The Death of Love in 1984
I owe the idea for this essay to a woman I’ve never met. I know her name is Sarah Vozel, and I know at some point she read the book 1984 by George Orwell and highlighted a number of passages for some reason. Sarah, if you’re out there, I have your book and I would be happy to return it to you. Just send me an email.
I don’t know how I ended up with Sarah’s copy of 1984. The most explanation is that I purchased it on Ebay or from a used book store. I honestly don’t remember, and It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that on page 120 of this particular copy of 1984, Sarah Vozel highlighted the following passage.
The next moment, it was hard to say by whose act, she was in his arms. At the beginning he had no feeling except sheer incredulity. The youthful body was strained against his own, the mass of dark hair against his face, and yes! actually she had turned her face up and he was kissing the wide red mouth. She had clasped her arms about his neck, she was calling him darling, precious one, loved one. He had pulled her down onto the ground, she was utterly unresisting, he could do what he liked with her. But the truth was that he had no physical sensation except that of mere contact. All he felt was incredulity and pride. He was glad this was happening, but he had no physical desire. It was too soon, her youth and prettiness had frightened him, he was too much used to living without women-he did not know the reason. The girl picked herself up and pulled a bluebell out of her hair. She sat against him, putting her arm round his waist.
page 120
In the margin beside this paragraph Sarah had written the word “LOVE”. I was surprised when I saw that she had marked this paragraph as an example of love. I went back and re-read the paragraph and couldn’t help but feeling like Sarah was wrong. This was not love, it was simply the fulfillment of a desire that the protagonist “Winston” never thought would be fulfilled. It says twice in the paragraph that all he felt was Incredulity. I’ll admit that incredulity can come with love. Specifically, by the person receiving underserved or unexpected love, but it is not love. It also says Winston felt pride. Which is the opposite of love. Pride focuses on the self, love focuses on others. Where Pride exists Love cannot survive.
A much better example of love was actually the three lines above this paragraph.
“I’m thirty nine years old. I’ve got a wife I can’t get rid of. I’ve got varicose veins. I’ve got five false teeth.”
“I couldn’t care less.” Said the girl.
page 120
Here was see Winston showing love for Julia though his honesty and desire for her to know and accept the real him. And Julia responding with the same answer every married couple gives each other on their wedding day. “I understand your flaws, and I choose you despite them.” In other words, “I couldn’t care less.”
After going over this small section of the book I decided to be on the lookout for the theme of love as I read the rest of the novel in the hopes of writing about it at the end. I was planning to title this article “Love in 1984” since that isn’t the title, you can probably guess that I ran into something I didn’t expect. But before we get to that, I want to point out a few other paragraphs of the book.
On page 166, Winston and Julia are discussing the possibility of being captured by the secret police and what will happen to them. They know that they will assuredly be captured at some point and they will never be able to hold up to the torture. They promise they will never betray each other, and we get this quote from Winston
“I don’t mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you – that would be the real betrayal.”
page 166
Winston understands that the people in the ironically named “Ministry of Love” will be able to make him say and do whatever they want. But he thinks it impossible for them to take away his feelings of love for Julia.
On pages 172-173, Winston and Julia are in the middle of being asked a series of questions about what they would be willing to do for the sake of “The Brotherhood” which is a group of rebels fighting against the oppressive government. After claiming they were willing to do a large number of unspeakable acts including kill, commit suicide, commit acts of sabotage that will harm innocent people, and throw acid on a child, they are asked:
“You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never see each other again?”
“No!” broke in Julia
It appeared to Winston that a long time passed before he answered. For a moment he seemed even to have been deprived of the power of speech. His tongue worked soundlessly, forming the opening syllables first of one word, then of the other, over and over again. Until he had said it, he did not know which word he was going to say. “No,” he said finally.
page 173
I don’t know if Winston and Julia would have actually committed all of those horrible acts for the sake of the brotherhood. They are never given the chance. But regardless of what acts they would have committed they are unable to even consider the possibility of never seeing each other again. This shows us how strong their feelings were for each other. At this point, they are without a doubt in love with each other.
Later on, we find Winston in a cell. He has been captured by the ministry of love and forced to endure all sorts of horrible tortures. His mind once more drifts to Julia.
He hardly thought of Julia. He could not fix his mind on her. He loved her and would not betray her; but that was only a fact, known as he knew the rules of arithmetic. He felt no love for her, and he hardly even wondered what was happening to her.
page 228
Winston’s feelings of love have been pushed aside by the overwhelming fear and uncertainty that he faces every day in his cell. Yet he still Knows that he loves Julia even if he no longer Feels it. This is reemphasized a few pages later.
More dimly he thought of Julia. Somewhere or other she was suffering, perhaps far worse than he. She might be screaming with pain at this moment. He thought: “ if I could save Julia by doubling my own pain would I do it? Yes, I would.” But that was merely an intellectual decision, taken because he knew he ought to take it. He did not feel it. In this place you could not feel anything, except pain and the foreknowledge of pain.
Page 238
“he knew he ought to take it.” Even though Winston no longer feels anything but pain he still understands what he should and should not do. He still understands the difference between right and wrong. He endures. Holding on with all of his strength to what he knows to be true. He Loves Julia.
On page 282 Winston has a conversation with the man in charge of his imprisonment and torture.
“You are improving. Intellectually there is very little wrong with you. It is only emotionally that you have failed to make progress. Tell me, Winston – and remember, no lies; you know that I am always able to detect a lie – tell me, what are your true feelings toward Big Brother?”
“I hate him”
“You hate him. Good. Then the time has come for you to take the last step. You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him; you must love him”
page 282
Winston is more than willing to do and say whatever the ministry of Love commands of him. They have taken his hope, but they do not yet control his mind to such a degree that they can change his will. His thoughts are still his own.
Winston is sent to “room 101” and forced to face the worst thing in the world. Which, for Winston, happened to be rats. Winston’s will finally breaks seconds before the rats are released onto his face and he does the thing he thought they could not make him do, he betrays Julia.
But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was one person to whom he could transfer his punishment – one body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over:
“Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!”
page 289
This is the moment that Winston breaks. He knew they could make him do or say whatever they wanted, but he assumed his will would always be in opposition to the oppressive “Big Brother”. The ministry of Love, through fear and pain, forces Winston’s mind to turn against the love he knows and sacrifice it for his own safety. His will is no longer for anything other than avoiding the horror being forced upon him by any means necessary, even if it means pain and death for the woman he loves.
Now we reach the part I did not expect.
Winston has been released from the ministry of Love.
“They can’t get inside you” she had said. But they could get inside you. “what happens to you here is forever,” O’Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things, your own acts, from which you could not recover. Something was killed in you breast; burnt out, cauterized out.
page 290
“I betrayed you.” she said badly.
“I betrayed you.” he said.
She gave him another look of dislike.
“Sometimes,” she said, “they threaten you with something – something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about. And then you say ‘Don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.’ And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way of saving yourself, and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about it yourself.”
“All you care about it yourself,” he echoed.
“And after that, you don’t feel the same toward the other person any longer.”
“No.” he said, “you don’t feel the same.”
page 292
Up to this point I had assumed that Winston and Julia would come out on top. After all, doesn’t Love always win? That’s the way it seems to work in all the stories I read growing up. I didn’t understand why the love between Winston and Julia was dead. It took me a while, but I think I understand now.
Winston and Julia thought they loved each other enough to always put the other person first.
But fear forced them to choose what was really most important: Their love for each other, or their love of themselves. When it really came down to it, when they were faced with their greatest nightmare, they chose to put themselves first. And with their Pride came the death of their Love.
The saddest part is that they have forgotten what they knew in prison. Winston did not feel any love for Julia in prison, but he still knew and chose to love her. Winston was able to choose to love Julia because he knew that he loved her. When he is released, Winston no longer trusts his mind to tell him what is true. He does not trust what he “knows”. He looks only to the government to tell him what to think so he does not realize that he can choose to love Julia regardless of any feeling, fact, or past mistake.
The action of Love is infinitely more powerful than the feeling of Love.
If you choose to love someone regardless of how you feel about them, the feelings will come soon after.
1984 is not a happy book. But it can help us understand some things about ourselves. Winston’s struggle with Love sheds light on the shortcomings of human Love. We are all born as prideful creatures. And everything we do is going to be rooted in that pride, even love. When we say we “I love you” It’s always “I love you because…..”. It always comes back to us and what we are getting out of it. If you don’t believe me just think about the person you love most and ask yourself this:
Would you still love them if they hated you?
If everything they did was directly and intentionally against you?
If every time they saw you they insulted, spit on, and slapped you?
If they stole from you every chance they got and broke whatever they could not steal?
If they tried to murder you?
It seems like you would have to be insane to keep loving a person who treated you this way and yet this is exactly how Christ loves us.
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
Romans 5:10
And how he tells us to love others.
“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,”
Mathew 5:44
Christ faced the worst death anyone could think of. He did it so we don’t have to. At any point he could have changed his mind and transferred the punishment back onto us like Winston did to Julia. But his love is unconditional. He does not say “I love you because…” He just says, “I Love you”. And his unconditional love is more powerful than any fear or pain.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
1 john 4:18
Winston was relying on his own strength, his own understanding, and his own imperfect love, and it wasn’t enough. But God’s Agape Love is perfect, is enough, and is freely given to all.
I feel like I would be remiss to not mention one more thing. At the very end of the book Winston realized that he loves Big Brother. This shows simply that any hope he had is dead. He no longer believes there is any reason to resist because he was relying on his own imperfect love for Julia to motivate his will for a world without Big Brother, and it fell short. Leaving him with nothing to keep his hope alive.
Hmmm… maybe I should have titled this “The death of hope in 1984”
Orwell, George, and Erich Fromm. 1984 : A Novel. New York, New York, Signet Classics, 2017.
