Illuminator-Pt.3 Ch.6 - Protagonist's situation at the end

"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding ! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast ! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

This passage shows Winston's situation in the end. After 40 years, after committing Thought Crimes endlessly, after trying to join the Brotherhood, after relentless torture, he was finally convinced that Big Brother was a loving being. The Party had finally been able to convince Winston that he loves Big Brother.

Illuminator-Pt.1 Ch.1 - Why the book has its title

"He dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a second. A tremor had gone through his bowels. To mark the paper was the decisive act.In small clumsy letters he wrote: April 4th, 1984.
He sat back.
A sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two. "

This passage shows a little bit behind the reason why this book has its title. 1984 was the year Winston thought it was, thinking, "It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two. " This was the year that Winston had written down for his first entry, the year Winston had first thought about rebelling against the Party, and it was the year he committed Thought Crime. The year is significant because throughout those years was when he first wrote in a diary illegally, had relations with Julia illegally, and attempted to join the Brother, which is obviously illegal, since the Brotherhood is an organization in itself a crime, because it's about rebelling against the party, which is considered a crime as well. This book is about the events that unfold in particular time Winston Smith's life, which happens to be 1984.

Illuminator-Pt.3 Ch.4 - Effective use of language

"It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude : the predestined thing happened in any case. He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled."

This passage shows an effective use of language through the use of similes. Orwell compared the act of swimming against the current with the difficulty of remaining oppressive in the Ministry of Love. Winston tried to remain rebellious, but as he faced more and more torture, he began to think that going along with it would be much easier for him, so he tried to educate himself into thinking like a Party member. He changed his own attitude which caused him to question why he had ever rebelled in the first place.

Illuminator- Pt.2 Ch.8 - Protagonist conflict #2

"You will get no comradeship and no encouragement. When finally you are caught, you will get no help. We never help our members. At most, when it is absolutely necessary that someone should be silenced, we are occasionally able to smuggle a razor blade into a prisoner's cell. You will have to get used to living without results and without hope. You will work for a while, you will be caught, you will confess, and then you will die. Those are the only results that you will ever see. There is no possibility that any perceptible change will happen within our own lifetime. We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing. It might be a thousand years. At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual, generation after generation. In the face of the Thought Police there is no other way. "

This segment shows Winston's conflict, which is to help the Brotherhood, which is the organization that rebels against the Party. He has agreed, along with Julia, that he would do anything to support the Brotherhood, except separate from Julia to never see her again. This passage shows the danger of becoming a Brotherhood member, because it is definite that they will be caught, and they are to confess, and they will die under the hand of the Party. In some cases, they may even have to commit suicide.

Illuminator-Pt.2 Ch.7 - Important idea the book conveys

" If you mean confessing ", she said, " we shall do that, right enough. Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They torture you. "

" I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. 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. "

She thought it over. " They can't do that ", she said finally. " It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything - anything - but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you. "

" No ", he said a little more hopefully, " no; that's quite true. They can't get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them. "

...

Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by enquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make ? They could not alter your feelings: for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.

This passage shows an important idea the book conveys, which is that nothing can change the way you feel. Julia and Winston talk about what they would do when they get caught, which is bound to happen sooner or later. They know that they can't help it if they confess everything, because the Party would have ways of obtaining that information through variations of torture. However, they agree to not truly betray one another, which means that they wouldn't stop loving one another. They weren't going to let the Party alter their feelings for one another, as Winston thought, "They could not alter your feelings: for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to." No matter what they did to them, they could never change their love for one another, and they knew that their love would be invincible any external damage.

Illuminator-Pt.2 Ch.4 - Why I like the book

"For a moment he was violently angry. During the month that he had known her the nature of his desire for her had changed. At the beginning there had been little true sensuality in it. Their first love-making had been simply an act of the will. But after the second time it was different. The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity, something that he not only wanted but felt that he had a right to. When she said that she could not come, he had the feeling that she was cheating him. But just at this moment the crowd pressed them together and their hands accidentally met. She gave the tips of his fingers a quick squeeze that seemed to invite not desire but affection. It struck him that when one lived with a woman this particular disappointment must be a normal, recurring event; and a deep tenderness, such as he had not felt for her before, suddenly took hold of him. He wished that they were a married couple of ten years' standing. He wished that he were walking through the streets with her just as they were doing now but openly and without fear, talking of trivialities and buying odds and ends for the household. He wished above all that they had some place where they could be alone together without feeling the obligation to make love every time they met. "

Although I'm not done with the book, this is already one of my favorite passages, if not my favorite. In this excerpt, Winston becomes angry because Julia cancels their next meeting since they can't have sex, since it's her time of the month. However, Winston isn't angry because he desperately want to sleep with her again, but because he desperately wants to be with her. Over the course of time that he has known her, he's began to fall in love with her. He felt that she became a necessity to him, and his need for her was that of affection, not desire. He started to become jealous, suspecting that she might be cheating on him, which contradicts his former opinion, because he claimed that the more men she slept with, the more he would love her, because it was the corruption that attracted her to him at first. However, he desires to be married to her, wishing they could openly walk through the streets together, acting as a normal couple of 10 years marriage would act. "He wished above all that they had some place where they could be alone together without feeling the obligation to make love every time they met."

Illuminator - Pt.1 Ch. 7

"Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom. He thought of a man whom he had passed in the street a few weeks back ; a quite ordinary-looking man, a Party member, aged thirty-five to forty, tallish and thin, carrying a brief-case. They were a few metres apart when the left side of the man's face was suddenly contorted by a sort of spasm. It happened again just as they were passing one another : it was only a twitch, a quiver, rapid as the clicking of a camera shutter, but obviously habitual. He remembered thinking at the time : That poor devil is done for. And what was frightening was that the action was quite possibly unconscious. The most deadly danger of all was talking in your sleep. There was no way of guarding against that, so far as he could see. "

In this passage, Wilson describes how your worst enemy was your own nervous system. Reflexive instincts like the urge to scream obscenities or to distort your face can give you away. Nasty habits can reflect upon your thoughts and can lead to being charged for Thought Crimes. The thing Winston most feared was saying things in his sleep, things that were totally out of his control, and if the Thought Police were to hear him, he would face conviction which led to death.

Illuminator- Pt.1 Ch.2 - Protagonist conflict #1

"Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new heart into him. He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. He went back to the table, dipped his pen, and wrote:

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone — to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink - greetings !

He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his thoughts, that he had taken the decisive step. The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. He wrote:

Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.

Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible."

This passage has importance because it shows what's going on in Winston's head as he's writing in his diary; what's the purpose, and what are the consequences? He's unsure about who's he's writing for: the future or for the past. But he's sure that he's writing to a time that's different than the time he's living in. He's writing to a time with the right to free speech, free actions, and a right to live. He's writing to a time when people are different from one another, diverse, and don't live in solitude. He's writing to a time when truth exists, as a person living in an era of solitude, when the government dictates what you should think and how you should live.

However, writing this, he knows that he just committed a crime, a thoughtcrime to be exact. He knows he will eventually be found out, and the Thought police will capture him, and vaporize him, basically cleaning out all evidence that shows Winston has been alive. Now that he's sure of his eminent future, all that's "important is to stay alive as long as possible."

Illuminator, Pt.1 Ch.3 - Setting

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran."

This passage shows the setting the building in which Winston resides in. The setting portrayed in this excerpt is more weather and emotional setting, rather than physical setting. This segment shows the bitterness of life Winston goes through, with "vile wind" and his disturbing smell throughout the building which seemed to smell of "boiled cabbage and old rag mats." The lack of electricity forced him to walk seven flights of stairs with a varicose ulcer above right ankle, which seemed to prevent him from walking up the stairs with ease. The poster at each landing also seemed to take part in the setting, appearing to give off a feeling of insecurity or a feeling that you were being watched, as it held a caption saying "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU."

-Annalee