After the book "1984" by George Orwell

What is the role of memory, dreams, smells and other involuntary feelings/emotions in 1984? Why are they important?

         I believe that, in 1984 the role of memory, dreams, smells and other feelings was very important.

First, I want to say that smell and memory are interconnected, because a smell can influence people’s moods and call up memories. And that’s why a lot of writers referred to the topic of scent. This tendency can be seen not only in the English literature, but also in the world literature, including Ukrainian. For instance, famous Ukrainian writer Mykola Voronyi has shown in his work “Yevshan-Zillya” the role of scent in human’s life, by the example of the main character, Turkish khan’s son, who remembered his childhood and his origin with the help of yevshan-zillya’s smell. So, I suppose that this boy and the main character of George Orwell’s novel “1984” Winston Smith have a lot in common, because Winston also recollected in his memory different situations and reminiscences relying on various scents. It can be illustrated by the example: ‘Only proles used scent. In his mind the smell of it was inextricably mixed up with fornication’. Sometimes, smell can pull you away from everyday routine, as for example, the smell of roasting coffee, real coffee, not Victory one helped Winston ‘to be back in the half-forgotten world of his childhood’. In addition to this, the example with the chocolate can be provided. When Winston felt the scent of chocolate, it stirred up some memory, which he couldn’t pin down, but which was powerful and troubling; that memory was so strong, that it was moving round the edges of his consciousness for some period of time. Relying on these facts one can say that smells play important role in recollecting human’s memories and feelings, which were pressed by the Party.

On the other hand, not only that was the problem for Big Brother. His aim was to destroy human’s reminiscences. Because as Maksym Rylskyi said: ‘The one, who doesn’t know his past – doesn’t deserve his/her future’. And without memory, the people can’t know the past. That’s why the Party wanted to change the history. It made Winston correct information in newspapers’ articles for that, which was playing in Big Brother’s hands. As one knows if someone changes the history, he or she changes the present. Therefore, having this sort of pretended present how can one speak of the good future? Unfortunately, the memory is unreliable, because one can forget something important and it would be easier for the Party to make one believe in “their truth”. That’s why Winston kept a diary. But in order to protect Party’s policy they destroyed every written record and documents through ‘memory holes’.

This, however, suggests us the idea, that only safe place for a person is his/her dreams. Just in your dreams you can be real, you can show your emotions, desires and thoughts, without anyone’s seeing or hearing them. In this way Winston let himself relax, he was thinking about history, a brown-haired girl and was having sexual intercourse with a prostitute. Moreover, in the real life any desire was a thoughtcrime. The proof of this is as follows: ‘The aim of the Party was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act’. But who wants such a life without freedom of actions, thoughts and eccentricity? That’s why, what Winston wanted most, more even than to be loved, was to break down the wall of virtue life, that was created by the Party.

Finally, I want to say that smell evokes feelings, that help to manifest human’s individuality, that was suppressed by the Party in order to standardize people and make the ruck of them. And to resist this, emotions together with the memory, smells and dreams play such an important role in 1984.