Learning to love Big Brother: 1984 and violent acts of truth as love

Everyone has heard “literally 1984” and during at least one point in their life had to listen to a rant about how relevant it is today, but upon reading it, i was more thoroughly gripped by the way that the totalitarian society depicted warps the characters and readers ideas of love, oppression, and control. 

In a world where non-reproductive sex is an act of rebellion against the loved and trusted authority, Winston finds a special kind of hatred in the way that the red “anti-sex league” sash rests upon the hips of the dark haired woman who passes him in the hallway. The desire to kill her crosses his mind and for a moment he cherishes it, genuinely considering the action upon seeing her in a place he wasn’t meant to be. Eventually, she confesses love (a thoughtcrime in of itself between party members) to him through a note smuggled to him in the hall, and the two begin their long and recurring affair wherever they can hide from Big Brother. 

In 1984, Totalitarianism skews ideas of what would otherwise be love. Winston feels that having sex with Julia is a political act, not really love or an animalistic urge. When he can't have sex with her he feels he is being deprived of a given, but shrugs off the feeling. However, telling her that in all honesty he considered beating her head in with a rock is his first act of love to her because it was an act of truth. plain, bare honesty, however violent the sentiment may be. when he refers to a "refusal to betray her" he doesn't mean he wont tell the party every crime they committed, he means that he won't stop loving her even when he does tell them everything. Julia, who confessed "love" to him before he could even really say he liked her, not only sold him out immediately, but betrayed him in the same instance. 

Similarly, I like to imagine that in the same way that Winston telling Julia he originally wanted to kill her was an act of love, O'Brien telling Winston of Big Brother’s true intentions was also an act of love. In 1984, especially in later chapters there is an idea that Winston is meant to view the torture as loving correction. Winston is insane, O'Brien is offering to cure him. Winston has reduced himself to the emaciated state he can see in the mirror, but The Party is compassionate, caring: they only want to make your brain perfect before they blow it out. 

The violent compassion seen in the torture comes from Big Brother. O'Brien wants him to see "reality" which is not objective but rather established from a point of reference according to the party. But even through the ideas O'Brien forces Winston to accept, there is a single, plain, truth: "power is not a means, but an end. the party does not seek to benefit the people, only itself." which, though in O'Brien's case is masterfully discarded through doublethink, feels like thoughtcrime. 

This sentiment comes off as being not of the party: The party bans any sort of religious worship, however, in his deranged scribbles along with assorted party slogans, Winston pauses, reflects upon O'Brien's words, and writes "GOD IS POWER".

The message is garbled in his drug-addled and brainwashed mind, but the idea comes out in a way that is contradictory to Ingsoc values, showing just a glimpse of rebellion in an otherwise incapable man.