{image source : Telegraph}

George Orwell in his Fiction “1984”, through Winston Smith’s dreams, flashbacks, and memories, demonstrates how Winston’s subconscious mind guide, reinforce, and reflect his personal values. Winston’s dreams inspire him to maintain sense of individual identity with characteristics such as love, loyalty, and compassion towards others.

Living in a time where Big Brother wields complete control over the mind, Winston uses his dreams, which cannot be monitored through tele-screens, to strengthen his sense of self, individuality and to let out his bottled-up desires. Winston’s dreams about his mother, who is a symbol of unconditional love, compassion and who sacrificed own life for Winston convey Winston’s torment and human desire to be with family who does sacrifices for each other. Whereas Winston’s dreams about his lover, “Julia” reveals his desire to live life richly and in such a way that would eradicate the barriers and impediments that control passion and humanness. Filled with important human values and ideas, Winston’ dreams subconsciously help him to maintain his individual identity in defiance of party.

Winston’s dreams of his mother remind him of the compassion and natural gestures of the past, values he incorporates while building his identity in opposition to BigBrother. In his first dream, Winston remembers some valuable information about his mother, including that she “died loving him,” and “sacrificed herself to a conception of loyalty [to him] that was private and unalterable”, demonstrating his admiration for her. In Oceania, all forms of private and unalterable loyalty are eliminated by Big Brother, for “today there were fear, pain and hatred, but no dignity of emotion”, proving the rarity of his mother’s love for Winston.

In a later dream, Winston remembers when he gave his mother a difficult time over his chocolate ration, ultimately running away from her and never seeing her again. Yet, the part that most stands out to him is the “enveloping, protecting gesture of [his mother’s] arm” over his younger sister as he ran out of the door. He genuinely admires this gesture, as he covets the compassion and natural love embedded in such a simple action. Later, Winston remarks that “the terrible thing The Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account”, demonstrating his acute awareness of The Party’s elimination of all human gestures. As a result of this awareness, Winston recognizes the significance of the values exhibited by his mother, for they are extremely rare in a world controlled by Big Brother.

Thus, Winston learns to greatly appreciate genuine love, loyalty and humane gestures, for he desperately tries to maintain his kindness and become an exception to the emotionless people Big Brother has created. Thus, through his dreams, his mother’s compassion and humane gestures become an important part of Winston’s own identity, as Winston later covets his relationship with Julia, while he also expresses his deep sympathy and admiration for a hard-working prole mother. This Winston’s dreams reinforce his moral values and bolsters his identity.

Winston’s dream of Julia reveals to him the natural pleasure in romance and intimacy, leading him to incorporate these values into his individual wants and identity. In his first dream of Julia, before they begin their intimacy, he dreams of her. Afterwards, he explains that what stands out is not the desire it instigates in him, but rather that he has great “admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside”. He realizes the significance of such a rebellious gesture, for “Big Brother and The Party and the Thought Police , "could all be swept to nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm”, as he is aware of Big Brother’s attempt to “prevent men and women from forming loyalties” and “remove all pleasure". The sadistic fantasies Winston has about Julia before they begin their affair indicate the strong link between repression of desires and violence. Party polices physical relationships to prohibit any development of individual loyalties between men and women and use those frustrations to harness into hatred, war fever and leader-worship.

Julia’s dream provides Winston with an important aspect necessary to strengthen his individuality, as it inspires him to incorporate romance into his identity, as this will once again defy the attempts by Big Brother to eliminate human nature. Therefore, Winston’s dream of Julia helps him to grasp and utilize his unique love. Dreams guide Winston to integrate compassion, love, loyalty, and romance into his sense of self.

Winston loses his sense of kindness, when he has a dream of a voice that tells him that they will "meet in a place where there is no darkness." Winston thinks the voice in his dream is that of O’Brien, who he believes is anti-Inner party. This dream evokes a childhood memory of his selfish act of stealing a chocolate from his starving sister and reveals his selfish side and foreshadows Winston’s gradual disconnect from natural human instinct of selflessness, as soon as he is under the immense pressure in the form of physical torture from Obrien.

Winston remembers a rainy day where he caused a racket, so his mother dutifully went out and bought him a Snakes and Ladders board game. He particularly remembers the true happiness he felt on this day, playing a board game with his mother and sister. No matter his later change in actions, the values within his previous dreams are still exhibited, portrays a man whose identity is rooted in natural emotions, in this case happiness. However, Winston immediately pushes this childhood memory out of his mind, considering it as “false”. This underscores the extent to which the Party has destroyed the very emotions and personality traits such as natural emotions, happiness, and nostalgia, which made Winston human in nature.

Winston’s final dream, where he no longer dreams of love and compassion, demonstrates his change in alliance, as he finally loves Big Brother. While sitting in the “Chestnut Tree Café, drinking his Victory Gin, he slips into another dream”. He pictures himself “in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody”, who opposes Big Brother. This is a major change, for while in his dreams of his mother he admired her loyalty and selfless love towards him, however he now happily dreams of betrayal. Furthermore, in this dream he says, “The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain”, and ultimately, “He loved Big Brother”. Throughout O’Brien’s torturing, Winston does all he can to avoid Big Brother’s ideological bullet from entering his brain, yet the dream demonstrates that he has finally been converted to orthodoxy, ultimately because of O’Brien’s torture.

Prior to Winston’s final dream, all of the previous Winston’s flashbacks were centered around values necessary to maintain kindness and selflessness. The dream of Big Brother, hints that a new selfish identity of Winston, is established. No matter how many times he says he agrees with the ideals of the Party because of O’Brien’s torture, he had not truly agreed with them until he reaches this final dream, the marker of his dehumanization. Thus, dreams reflect Winston’s values throughout the novel, and once he disconnects from his original dreams and memories of selfless gestures and love, he simultaneously disconnects from his original compassionate identity.

Winston with each dream, may it be dream of his dying mother, and sister or dream of Julia, takes further steps towards maintaining his humanity, as they each teach and inspire him to maintain his love, compassion, and loyalty towards individuals. However, Winston’s final dream cements his ultimate transformation into love for Big Brother. His final dream demonstrates the extent of psychological control by totalitarian regimes to indoctrinate individuals even at the subconscious level to replace the deeply rooted emotions with worship for cult personality like Big Brother.

In my view, Winston’s dreams and memories represents the indistinguishable morals rooted within him. For Winston, important rebellious emotions and ideas are embedded in his dreams, demonstrating the psychological and ideological assistance they provide to build his individual identity. Yet, the indoctrination of even those emotions by Obrien and the party, cautions the reader of the extent of the control of authoritarian governments and their influential leaders.