Sunday, February 20, 2011

A different type of protagonist


To me, one of the weirdest and creepiest parts of the book so far was when Winston has sex with the prostitute. I'm sure i'm not the only one who thought this and I bet I wasn't the only one who was a little shocked. I thought to myself that there is no way that Winston would have sex with this woman until he wrote in his journal "She threw herself down on the bed, and at once, without any kind of preliminary, in the most coarse, horrible way you can imagine, pulled up her skirt". The main reason I was surprised with Winston's actions was that I thought Winston was suppose to be a typical protagonist, goodhearted and never doing anything wrong. Winston's actions with the prostitute make me question the thoughts I had about Winston at the beginning of the book.

4 comments:

  1. Even though protagonist are good people... aren't they humans too and make mistakes? Winston made a mistake just like the rest of us, does that make him any less of a person?

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  2. ever think what winston did was a protagonist action for this book. The antagonist we can agree is Big Brother and we want winston to rebel. maybe just in different ways

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  3. i agree. my post was a little more opinionated but basically the same message. WInston doesn't come off as someone who would crave sex so badly to so it with a 50 year old woman. very strange.

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  4. What do you guys think is the main point of Winston including this scene in the diary and Orwell including this in the book? It certainly doesn't seem like Winston is proud of this. It seems more like he is horrified by what he has been reduced to. It seems like because he is a good man (and our protagonist) who does lower himself to do something shocking to himself and the reader - it makes the Party's system of control all the more terrible.

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