V.S. Pritchett (124) contends that George OrwellÆs 1984 ôis a book that goes through the reader like an east wind, cracking the skin, opening the sores.ö Though relatively simple, this novel is nevertheless filled with a number of symbols that underscore OrwellÆs central thesis û that totalitarian societies create lives that are not worth living and that the moral corruption of absolute political power is inevitable in a totalitarian system. This brief essay will examine a number of the key symbols used by Orwell to explicate this thesis.
The basic framework of the novelÆs plot is said by Pritchett (124) to be straightforward. In 1984, Winston Smith, a civil servant and Party member in the English Totalitarian State, develops political doubts, drifts into rebellion, is detected after a short period of happiness with a female Party member and rehabilitated. Mario Varricchio (98) describes this as a society emptied ôof a sense of history and of memory of the pastö in which ôthe emptiness is filled by a host of images of propaganda.ö
One of the most significant symbols present in the novel is that of the glass paperweight. According to Troy Place (108), ôthe paperweight symbolizes escape from a self-defeating and unnatural routine, as it represents the suspension of time.ö Indeed, the literal characteristics of the paperweight suggest suspension of time as well as life. Winston compares the glass to rainwater which implies purity and rebirth. The coral and the objects that Winston guessed that the glass contained are living things, reinforcing the notion that the paperweight symbolizes the suspension of life. When Winston awakes in bed with Julia he uses this symbol, describing to her ôàa vast luminous dream in which his whole life seemed to stretch out before himà it had all occurred inside the glass paperweight, but the surface of the glass was the dome of the sky, and inside the dome, everything was...