A Case for Free Will “He has finally learned to love big brother” was how George Orwell in his novel 1984 described Winston, conversion to the party are represented by big brother at the end of the novel. It is easy to believe that at this instance, after torturous reeducation that Winston has endured, he has lost free will and no longer be able to freely choose to love big brother but was forced to, against hiss will. Therefore Winston was never free to love big brother, and in fact not free at all after his “reeducation.” But if we are to accept a definition of free will that stipulates that we are able to produce and act on our own volitions we must accept that Winston has retained and has chosen to love big brother out of his own free will. Winston’s conversion is troubling for the adherent of the existence of free will. Winston’s conversion, facially, seems to show that outside forces determines a behavior and not the self. Our actions are determined by mechanistic laws that one can manipulate to result in a specific action. In fact, Winston’s conversion to the party ideas has provided a firm arguing point for the determinist who believes all our volitions are caused by an external event and thus do not truly belong to us. In a scene between O’Brien and Winston, O’Brien shows Winston four fingers demanding Winston to tell him that there were five fingers. At first, Winston denies that there are five fingers even as O’Brien gradually turns up the dials that inflict an excessive pain on Winston. O’Brien hurts Winston so badly that Winston cannot take it anymore and exclaims, “Five, five six- in all honesty I don’t know” seemingly surrendering his free will to O’Brien replacing his own beliefs with O’Brien’s beliefs (Orwell ... ... middle of paper ... ...ptions to choose. Winston world is controlled by the party. By limiting his options to what he sees and what he does not see, the party is successful in controlling Winston’s free will in a direction that favors their ideals. Free will does not disappear in the ignorant nor does it disappear in the closed minded, therefore one cannot say that Winston has not lost free will simply because information is controlled and he suppresses idea contrary to the party. It would not be erroneous to say that if the circumstances were different, if Winston lived in a democratic society where the majority truly rules instead of a party and information truly flows freely, Winston would act different because the environment would be different; there is more information and thus more paths for his free will to take. But in the world of George Orwell’s distopia this is not the case.
In “1984,” Orwell uses Winston to portray a single individual’s attempt to take action against a powerful government, culminating in his failure and subjugation. His individual efforts failed tremendously due to the overarching power of the Party to control every aspect of social life in Oceania. Orwell uses Winston’s deeply seated hatred of the Party to portray his views on power and social change. Winston’s actions show that even in the direst of situations ...
From the beginning of the novel, it was inevitable that Big brother would eventually win, and Winston would be caught by the thought police. He could never have an immediate affect on the Party. His long and pointless struggle achieved no result in the end, and finally was brainwashed and lost any freedom of thought he once had.
“ It was as though their two minds had opened and the thoughts were flowing from one into the other through their eyes. 'I am with you,' O'Brien seemed to be saying to him. 'I know precisely what you are feeling. I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your disgust. But don't worry, I am on your side.” (1.1.33) In this quote we learn that Winston was able to overcome his fear of discussing rebellious acts with o’brian and for a moment felt relieved when O’brian played along with
It has been sincerely obvious that our own experience of some source that we do leads in result of our own free choices. For example, we probably believe that we freely chose to do the tasks and thoughts that come to us making us doing the task. However, we may start to wonder if our choices that we chose are actually free. As we read further into the Fifty Readings in Philosophy by Donald C. Abel, all the readers would argue about the thought of free will. The first reading “The System of Human Freedom” by Baron D’Holbach, Holbach argues that “human being are wholly physical entities and therefore wholly subject to the law of nature. We have a will, but our will is not free because it necessarily seeks our well-being and self-preservation.” For example, if was extremely thirsty and came upon a fountain of water but you knew that the water was poisonous. If I refrain from drinking the water, that is because of the strength of my desire to avoid drinking the poisonous water. If I was too drink the water, it was because I presented my desire of the water by having the water overpowering me for overseeing the poison within the water. Whether I drink or refrain from the water, my action are the reason of the out coming and effect of the motion I take next. Holbach concludes that every human action that is take like everything occurring in nature, “is necessary consequences of cause, visible or concealed, that are forced to act according to their proper nature.” (pg. 269)
Winston Smith is your “average Joe” in Oceania. He struggles with how to determine what is true or not. Winston is a fatalist because, “no matter what he does, he believes that the party will eventually kill him. At the beginning of the book, Winston buys a diary from a junk shop, which is against the party’s will because he buys the diary he is committing a crime against the party. Simply by purchasing the diary made no difference if he wrote in it or not he would still be killed. On pg. 19 of the book Orwell wrote, “Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The thought police would get him the same.” This shows Winston’s sense of fatalism.
Big Brother has won over the citizen in the quote because Big Brother doesn't want their citizens to love they want to to only love and follow Big Brother. Andras Szanto view on how realistic this situation is quite different from orwell's views on the situation. “ Szanto said ‘You act differently, and plan differently, out of hope and joy than out of fear and anxiety.’ ” (Szanto, “What Orwell Didn't Know About The Brain, The Mind, and Language.”). Szanto explains how your body reacts differently to the situation you are going through, he says Orwell didn't study the mind before he wrote the book and his view on how the mind work was wrong. The physical torture that Winston goes through is just enough to propel him over the edge, in a psychological way. What he endures is a type of physical mind control, they are controlling his mind by force and is seen rather than an expression like fear and doublethink. Physical Torture is related to how the Big Brother has utter control over the citizens of Oceania, when Winston is not true and loyal to Big Brother he is taken to the Ministry of Truth in order for Big Brother to obtain complete control. In a totalitarian government all they want is control and they want all the control. Physical torture is an aspect that is used within 1984 when a citizen's complete control is
In the book 1984 by George Orwell, many different entities and ideas surrounded Winston Smith. The main character was shown as having a strong dislike for the Party and Big Brother, yet he worked in the Ministry of Truth. While he edited documents and ‘changed history’, he knew about the lies that the Party forced on the citizens of Oceania. Winston had encounters with many, who all had different views of the Party. These people influenced him and expressed to him how the Party can transform one’s mind into something it should not be. In 1984, Katharine and Julia both influenced Winston by showing how the Party is able to manipulate minds, by showing dislike for the Party, and causing the Party to react towards relationships they disapprove of.
Despite Winston’s good intentions and desires, his physical and mental state wear down to a point of capitulation. On top of this, he begins to understand the absolute nature of the Party’s power, and as a result gives in slightly: “In the mind he had surrendered, but he had hoped to keep the inner heart inviolate” (250). Although Winston is conceding the right to his own mind, he was still keeping what is in the heart, which are his values and emotions. If he is able to keep his “inner heart inviolate,” then his hatred for the Party will still exist in a remote part of him. Even if the Party is able to convert him into a loyal slave, he will still have that part of him that is true to himself, which is heroic. However, his instinctual emotions
Winston describes his act of rebelling as steps, “The first step had been a secret, involuntary thought; the second had been the opening of the diary. He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions” (159). This shows that Winston not conforming to them made him more rebellious and that made him not conform. This cycle eventually got Winston caught, which he knew it would. The conflict became more apparent after the thought police took Winston, because they began to try to make him conform to their ways. O’Brien described what they did as, “We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves” (256). They did that when they destroyed his character, then his mind, and finally his emotions. The end of the conflict between Winston and the Party ended when Winston finally loved Big Brother. By the end Winston had become someone who believed anything the Party told him and had absolutely conformed to them. The conflict between Winston and the Party ended when Winston conforming and the book said that this same thing happened all the
To Winston, freewill is equivalent to acting against the Party; becoming an anti-revolutionary gives him answers to the truth and can bring back a life similar to that
If one does not have the capability of controlling what they think, do, or even what they say then, according to Orwell, they cannot possibly remain “human”. However, according to Winston, staying human was possible. There were ways in which a person could refrain from falling into the clutches if the Party. In 1984 Winston says, “’They can’t get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them’” (Orwell, pg.166). Winston is among one of the only people to believe that there is still hope for the world. He wholeheartedly believes that there is a way to beat the Party; that there is a way to survive and hold on to whatever makes someone human. In 1984 free will and free thinking were extremely hard to come by. The Party was in control of every single thing their citizens were exposed to. They controlled the past, the present, and the future. Whoever is in control of the past; what is being said of the history of the world
He has, “a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to”. He knows he has been robbed of something but doesn’t know what. Winston has an inkling that things could be better but has no idea how anything could ever be different because, “In any time that he could accurately remember, there had never been enough to eat, one had never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes, furniture had always been battered and rickety, rooms underheated, tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces”. Winston honestly doesn’t know any better than to accept what he has been told because he hasn’t the slightest idea of how anything could be different. After all, “Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?”. To the reader, the picture Orwell paints of Winston’s life seems unbearable but it isn’t to Winston because it is all he has ever
Winston Smith, an average and very human man in George Orwell’s 1984, struggles with the rules and opinions of Big Brother and those who work for him. Winston possesses many characteristics of human nature such as violence and rebellion, traits found to some degree in all the citizens of Oceania. The rebelliousness in Winston is brought out when he believes his rights and freedoms are being stripped from him. In the novel, Big Brother is an overarching figure who sees everything. He enforces an abundance of rules that create conformity and repression, but also obedience and harmony, in the citizens of Oceania. Big Brother’s encouragement of peace and unity is challenged by the human tendency to lean towards violence and because of that, Big
After his time of torture in the Ministry of Truth, Winston has been permanently changed to reflect what the Party wants out of its followers. His now bland lifestyle solely consists of playing chess, mindlessly watching the news pour from the telescreen, and guzzling down obscene amounts of Victory gin. He is even described as “convulsive”(Orwell 297), a clear use of diction to describe Winston’s lack of control of his actions now that the Party has taken him over. Most of Winston’s uniqueness is gone. The horrifying torture techniques used on him have stripped Winston of that which made him Winston. He is now simply a pawn of the Party. This is specifically demonstrated in the passage where Winston is described to be in a “blissful dream”(297) in which he is back in the Ministry of Love, but is now “forgiven, his soul white as snow”(297). Here, Orwell uses simile to reveal the extremes of the change in Winston. All he desires now is to have a white, or pure, soul and to erase fully the marks left by his old self and be back to a blank
“Please tell me: isn’t God the cause of evil?” (Augustine, 1). With this question to Augustine of Hippo, Evodius begins a philosophical inquiry into nature of evil. Augustine, recently baptized by Saint Ambrose in Milan, began writing his treatise On Free Choice of the Will in 387 C.E. This work laid down the foundation for the Christian doctrine regarding the will’s role in sinning and salvation. In it, Augustine and his interlocutor investigate God’s existence and his role in creating evil. They attempt not only to understand what evil is, and the possibility of doing evil, but also to ascertain why God would let humans cause evil. Central to the premise of this entire dialogue is the concept of God, as relates to Christianity; what is God, and what traits separate Him from humans? According to Christianity, God is the creator of all things, and God is good; he is omnipotent, transcendent, all-knowing, and atemporal- not subject to change over time- a concept important to the understanding of the differences between this world and the higher, spiritual realm He presides over. God’s being is eidos, the essence which forms the basis of humans. With God defined, the core problem being investigated by Augustine and Evodius becomes clear. Augustine states the key issue that must be reconciled in his inquiry; “we believe that everything that exists comes from the one God, and yet we believe that God is not the cause of sins. What is troubling is that if you admit that sins come from… God, pretty soon you’ll be tracing those sins back to God” (Augustine, 3).