1984 Blog 7

In Winston's dream, everything took place in the glass paperweight he bought. He identified the dome of sky as being the surface of the glass of the paperwieight, and inside that dome was a soft light where if you looked you would be able to see an "interminable distance" (Orwell 160). In the dream Winston felt his life stretching out before him. He then recalled his mother and how she did a certain gesture with her arm that a Jewish woman had done thirty years later while trying to protect she and a young boy from the bullets which were being shot at them. This triggers a memory about his mother, last time he ever saw his mother. He was a young boy without his father, be he had already disappeared, but had only his mother and younger sister. Once his father disaooeared his mother seemed to lose spirit and seemed to anticipate something happening to her sooner or later. his younger sister was always sick, and there wasn't very much to eat, yet Winston was very selfish with the food. He would constantly whine and ask why there wasn't enough to eat, and he would also steal food from his little sister. There was a chocolate ration that was issued, and Wiston's mother tried to divide the ration they received into equal parts, but Winston got upset that he didn't have more, so he took his younger sister's and ran into the basement. Feeling guilty he whet back upstairs and his mother and sister weren't there and he never saw them again. I think Winston is troubled by his past and he feels guilty for his mother and sister's death. He begins to notice that the protective, loving gesture that the Jewish woman and his mother used were of the same significance. Though his mother had nothing left to give him, but instead embraced him, even though it didn't change the situation. The Jewish woman clasped the little boy in her arms as if her arms would avert the bullets, though she knew they wouldn't. The party tried to convince its inhabitants that human impulses didn't matter because whether they did them or not they would still taken away; their history completely erased. Winston makes the point that the people of a generation ago governed their lives by unquestioned loyalties such as forming individual relationships, a tear, an embrace, and a word to a dying man. All of these things were actually valued. I think Winston is beginning to understand emotions that he had cut off before, he is allowing himself to be like the people of a generation ago (and the proles who have kept their emotions intact) and valuing human life. He states that those with emotions are human beings because they have compassion within them.