flooded with clear, soft light" (Orwell 134).
Winston also tells Julia that the paperweight is ôa message from one hundred years ago, if one knew how to read it" (Orwell 121). The paperweight smashes to the floor when Winston and Julia are detected and Winston realizes ôhow small it always was" (Orwell 184). He appears to recognize that his dream of overcoming the PartyÆs control was insufficient. As Place (110) puts it, ôthe smashing of the paperweight represents the destruction of the world he and Julia had created and begins the end of the consciousness for which he had worked.ö
Another powerful symbol in this novel is the written word. Winston works in the propaganda ministry where he rewrites history to conform to the changing geopolitical alliances of his world. His doubts about the accuracy of the ônewsö produced by the Ministry of Truth begin when he obtains a piece of evidence of lying by the state.
Anthony Kearney (238) suggests that the manipulation of politicians through the development of a language called Newspeak is essential to the maintenance of state-generated fictions. For example, Orwell (251) cites the passage from the American Declaration of Independence which contains the phrase ôall men are created equalö and maintains that ôit would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original.ö Newspeak as a language is therefore itself symbolic of the transformation of democratic ideals into constructs that are superficially similar to their models but essentially quite different in their focus (Kearney 239).
The printed or written word is of special significance because Winston recognizes the extreme fragility of things that are written down. Nothing that is true on one day is likely to be true on another. Oceania, Eurasia, and East Asia are in perpetual war, but from time to time these states change sides and the great masses o...