Love in George Orwell's "1984"

George Orwell, in his novel, 1984, has created a bleak totalitarian society in which The Party has become all powerful and their goal is to control all thoughts, all actions and to suppress all individuality. Love of family, romantic love and sexual love are all key to a person's individuality and are, therefore, completely forbidden within Orwell's fictional society. The tensions that this creates amongst the main characters in 1984, as the state believes that love of Big Brother is the only acceptable love, is symbolic of the struggle to survive as human beings in this totalitarian state. Winston Smith, the protagonist is this story, spends much of his life thinking about what is lost and trying to find love. He knows that the Party's goal is that he and all of the citizens of Oceania care only for the State. He is told, "Never again will you be capable of human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living or laughter, or curiosity or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves" (Orwell 256).

The Party systematically undermines and does away with every form of love in their society beginning with the love and bonds of family. They have instituted a group named the Junior Spies which persuades children to spy on their parents and seek out signs of unorthodox behavior or activities that they could report to the thought police. "It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak - "child hero" - was the phrase generally used - had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police" (Orwell 24) The parents learned to value this behavior as when Mr. Parsons is arrested, turned in by his daughter. He tells Winston, "Pretty smart