![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Jul. 27th, 2011
1984 (1,6) Love and Marriage
Jul. 27th, 2011 07:39 amAs Winston tries to self-administer a little journaling therapy to get over his poison prostitute, he reflects on the overall philosophy of sex in Big Brother’s world.
So, our Winston is a very sexually frustrated guy, bemoaning his deprived state, to paraphrase, ‘Why did it always have to be like this? Why can’t I have a woman of my own instead of these wretched scuffles with disgusting whores every few years? But a real love affair is impossible.’
Fortunately for you, old boy, you are in a novel, and your love life is going to pick up before long. Ah, I rather envy you.
Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside of it. All marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose, and - though the principle was never clearly stated - permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the Party. Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema.... The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it. He did not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should be so. And so far as the women were concerned, the Party’s efforts were largely successful.In these reflections, we learn that Winston was married. Funny thing, I have read this novel at least three times before this, and I was still taken by surprise by this fact. It shows you how easily things will just fly over me or whisk around me. However, this marriage was a very insignificant relationship in his life, lasting for only a little over a year some ten years ago, and was as joyless and loveless an affair as the Party could wish. Katharine, this wife, was entirely a creature of the Party with no soul and wit of her own:
She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none, that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her. “The human sound track” he nicknamed her in his own mind.They separated after they proved to be unable to have children for Big Brother. This was not a tragedy in Winston’s life, for she was as warm and imaginative in bed as she was in conversation and companionship.
So, our Winston is a very sexually frustrated guy, bemoaning his deprived state, to paraphrase, ‘Why did it always have to be like this? Why can’t I have a woman of my own instead of these wretched scuffles with disgusting whores every few years? But a real love affair is impossible.’
Fortunately for you, old boy, you are in a novel, and your love life is going to pick up before long. Ah, I rather envy you.
1984 (1,6) Love and Marriage
Jul. 27th, 2011 07:39 amAs Winston tries to self-administer a little journaling therapy to get over his poison prostitute, he reflects on the overall philosophy of sex in Big Brother’s world.
So, our Winston is a very sexually frustrated guy, bemoaning his deprived state, to paraphrase, ‘Why did it always have to be like this? Why can’t I have a woman of my own instead of these wretched scuffles with disgusting whores every few years? But a real love affair is impossible.’
Fortunately for you, old boy, you are in a novel, and your love life is going to pick up before long. Ah, I rather envy you.
Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside of it. All marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose, and - though the principle was never clearly stated - permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the Party. Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema.... The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it. He did not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should be so. And so far as the women were concerned, the Party’s efforts were largely successful.In these reflections, we learn that Winston was married. Funny thing, I have read this novel at least three times before this, and I was still taken by surprise by this fact. It shows you how easily things will just fly over me or whisk around me. However, this marriage was a very insignificant relationship in his life, lasting for only a little over a year some ten years ago, and was as joyless and loveless an affair as the Party could wish. Katharine, this wife, was entirely a creature of the Party with no soul and wit of her own:
She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none, that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her. “The human sound track” he nicknamed her in his own mind.They separated after they proved to be unable to have children for Big Brother. This was not a tragedy in Winston’s life, for she was as warm and imaginative in bed as she was in conversation and companionship.
So, our Winston is a very sexually frustrated guy, bemoaning his deprived state, to paraphrase, ‘Why did it always have to be like this? Why can’t I have a woman of my own instead of these wretched scuffles with disgusting whores every few years? But a real love affair is impossible.’
Fortunately for you, old boy, you are in a novel, and your love life is going to pick up before long. Ah, I rather envy you.
rights that mean something
Jul. 27th, 2011 08:53 amWatching the opening of "Gangs of New York", the DiCaprio and Daniel Day Lewis film about the rough and tumble Tammany Hall days. Two gangs confront each other with hatchets and knives and go at each other like Vikings - true blood-fighting.
Mallway Dialogue...
I turn to them and say, "Now that's how you win rights that mean something."
Oooooh! That's Monk for you.
Mallway Dialogue...
I turn to them and say, "Now that's how you win rights that mean something."
Oooooh! That's Monk for you.
rights that mean something
Jul. 27th, 2011 08:53 amWatching the opening of "Gangs of New York", the DiCaprio and Daniel Day Lewis film about the rough and tumble Tammany Hall days. Two gangs confront each other with hatchets and knives and go at each other like Vikings - true blood-fighting.
Mallway Dialogue...
I turn to them and say, "Now that's how you win rights that mean something."
Oooooh! That's Monk for you.
Mallway Dialogue...
I turn to them and say, "Now that's how you win rights that mean something."
Oooooh! That's Monk for you.
FDR on American Anti-Semitism
Jul. 27th, 2011 03:09 pm“If there was a demagogue around here of the type of Huey Long to take up anti-Semitism, there could be more blood running in the streets of New York than in Berlin.”
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt
This statement comes up in the discussion of Roosevelt’s determined silence in the face of Hitler’s ongoing genocide of the Jews. The quote refers to the fact that there was a lot of anti-Semitism in America, and it may have been felt that it was best to be assertive about that which united everybody against the Nazis and Germany, including our allies the Russians, who have their own mass murders behind their borders (and we won’t even talk about the American Indians, since that may be counted as ancient history, though it was a point that Hitler did not fail to harp on). Roosevelt obviously felt that the best answer for everybody was to defeat the Nazis, and one would think that nothing very meaningful could be done in any case until that happened.
As for the date of this quote, Beschloss does not get more specific than to say it was pre-WWII. I would guess late thirties, but you shouldn’t bet on that.
(Source: “The Conquerors” by Michael Beschloss)
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt
This statement comes up in the discussion of Roosevelt’s determined silence in the face of Hitler’s ongoing genocide of the Jews. The quote refers to the fact that there was a lot of anti-Semitism in America, and it may have been felt that it was best to be assertive about that which united everybody against the Nazis and Germany, including our allies the Russians, who have their own mass murders behind their borders (and we won’t even talk about the American Indians, since that may be counted as ancient history, though it was a point that Hitler did not fail to harp on). Roosevelt obviously felt that the best answer for everybody was to defeat the Nazis, and one would think that nothing very meaningful could be done in any case until that happened.
As for the date of this quote, Beschloss does not get more specific than to say it was pre-WWII. I would guess late thirties, but you shouldn’t bet on that.
(Source: “The Conquerors” by Michael Beschloss)
FDR on American Anti-Semitism
Jul. 27th, 2011 03:09 pm“If there was a demagogue around here of the type of Huey Long to take up anti-Semitism, there could be more blood running in the streets of New York than in Berlin.”
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt
This statement comes up in the discussion of Roosevelt’s determined silence in the face of Hitler’s ongoing genocide of the Jews. The quote refers to the fact that there was a lot of anti-Semitism in America, and it may have been felt that it was best to be assertive about that which united everybody against the Nazis and Germany, including our allies the Russians, who have their own mass murders behind their borders (and we won’t even talk about the American Indians, since that may be counted as ancient history, though it was a point that Hitler did not fail to harp on). Roosevelt obviously felt that the best answer for everybody was to defeat the Nazis, and one would think that nothing very meaningful could be done in any case until that happened.
As for the date of this quote, Beschloss does not get more specific than to say it was pre-WWII. I would guess late thirties, but you shouldn’t bet on that.
(Source: “The Conquerors” by Michael Beschloss)
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt
This statement comes up in the discussion of Roosevelt’s determined silence in the face of Hitler’s ongoing genocide of the Jews. The quote refers to the fact that there was a lot of anti-Semitism in America, and it may have been felt that it was best to be assertive about that which united everybody against the Nazis and Germany, including our allies the Russians, who have their own mass murders behind their borders (and we won’t even talk about the American Indians, since that may be counted as ancient history, though it was a point that Hitler did not fail to harp on). Roosevelt obviously felt that the best answer for everybody was to defeat the Nazis, and one would think that nothing very meaningful could be done in any case until that happened.
As for the date of this quote, Beschloss does not get more specific than to say it was pre-WWII. I would guess late thirties, but you shouldn’t bet on that.
(Source: “The Conquerors” by Michael Beschloss)