Love and sex in Geoge Orwell's novel 1984

Essay by onurcavusgilUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, December 2002

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George Orwell's novel 1984 explores intimate human relationships in a bleak futuristic society as experienced by protagonist Winston Smith. Since there are few bonds stronger than those developed from loving relationships among family, friends, and lovers, the only entity acceptable to love in Oceania is the face of the Party, Big Brother. This restriction is necessary to achieving complete power and control over its citizens, as the Party must dissolve all loyalties derived through love, sex, and family and redirect them upon itself. By destroying trust the Party has "cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman"(220).

To train the citizens of Oceania for complete submission and devotion to Big Brother and the Party the family bond has been completely devalued, as "No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer."(220) The Junior Spies are an organization in which children have become the police and denouncers of their parents in the name of Big Brother.

By this means, the Party has managed to wedge itself between one of the most powerful instinctual bonds to turn parental devotion into fear and children into faithful machines of the Party as an extension of the Thought Police. Parsons' remark "In fact I'm proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway"(193) in response to his daughter's betrayal, clearly portrays the Party's influence in the family institution. Not only does the daughter value the Party's approval more than her father's life, but also Parsons' appropriate response is to be grateful for the betrayal and to those who enforce it.

The betrayal of the family bond is a common theme in 1984. Orwell illustrates how weak that loyalty has become with the skull-faced man's desperate begging...