Winston Smith - Blog Posts
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OP i agree with all of this, but I’d also like to add that the “survival” theme Newman was going for goes against the entire point of the original novel. THE WHOLE POINT of 1984 originally was that through loving each other, Winston and Julia were able to do more than survive, they were able to find scraps of joy and meaning outside of the Party. In fact, that’s a major reason why the Party suppresses interpersonal relationships, because it exists by monopolizing the energies and activities and feelings of it’s citizens, and to do this, it keeps them in a state of mind where there sole focus is survival (via war, economic insecurity, repression, etc). By loving each other, Winston and Julia are able to transcend the survival mindset, until they are captured and tortured, which works because a total focus on survival, and the all-consuming fear that accompanies it, crowds out one’s mental space, leaving no energy for interpersonal love.
by reducing Julia’s motives to survival, Newman is denying what makes the Winston/Julia romance a meaningful form of resistance.
Julia by Sandra Newman is a terrible book and here’s why
“Julia never actually liked Winston Smith, she actually thought he was pretentious and annoying.”
So why does she repeatedly tell him she loves him
“She’s lying.”
But why
“She was a honeytrap by the Thought Police.”
But she acts surprised when the Thought Police come to arrest her
“She’s been told to act surprised.”
So she’s just doing as she’s told for the entire novel and never makes any decisions for herself
“Yes! It’s what she has to do to survive! That’s the point of the book!”
Really because she never once says that when she’s being used as a whore for the Thought Police, if anything it seems like she’s motivated by the prospect of getting a new flat, plus she seems to put actual effort into adopting the party’s ideology, so clearly it’s not just about survival…
“Okay so Julia’s motivations are a little confused, but this book adds so much that Orwell didn’t consider in the original!”
Like what
“The Holodomor.”
Jesus Christ…
“No, but it’s the survival theme again, she sells her mother out in order to escape the famine!”
Okay, and how does she feel about that?
“She doesn’t, she was only a kid, she can’t hold herself responsible.”
Really? Because Winston held himself responsible for the deaths of his mother and sister, and he was only a kid, it’s part of what makes him so complex…
“Well that wouldn’t work here anyway.”
Why not?
“Julia’s mother makes her do it.”
Are you serious? Does Julia make a single decision in the entire story?
“Of course! She runs away at the end.”
What, when she’s seven months pregnant and has been tortured and starved for months? I thought this was supposed to be about providing a woman’s perspective on the original; what woman would choose to go for a cross country run in that physical state?
“Julia’s built different. She doesn’t even get scared when the rats jump onto her face.”
Why would she? It’s never established that she was scared of them in the first place!
“She bites one of their heads off.”
Cringe, then what
“Oh, then they just let her go.”
You cannot be serious
“Of course! They’ve got to use Room 101 at least a hundred times a day, so she just runs out the clock.”
And how does she figure that out
“She doesn’t, someone…”
…tells her to do it, quel surprise
“No but this character is a super cool badass female OC who O’Brien plagiarises because he has no ideas of his own.”
Are you aware of the irony of writing that in a book that wouldn’t exist without Orwell’s original
“Yeah but Orwell’s protagonist is so whiny!”
He’s a victim of a totalitarian regime, what do you expect
“Yeah but he’s so self-important!”
And that’s his downfall, in his hubris he falls into the most obvious trap in the world, O’Brien lures him in with the masculine power fantasy of being a resistance fighter and Smith pays the price by being carted off to the Ministry of Love to be tortured to death.
“The Ministry of Love isn’t that bad, Julia makes it out okay.”
Yes, that’s the problem, Julia survives everything
“She does get a nasty scratch off one of those rats…”
In the original it’s implied she got lobotomised
“That wouldn’t work in this version.”
I shudder to ask, but why not
“Because she needs to live long enough to see the regime fall.”
And how long does that take
“About six hours after the end of the original.”
Are you fucking serious
“And then she meets Big Brother face to face!”
Big Brother isn’t fucking real
“In this version he is.”
So you have a protagonist who survives the horrors of a brutal famine, the Ministry of Love and Room 101 with barely any emotional or physical damage, then after a heavily pregnant hike she gets to meet the final boss of totalitarianism face to face, and you think Winston is self-important?
“Did I mention that she’s queer in this version?”
Is that supported by the text of the original in any way at all
“No.”
Then why. Why to any of this. If you hate Winston so much and you have to change every single aspect of Julia to shoehorn her into your batshit headcanons, why write a book about them, why write a book about 1984, why did this get published, why is this getting good reviews. Why. Why. Why to any of this
so, I’ve been getting a lot of trump x Biden (triden????) content recommended to me across socials recently. It’s been absolutely wild, and I know many of you have been eating it up (ironically or unironically? Who cares, irony is dead anyway)
however, I would like to give credit where credit is due to the 1984 fandom for being the first people to latch onto the trope of Frail Sickly Old Man x Compulsive Liar. We were truly Ahead of Our Time.