1984 Response Paper

Jennifer Hof
Professor Steven Wexler
English 312
18 November 2009

1984: Is There Any Hope in the World?

There is no hope. We have already lost, and once we have lost there is no way of winning again. Even when we struggle, we are not accomplishing anything and we cannot hope to overthrow the system. This is the message conveyed by the end of George Orwell's novel 1984, and Michael Radford's film version, called Nineteen Eighty-Four, follows the example of the book in this regard but in a much different way and with a much different impact on the viewer.

There is no doubt that both the book and novel versions of 1984 present us with a world that has no hope. By the end of both, Winston has not only been defeated and his wished-for revolution turned out to be a hoax, but he has become a true traitor to everything he stood for. As Winston told Julia, “"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” (Orwell 166). By wishing for a terrible thing to happen to Julia instead of him, Winston stopped loving her (286) and both of them acknowledge that after doing such a thing, you never feel the same way about that other person (292). The same events happen in the film. The hoped-for revolution fails. The Party remains in the control. Julia and Winston have betrayed each other. There is no hope that the Party can be overthrown, as O'Brien explains to Winston (280). So the two works have have in common the fact that in the end, all hope is lost.

The two differ in one regard, however. Both end on with the idea that there is no hope, but during the novel we are allowed to feel as though there might be hope. To the first time experiencer, the attitude towards hope would be massively different depending upon whether one was reading the novel or viewing the film. In the book, we feel as though there is love and passion between Winston and Julia. Although the Party wishes to kill emotion, we feel life within both these characters. We know that Winston as strong feelings, we can feel them in his speech to O'Brien: “'We are enemies of the Party. We disbelieve in the principles of Ingsoc. We are thought-criminals. We are also adulterers'” (Orwell 170). One can feel the strength of his words, we feel as though Winston believes what he is saying, we have hope that such strong ideals can defeat the Party. Yet in the film version, there is no such hope. Radford presents us with a dismal world. Everything is gray and seems washed out, even the red sash which Julia removes the first time that she and Winston have sex. The characters have no passion, not even towards each other or when discussing how they want to bring down the Party. All emotion is muted, and it has the effect of sucking all hope right out of the viewer. You cannot hope that Winston may win, because he has already lost. He is already not human, he doesn't have emotion, he has already been defeated by the Party – before he even begins his revolution. This makes it difficult to connect with the characters when viewing, but it has the effect of underscoring the idea that there is no hope.

The film version could be seen as more accurate by some. We do not have any hope, and we never had any, unless we have the freedom to think about the world in which we live. If we were to lose that, then we would lose everything. Walter Benjamin would certainly support the idea that we cannot escape our fate. In his article “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Benjamin explains that, “Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling.” So long as we are closed off within our own tiny lives, as the characters of 1984 are so closed off, then we are trapped. But if we have a way of escaping that and seeing outside, then we have hope, at least according to Benjamin.

In both the book and film versions of 1984, we are left in a world without hope. Yet the book allows us to keep some hope during the events of the story, whereas the film uses the acting and lighting of the movie to strip us of that hope so we go through the entire piece feeling hopeless. The film version, while less enjoyable since it is more difficult to identity with the characters, is perhaps the more accurate. As Benjamin points out, we DON'T have any hope so long as we remain locked in our lives. So the film version of 1984 conveys this more accurately. We must continue to be able to explore via the arts, or else there is no hope whatsoever in the world.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. Marxists Internet Archive. Web. 15 November 2009.

Nineteen Eighty-Four. Dir. Michael Radford. 1984. Film.

Orwell, George. 1984. New York: New American Library, 1961. Print.