1984 Quiz

1984 is a book written in a world where the government watches everything you do. The main protagonist is a man named Winston Smith and his job is to recreate historical documents and modify them to show the public what they want them to see and then they burn the original. It revolves around a world where there is no freedom and nothing you do can be undetected, there is no sanction of privacy. During Hate Week Winston begins to think differently of how the government is and starts to wonder how the world might look if Big Brother wasn't always watching over there shoulder. He begins to write in a diary to express his emotions and at one point he ends up writing DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER and that's where everything on his new perspective begins.
The quote that I have chosen is in chapter 1 where the people of the Ministry of Truth begin to surround themselves around the telescreen for the Hate on Goldstein. As people begin to chant Big Brother continuously Winston unknowingly was writing down with big brother in his diary.
"But he did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with his diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed-would still have committed, even if it had never set pen to paper-the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thiughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you." (Orwell 19). The meaning behind the quote above is that what he has done is against the law and that one way or another the government will find him and persecute him. He is afraid that one phrase can lead to his demise and cause major problems for him in the near future. It was not intentional, it was just a reaction to what was going on inm the moment, he had no control of his subconcious. It shows that the manipulation of the governmnent can be broken and within doing so can cause ideas on how to modify the government. It shows that the people have been opressed for so long and Winstons new viewpoint of society could result in the downfall of Big Brother.