The Theme Of Winston Smith Really Love Big Brother

To ponder if Winston Smith truly loved Big Brother is to ponder the very nature of love itself. Could love, for example, be forced upon someone? Could love be obtained through fear and torture? Is it also possible for someone to lie to themselves long enough that their lie becomes truth? Winston has sunken into a hopeless “yes” to each of these questions. In particular, he seems to have convinced himself that he loves Big Brother—although this is not true. His unconscious still loathes Big Brother, although now Winston does a better job at hiding that fact, mostly because he is able to finally hide it from himself. At the beginning of this final chapter Winston Smith is found at the Chestnut Tree, drinking gin and feeling worried about the war. He is a regular there: he always sits at the corner table because no one else would like to be seen with him, works a chess problem, and pays an undercharged bill. Already the reader sees the battle Winston has with his own psyche. He doesn’t allow himself to think about the smell of the rats, yet he downs the gin that reminds him of them. The gin, in itself, is a symbol for the way Winston loves Big Brother—he downs the gin in one gulp, and although it tastes worsens the more he drinks it, he continually does so. In this same …show more content…
Returning to the present, his waiter fills his glass up with more gin, and he drinks it again. He has become an alcoholic now, for gin is the only way he makes it through each day. Interestingly enough, alcohol is also the most common drug used during sexual abuse. In sobriety most victims cannot even remember if they consented or not, making it easy for the abuser to make the abused believe they had wanted it all along. Winston has been abused—his alcoholism is another way of forcing himself to believe that he wants this; he forces himself to believe he chose to love Big Brother upon his own