----- Original Message ----- From: Natasa Tucev tucev@tesla.rcub.bg.ac.yu
Me:
Not exactly. Winston fails as a human being even before he's arrested.
Remember when he declares he is ready to do anything to bring down the
Party
- kill hundreds of innocent people, distribute habit-forming drugs, spread
venereal diseases, throw acid in a child's face, if need be? He wants to fight the system, but the system has already transformed him and defeated him completely.<<
Fiona:
I don't see this as giving up his humanity. Far from it. Oceania was
created
by human beings, and is maintained by human beings-- many of whom are probably quite decent sorts. Violence and hatred are human behaviour-- and are practiced/advocated by the resistance in Oceania as much as by the state.<
A language problem perhaps. When I say 'failure in humanity' I'm refering
to
a set of moral values. Winston wants to destroy the Party because it is evil, corrupt and inhuman. His statement of what he is willing to do to destroy it demonstrates that he has also become evil, corrupt and inhuman. In this way the system has already defeated him.
But remember, the system controls both sides-- the revolution and the ruling regime. The influence on Winston is coming at him from two directions, and the reason it is set up like that is to find the resistor, discredit him and exterminate him. Identify the opposition, corrupt it and destroy it.
Anyway, IIRC, the proles' expression of human heritage consists in
quaffing
beer, reading pornography and singing pop songs, and they have no
knowledge
of the past.<
Then you don't RC. Proles are human in the way which seems no longer accessible to Winston. He is aware of that. Shortly before he is arrested, he watches a prole woman from his window, working and singing. She is old and her body is 'blown up to monstrous dimensions by child-bearing'. The words of the song are nonsense. Still, he is fascinated by the warmth of
her
voice and by her vitality. 'The woman down there had no mind, she had only strong arms, a warm heart and a fertile belly... People who had never learned to think but who were storing up in their hearts and bllies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world... The proles... would stay alive against all the odds, like birds, passing on from body to body the vitality which the Party did not share and could not kill.'
Yes, but the implication is that the proles need an agitator; they may survive, but left to their own devices they won't change the system. This is why the system isn't concerned about the proles as a site of resistance-- they seek to control the middle classes, because they see the potential leaders of the revolution as coming from there.
F.
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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