formality, though the torture was real. How many times he had been beaten, how long the beatings had continued, he could not remember. Always there were five or six men in black uniforms at him simultaneously. Sometimes it was fists, sometimes it was truncheons, sometimes it was steel rods, and sometimes it was boots. There were times when he rolled about the floor, as shameless as an animal, writhing his body this way and that in an endless, hopeless effort to dodge the kicks, and simply inviting more and yet more kicks, in his ribs, in his belly, on his elbows, on his shins, in his groin, in his testicles, on the bone at the base of his spine. There were times when it went on and on until the cruel, wicked,
unforgivable thing seemed to him not that the guards continued to beat him but that he could not force himself into losing consciousness. There were times when his nerve so forsook him that he began shouting for mercy even before the beating began, when the mere sight of a fist drawn back for a blow was enough to make him pour forth a confession of real and imaginary crimes. There were other times when he started out with the resolve of confessing nothing, when every word had to be forced out of him between gasps of pain, and there were times when he feebly tried to compromise, when he said to himself: ‘I will confess, but not yet. I must hold out till the pain becomes unbearable. Three more kicks, two more kicks, and then I will tell them what they want.' Sometimes he was beaten till he could hardly stand, then flung like a sack of potatoes onto the stone floor of a cell, left to recuperate for a few hours, and then taken out and beaten again. (3.2.3)”. Winston's reward is his liberation. Although was is brainwashed again, he gave up what O’brian wanted all along. His loyalty toward his party was stronger than ever before.
In conclusion, Winston is a hero. He went through the whole hero journey, although the outcome wasn’t expected his still realized that that was not how life had to be lived. He sacrificed himself to figure out the real truth. He questioned the fact about why did history have to be re-written. When nobody else did, or nobody else had the courage to question it themselves.