The climax of the novel

What is the climax of this novel? What happens? How do the events of this novel make you feel?

I think that the climax is when Winston begged O'Brien to torture Julia instead of him. Until this point, Winston had been resisting and keeping his belief; he felt love, kept diary and read forbidden books. But the time he yelled at O'Brien was a starting point of change; Winston started give up his 'right' belief and surrendered. He stopped loving Julia and commenced to love Big Brother as he was told to do. Not only the event shocked me but also made me sad; I expected the ending to be happy or at least hopeful. I hoped that Winston would carry out his plan to make the world better place. The novel suggested through Winston's surrender that the world will remain as a dystopia.

The main characters of the novel

Who are the main characters in the novel? Do you like them? Why or why not? What is special aobut them? What do they reveal about the universal human experience?

The main characters are: O'Brien, Julia and Winston. Winston is a person who strongly dislike the dystopia society. He expresses his angers through doing some rebellious thing, such as keeping a diary, reading books, and falling in love with someone. Because Winston thinks that O'Brien is trust-worthy, he starts to tell him his thoughts and opinions towards the society. O'Brien, who's actually working for Big Brother the dictator, acts as if he advocates Winston's thoughts, and persecute Winston later on. Julia is a neutral person. Although she agrees with Winston's rebellious thoughts, she doesn't practice her thoughts into action unlike Winston. Ironically, her attitude changes after she falls in love with Winston.
Although I dislike O'Brien's cunning personality, I could understand the situation. If I were in the situation like him, I wouldn't risk my life and my job to simply follow 'justice and right', but rather blend in to what everyone's doing even if it's morally wrong, becaue I know it's hard to go against everyone. Winston's personalities and attitude were quite admiring to me in the beginning of the novel. I was disappointed when he finally surrender to torture and blames his loving one, Julia, yet I felt sympathy for him; pain is hard to resist.

Questions answered for 1984

Are there any current situations in the world that relate to the novel? Whar are they, and how do they relate? Does the novel shed any light on how current situations could be resolved or “fixed”?

In my opinion, North Korea resembles the situations in the novel in several ways. First of all, citizens in North Korea are forced to ‘love’ and ‘admire’ Jung-Ill Kim, just as people in the novel are told to do so for Big Brother. In addition, after being brainwashed for years, most North Koreans dim their country as a paradise, like people in the novel think so.
It seems that the fact that Winston, the main character in the novel, being brainwashed and sentenced to death tells readers that the novel doesn’t have any clear solutions for such situations to be resolved. However, from a different point of view, I can say that the novel does shed lights for a way out, as it shows Winston struggling to attain freedom in such suppressing society, because his actions symbolizes that no society can oppress the universal human desire for liberty completely. In other words, the novel tells the readers that if all people fight against the society like once Winston did, things will go as they wished. Numerous historical events that people overthrowing their repressing societies can support such idea: the French Revolution, American Revolution and so on.