callsthe
"last man," and we might say that,
fundamentally, what bothers Winston is the way the
state strips people--and
most specifically, he himself--of their humanity. He remembers, if
dimly, his
childhood before the revolution, and he knows people lived and acted
differently.
From the start of the novel, as symbolized in his purchase of a
secret journal, he is trying to
hold on to a piece of his humanity. He
resents the endless intrusions of the Party into his life
and clings to his
individuality and remnants of autonomy:
It was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or sleeping he would be
taking
part in some kind of communal recreations; to do anything that
suggested a taste for solitude,
even to go for a walk by yourself, was always
slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in
Newspeak: ownlife , it was called, meaning individualism
and...
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