MovieChat Forums > Nineteen Eighty-Four (1985) Discussion > Was the party over thrown in the end?

Was the party over thrown in the end?


I have read the book and seen the movie, I know this is not answered. It is more of an opinion question. I would like to think that in the end the proles woke up and brought the party down. However, the party seemed in invincible and all powerful. It is hard to see them ever being overthrown.

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Someone had actually written a sequel to 1984. It was called 1985 - A Historical Report. Written by Gyorgy Dalos, it describes the downfall of Oceania. I haven't read the book myself. Here is a review of it:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/552786277

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I am curious to how you could legally write the sequel to someone else's work?

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I have no idea but it'S been done before. There is a Russian that made a Lord of the ring book. It cover the POV of the orcs. He explains it by saying the story is always written by the winners.

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I am curious to how you could legally write the sequel to someone else's work?


There are a number of ways. One, if the legal estate of the writer in question allows it. Two, it's an unofficial sequel; you merely imply that it's a sequel, changing some names but using the same approaches, the same settings, etc. Another way is to wait for the property becomes public domain, in which case you can do anything you want as a sequel. This is partly why you have so many Dracula and Frankenstein films.

I have this idea for a short story set in the world of 1984, but in the warzone. It's a war story where an entire unit of Oceanic troops lose their political officers in combat, and decide to rebel by fighting for a real combat victory.

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Someone else's work does not count as canon. In fact, I think 1984 was still copyrighted in the 1980s and the rights belonged to Orwell's widow, so did Dalos get her permission?

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I'm not sure about the copyright issue. It's a bit like people who have written stories about Conan the barbarian or Sherlock Holmes after the original creators have died.

A couple of people have written sequels to H.G. Wells's The Time Machine. Someone else wrote a sequel to The Day of the Triffids. (It was called The Night of the Triffids.)

Gyorgy Dalos's book is meant to be satirical, though probably not to the extent of being a parody. As I said, I haven't read it, but I am kind of curious about it.

Getting back to the original question, I think it's possible that the Party might collapse eventually. Maybe not because of the Proles, but through stagnation. O'Brien told Winston that they'd eventually do away with science when they're omnipotent, but isn't that the sort of thing a madman would say?

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The Proles will not start a revolution because they don't realize they are being oppressed. They cannot discover that they are being oppressed until after the revolution. They are in a Catch 22 situation.

The only way the Party might collapse is if it lost its love for power which doesn't seem all that likely.

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That isn't a real sequel. Sequel has to have been done by the original author. 1985 and various literature that may make direct references to something is more like fan fiction.

Additionally, the original book 1984 isn't meant to be a novel with a good ending. It is a dystopian science fiction that is pessimistic and is usually good specifically because such literature doesn't attempt to make the reader or viewer feel good in the end.

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I think the implication is that the political structure cannot be changed, and therefore the wars will perpetuate and continue to feed the economies of the nation as a means of keeping the people working, producing, ad allied to the cause, even when the enemy is so blatantly changed in the middle of the war.

Therefore, no, the governments were not changed, and were kept the same.

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There are some hints in the novel that the rule of the Party will eventually come to an end.

One is that the Newspeak appendix in the novel is referred to in a footnote on the very first page of the novel, and is written from the point of view of someone for whom the use of Newspeak was a historical event. Orwell thought the appendix was an integral part of his novel and refused to have it excised for an American edition, which hints at its importance.

Another is the scene in the Chestnut Tree cafe at the end of the novel. Winston is studying his chess problem while waiting for news from the front, worrying that 'for the first time the territory of Oceania itself was under threat'. This can be taken as a hint that the Party is starting to lose control of events.

So yes, I think the Party would have fallen eventually, although not in time to do Winston any good.

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'for the first time the territory of Oceania itself was under threat'
This is just an act of changing the perception of reality.
Winston knows that he was witness of attacks (e.g. rockets) against Oceania's soil and he knows that atomic bombs hit it. Yet he is reconstructing _his_ reality and removes the knowledge of these attacks to be able to accept _the party's_ reality.

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None of that is true.

It's just Party propaganda intended to invoke fear in Winston so that he could cry out for Big Brother to save Oceania. And when it was suddenly announced that there was a huge flanking maneuver and the enemy was utterly routed, Winston breathed a sigh of relief and thanked BB, and that is when he came to finally love him.

But who knows if any of that even happened, or if there was ever a war at all. It's just telescreen diarrhea, and since Winston has no external sources, everything the telescreen says must be accepted as true. The populace is cut off from the outside world, so the telescreen can tell them anything it wants and they'll believe it.

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one of them in 1991, remember, the fall of soviet union? the one (pretend to be two) in washigton d c is still intact.

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I don't think "Oceania territory at threat" means anything really. The Party control all information coming in and the Party lie to suit its own ends. It was probably attempting to whip the Proles up into a state of patriotism by stating that Oceania territory was under threat because they can't have a war unless the people can perceive an external threat to Oceania.

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I don't think "Oceania territory at threat" means anything really.


A plausible interpretation, and I did wonder about this, although it's an implicit admission of weakness on the part of the Party which I don't think they would do willingly, even for propaganda purposes.

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Even the Stalinist regime of the USSR was not "overthrown" (it simply collapsed) and even that regime was not as all-out totalitarian as the one of IngSoc. The control of IngSoc is omnipresent; it leaves no breathing room for any grain of resistance on a larger than individual level.

If IngSoc were ever to cease existing it would probably only because of its own inevitable collapse through internal corruption in the Inner Party or by total economic collapse.

IngSoc can probably best be compared to (but is still even more totalitarian than) North Korea, where control is near-total.

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My personal interpretation of the end of the novel is that Winston had been brainwashed and re-educated to the point that he believes that he is a loyal believer of the party and their propaganda, envisioning Oceania is about to about to win the war against Eurasia. As O'Brien said in the novel, the aim of the party is not just to eliminate an dissent but also to make sure that all people who oppose the party end up being loyal to the party. The way the society is set up, which is based on Stalinism there is no way any opposition can form because everyone is being watched and it is debateable one whether Goldstein even exists.

Also George Orwell was a more pessimistic writer, at the end of Animal Farm the animals end up looking into the windows of the farm house and see the Pigs are no different to the humans and that they are their new oppressors. There is no revolution at the end to overthrow the regime like they was in the animated film.

There is even a theory which Julia mentions is that Eurasia and Eastasia don't actually exist and the war between the nations is a fabrication, to install nationalistic dogma and keep the populous to have a sense of fear.

Please visit www.entertainmentfuse.com

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I think the most hopeful answer to your question can be found in the appendix at the end of the book, where Newspeak and its attendant political philosophy are explained in the past tense. It's written as though by someone in the future reflecting on Ingsoc's regime, in a way that would never be permitted under Ingsoc's rule. So logically, one can infer that the world changed for the better at some point after Winston's story.


I'm an island- peopled by bards, scientists, judges, soldiers, artists, scholars & warrior-poets.

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I agree, and it's a bit like looking back at the 20th century. However, it never really stops, and just look at us now.

º¬
Be seeing you

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Yes, in the end, Winston gathers together his friends at the Chestnut Tree bar; now having the plans for the interior of the Ministry of Love, they plant a bomb in the most structurally vulnerable point, destroying it in one fell swoop; the telescreens now broadcast that Big Brother has fallen, the Thought Police scatter and join the crowds in one big spontaneous celebration....and Julia, lifted upon Winston's shoulders, shouts loudly, "WEEESA FREEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!".
O'Brian, crawling out of the rubble of the Miniluv, is confronted by a group of former Outer Party members with cricket bats; "Oh, *beep* he exclaims, as the close on him and proceed to beat him to a pulp.
Proles, overjoyed that there are no longer any legal authorities to prevent them from raiding all the gin in London, get drunk, and start singing, "Yub Yub"!
The final scene shows us Julia and Winston, in Winston's flat; Julia disrobes and say, "Let's do it and never stop!"; they start going at it, with the Proles outside still singing, "Yub Yub!", and over Julia and Winston hover the glowing ghosts of O'Brien, Parsons, and Ogilvy, looking a bit puzzled at the whole thing.....ende.

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triple plus good!!

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triple plus good!!
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I'd like to add something a little off-topic.

Orwell based Newspeak on Esperanto, which he disliked for some reason. "Bad" in Esperanto is "malbona" (literally ungood) and "better" is "pli bona" ( which obviously resembles "plus good").

Both languages have small vocabularies and very regular rules, but for vastly different reasons. Newspeak was supposed to make it difficult to think unorthodox thoughts. Esperanto was always intended as a SECOND language and was designed to be easy to learn, with small vocabulary and no irregularities. I'm not sure why Orwell hated it.

The movie actually pays little attention to Newspeak, except for the weird dictionary guy who likes "destroying words" -- and ends up as an unperson.

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You're right, the movie doesn't get into details about the finer points of newspeak although it does at least elude to it and why Oceania is trying to eliminate language. I still can barely understand the newspaper headlines that Winston reads.

i find languages fascinating and read a bit about Esperanto. FWIW some speculated that Orwell hated it partly because there was a splinter group ("Sennaciismo" apparently) who adopted the use of Esperanto to further revolutionary socialist objectives. There is something a little creepy about a designed language rather than a language that has evolved over generations. It can be created for whatever purpose one wants. It sounds as if Esperanto was well intentioned but in Orwell's worst case scenario of 1984, it's perverted into something whose simplified vocabulary reduces the basic ability of self expression which of course was a main goal in Oceania.

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Apparently Orwell had some odd likes and dislikes and he put them in his book. The 3-minutes Hate session sounds rather like a sports rally. Sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov points out that Orwell disliked ball-point pens and went out of his way to say that Winston used a fountain pen. One day he pointed out a certain skyscraper and said that he used it as a model for the Ministry of Truth. ( The building was still there in 1984 and there is a shot of it in the movie, where it represents O'Brien's Inner Party apartment building.)

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"One day he pointed out a certain skyscraper and said that he used it as a model for the Ministry of Truth. ( The building was still there in 1984 and there is a shot of it in the movie, where it represents O'Brien's Inner Party apartment building.)"

The University of London. It also made an appearance in the 1981 version of The Day of the Triffids:

http://www.qmul.ac.uk/undergraduate/whyqm/uol/

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Just thinking... Your big telly screens might not have anything to show, if you just blew the bassas up in their HQ. Or did they have internet then? "Oh,*Beep!*"

Be seeing you

Prannock

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