Winston's Future

Winston's actions have been extremely risky and rebellious. He is aware of this and yet it does not stop him. In some sense, it seems as though Winston wants to get caught. By pulling out the diary onto the table in front of the telescreen, Winston is playing a game of Russian roulette- he could be being watched but on the other hand he might not be. In a more serious sense, if he gets caught, it is likely he will be killed.

            I presume he will eventually get caught but I think that is his goal. I believe some part of Winston wants to know what exactly goes on behind closed doors to those that disappear. He will probably be exiled before being vaporized. His choices indicate no desire for safety yet his thoughts say otherwise. These contrasting thoughts and actions make Winston a very contradicting character.  On the other hand, Winston could just be paranoid. Regardless, he is headed “downhill”, somewhere unsafe and unknown to him.

            As structured as his world may seem, it is soon about to crumble around him. He will become more of a prisoner than he already is, for he has purposively committed wrong. I do not believe he will be alone, for the dark haired girl shows promise. I believe the dark haired girl might not actually be against him, rather she may secretly be on the same boat as Winston. I predict that they will end up together and she may eve vogue for him which could save his life. Both may ultimately be vaporized. 

King Lear Tweet #Newspeak

1984- The Ministry of Truth

               The Ministry of Truth is quite ironic, for it displays everything but the truth.  Instead, this should be called the ministry of falsification. Winston’s job is to literally change history so that Big Brother will always seem correct to the past, present, and future. What baffles me is that the people, like Winston, who work these jobs, continue working them. They complete their tasks yet seem blind to what they are actually doing. I wonder if other workers other than Winston realize just how contradicting and destructive their job is.  The result of the ministry of truth is to make Big Brother the one, absolute power which everyone not only supports, but is proud of.

                 Orwell’s society is ultimately portrayed as contradicting. It’s as if the government has a double standard for its self and its citizens; on one hand, the government can change its past so that the future can perceive Big Brother as perfect, yet the citizens live in a less than perfect world. In fact, they live in a dystopia.  The devotion perfection trying to be achieved by Big Brother only benefits the government. Isn’t the government supposed to benefit its people? Oceania is quite the backwards society.

               In context with our own government, I think the ministry of truth symbolizes its corruptness. As seen in history classes throughout the country, we focus on wars won, rather than battles lost. Arguably one of America’s greatest downfalls is barely talked about in school. The eugenics movement was not covered in my required history class, rather an elective which not all students take. Isn’t it interesting what school curriculums choose to focus on? For, our downfalls as a country are quickly overlooked while our losses and victories are taught repeatedly. 

Weighing the Dog Explication

At first, the poem seems to be about the simple, common task of weighing a dog.  However, the last stanza expresses its hidden symbolism. Billy Collins ultimately portrays weighing a dog as a failed relationship between the speaker and his partner.  This portrayal is awkward and strange to relate back to a relationship, but that might just be Collins’ intention.  

                I interpret that the speaker is like the dog, for the speaker says “you held me in your arms more than I held you”, mirroring that the dog owner cares more for the dog than the dog does in return. The “shaky blue scale” is what their relationship teetered on, for it is a balance they tried, and ultimately failed, to find.  When he “subtracted [himself] from [the] combination” on the scale, she became lighter, suggesting that he was weighing her down.  This concept of being an unwanted weight is present with literally weighing the dog, for the speaker must hold the dog down in order to get the weight.

                For anyone who has ever had to weigh a large dog, you know it can be an awkward, sometimes frustrating process. The tone of this poem however, does not reflect that. The tone is comprised of regret and sorrow. The last line really reflects this tone; “and now we are both lost in strange and distant neighborhoods”. If we relate this back to the analogy of dogs, it can be viewed as if the two lovers are now astray, for this quote projects the image of two stray dogs. This makes sense for the two lovers no longer have the other to take care of them and they live separately, trying to find a new spouse. 

Harlem Explication

Langston Hughes was a writer during the Harlem Renaissance. The name represents the movement, although at the time it was not called the Harlem renaissance, this literary movement of black culture into pop culture created a new, or rather, different respect for black culture. The poem is made up of rhetorical questions, suggesting the narrator’s questionable attitude towards this movement. Or maybe the opposite; that the author finally will get his chance to make his “dream deferred” come true. Hughes uses many similes including the infamous “like a raisin in the sun”, which suggests that the “dream deferred” could be put off too long. That, like a raisin, it will dry up, losing all its pizzazz. Using the comparison to other food, “rotten meat” and “syrupy sweet” suggests that one’s talent and dreams have a critical period of which they are ripe or well, but after that they may become “rotten” or “crust and sugar over”.

By saying it might “just [sag] / like a heavy load” could be meant to say it drags one down. It could even mean that not achieving ones dream can cause a sense of depression. This is its own stanza toward the bottom of the poem and is secured by a period, the only period in the poem. All this further symbolized the weight of a “dream deferred”.

This could have occurred for many black artists before the time period however, during the Harlem renaissance, their deferred dreams could be made into a reality and “explode” much like Langston Hughes’.  This last rhetorical question suggests a hopeful outcome, unlike the previous part of the poem which was quite bleak. It could also be interpreted as negative, that the dream was built up for so long that when it comes to a head, it “explode[s]” which could result in calamity. However, I interpret it in a positive way, in which Hughes gives hope to other artists chasing their dreams, for the Harlem Renaissance was the ultimate time for blacks to display their talents.