Book 1: Disturbing Moments

"'Up with your hands!' Yelled a savage voice...Winston raised his hands above his head, but with an d uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy's demeanor, that it was not altogether a game." (22)

Junior spies are youth that act as spies for the party monitoring adults for any disloyalty towards the part. The kind of power they hold is just crazy. I was quite surprised by this. I understood that there were junior spies but the fact that they are so outwardly opinionated, especially at their young age, is crazy. When you normally think of spies, you would think of some man in a suit with glasses sneaking around collecting info. However, these kids are a whole other story. When realizing just how much power these kids hold, the power that the party has over the people seems that much more dangerous. Is it right to use kids in this manner?

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"'They're disappointed because they couldn't go see the hanging, that's what it is'...'Why can't we go and see the hanging?' roared the boy in his huge voice." (23)

Kids seem to be a powerful tool of the party. This quote really shines a light on just how chaotic and dystopia-like the world had become in 1984. A world where kids enjoy seeing hangings is another level of intense. First there was the fact that they openly spy of adults for the party which was disturbing enough. But the fact that kids see public executions as a sort of entertainment is sad. This system is worsened even more by the fact that the adult, the children's parents even, aren't seeing the issue here. The way Mrs. Parsons talks about her kids not being able to go to see a public hanging makes it sound like she is telling there teenage kids they can't go to a party. The reality of it sadly, is that adults have adopted this sort of life for their kids and themselves. Even if they live in a dystopian world, is it right for parents to leave their kids at the hands of such a seemingly corrupt system?

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 "Withers, however, was already an unperson. He did not exist: he had never existed." (46)

The last disturbing quote that I came across in these chapters had to do with Winston's work. The word "unperson" is used to signify that someone is dead. And during his job, he was trying to figure out why Withers had been disgraces. The only clues he found were the words "refs unpersons". He believes that this means the Withers is dead.

When looking at the paragraphs covering this topic, I am starting to see more and more that Oceania and the whole of this 1984 world is a true dystopia. The system has developed to a point where people who oppose it can be made to disappear. This classifies them as "unpersons" implying that they are most likely dead. When you see the letters "un" before a word, you can predict that the whole world is a negative to something. This is demonstrated by the word "unperson" because once a person is labeled this, they are nothing. They "did not exist" and "had never existed".