Nature of Love and Friendship in Oceania Essay Example

Katharine believed that they should have sex to have a child but Winston kept on postponing when the appointed day of sex reached. Katherine called it ‘making a baby’ (pg.58)

In Oceania, the Party was able to ruin marriages even those that happened out of wedlock. Winston had an outside affair with Julia in a relationship that started as hatred, sprung into love realms and finally tossed into a sea of indifference. In the first meeting between Winston and Julia, Winston offered his love for Julia by telling her how she hated the sight on first seeing her as it is put in the novel “I hated the sight of you; I wanted to rape you and murder you afterward”(pg. 101). However, Winston hated the fact that Julia conformed to him wholeheartedly just as Katharine had done before. The love between them was so tight that they were willing to commit atrocities as big as maiming children together. Winston was clear that he would not crush his love with Julia for the sake of the brotherhood. However, their love was eventually crushed by the ministry of love due to the tortures that Winston and Julia received in Room 101 by O’Brien and the Party.

Other than the relationship between men and women, there was a strange relationship between Winston and his torturer, O’Brien. From the novel, Winston stated that he felt deeply attracted to O’Brien because he was easily approachable and would let people cheat on the telescreens if approached politely (pg. 13, Oceania). Winston said that he had spoken with O’Brien in his dreams for many days. Despite the fact that a diary was punishable by

death in Oceania, Winston had dedicated his diary to his torturer, O’Brien. However, Winston knew all along that O’Brien was not in his support despite the deep love and friendship that he had with him.

There was a tight bond of love between Winston and his mother. In the novel, Winston felt a deep sense of guilt when he realized that his mother and sister were ready to sacrifice their lives for him. He realized that he had the responsibility of bringing back the lost love to his mother and sister in achieving the dreams of the Golden Country. After a long term struggle, Winston was finally left with the love for O’Brien and his brother as the party withdrew the natural love from Winston. In a conclusion, it can be said that the concept of love in Oceania was not only strange but frightening.

Work cited

• Morrow, Patrick. "Oceania." The Commonwealth Novel Since 1960. Palgrave Macmillan UK 1991. 120-124.
  Orwell, George. "New York: Signet Classic." (1984).
• Winduo, Steven Edmund. "Unwriting Oceania: The Repositioning of the Pacific Writer Scholars within a Folk Narrative Space." New Literary History31.3 (2000): 599-613.