Is it worth having hope for freedom?

"George Orwell was an English novelist, essayist and critic most famous for his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)" (Biography.com).

 In 1984, Winston Smith, the main character, lives in London which is part of the country Oceania.  The world is divided into three countries that include the entire globe: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia.  Oceania, and both of the others, is a totalitarian society led by Big Brother, which censors everyone’s behavior (Pageonetoo).

Winston is disgusted with his oppressed life and longs to join the fabled Brotherhood, which is a supposed group of underground rebels intent on overthrowing the government.  Winston meets Julia and they fall in love and have a romance, something which is considered a crime.  One day, while walking home, Winston encounters O’Brian, an inner party member, who gives him  his address.  Winston had exchanged glances with O’Brian before and had dreams about him giving him the impression that O’Brian was a member of the Brotherhood.  Since Julia hated the party as much as Winston did, they went to O’Brian’s house together where they were introduced into the Brotherhood.  O’Brian is actually a faithful member of the Inner-Party and this is actually a trap for Winston, a trap that O’Brian has been cleverly setting for seven years.  Winston and Julia are sent to the Ministry of Love which is a sort of rehabilitation center for criminals accused of thought crime.  There, Winston was separated from Julia, and tortured until his beliefs coincided with those of the Party.  Winston denounces everything he believed him, even his love for Julia, and was released back into the public where he wastes his days at the Chestnut Tree drinking gin.

Nineteen Eighty-four is a novel that represents strong criticism about the society where the author was immersed during the time he wrote it. Winston Smith, 1984's main character, was the perfect figure to reflect what Orwell thought about society, since he is against the system of life where he was forced to live in. What I personally believe and see through the reading of the novel is that there is a contradiction between the idea of triumph and defeat that is clearly seeing when the expectations about Winston and Julia living in a free society and without being controlled by a totalitarian system are not accomplished. 

Yes, we had hope, but actually, a fake hope about the future of these characters that never had a happy ending and my question at this point is…how far from the world’s reality is this situation? How many times have we though the happy ending is coming but it is not? 

Let’s think about The Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall was a barrier that existed from 1961 through 1989, constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961 that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin until it was opened in 1989. The Eastern Bloc claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period (History). Nevertheless, the history has made us to realize the truth is other. Actually, wall was built in order to shun people from the East ran away from there into the West. Many people tried to escape from poor conditions given in the East by "jumping out of windows adjacent to the wall, climbing over the barbed wire, flying in hot air balloons, crawling through the sewers and driving through unfortified parts of the wall at high speeds", however lots of them were killed when trying running away (History.com Staff).

Thinking about this event, I might state that Orwell kind of predict what would happen in Berlin.  As Winston, many people tried to get their freedom from powerful entities such as the Soviet Union and The Big Brother. Unfortunately, when these people full of optimism and hope thought they had made it, they were caught and killed. So my question here is:  it is worth having hope for freedom? Well, based on the history, the real and the fictional one, all those people who tried to cross the wall and defy the authority knew this has consequences and for them death was the only answer. Their bravery and hope of freedom was punished, not allowing them to get what they desperately wanted. Freedom in those moments was something ridiculous. 

"'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past'" (Orwell 31).

All in all, from my point of view, Orwell was a visionary. He had the ability to imagine how society will develop in the future and used his ability to write 1984, but he also predicted how society will be in our times; for instance, the use of propaganda, as in Oceania. Today's media is the connection for state propaganda. The news of the last decade's most important events support the way in which people behave. In that sense, the controlled pieces of information that people receive make them believe that this is the real natural world, people do not query about those events. Following that idea, the censorship of information in which we live in is taking control of our lives because we are being offered with programs like Facebook in order to keep us away from what matters. Finally, the US government is playing to be the Big Brother nowadays.

  

-George Orwell. Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.

-History.com Staff. Berlin Wall. 2009. 16 Nov. 2014. <http://www.history.com/topics/cold-                             war/berlin-wall>

-Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-four. London: Penguin Books, 1954.

-Pageonetoo, User. Freerepublic.com. 02 06 2005. 20 11 2014.