1984 Rebellion Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #13

But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act. (2.2.63)

The Party? More like the Party Poopers. These guys have managed to mess up society so much that something as intimate as sex becomes an act of rebellion. And it's not just sex, every human emotion gets turned into a possible act of rebellion—including feeling hangry

Quote #14

She hated the Party, and said so in the crudest words, but she made no general criticism of it. Except where it touched upon her own life she had no interest in Party doctrine […]. Any kind of organized revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same. He wondered vaguely how many others like her there might be in the younger generation people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as something unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog. (2.3.15)

Julia wants to have the best of both worlds—to live under the Party's rule but still participate in little acts of rebellion as they suit her, like falling in love and having sex. Winston is critical of this mindset because he thinks it signifies a tacit acceptance of the Party's authority, since rebellion only happens on such a small scale. 

Quote #15

She knew the whole driveling song by heart, it seemed. Her voice floated upward with the sweet summer air, very tuneful, charged with a sort of happy melancholy […]. It struck him as a curious fact that he had never heard a member of the Party singing alone and spontaneously. It would even have seemed slightly unorthodox, a dangerous eccentricity, like talking to oneself […].

"You can turn round now," said Julia.

He turned round, and for a second almost failed to recognize her […]. The transformation that had happened was much more surprising than that. She had painted her face. (2.4.29-31)

Makeover time. So apparently makeup is banned in the future, and Julia puts some on (gasp!). This is another example of one of her low-key acts of rebellion, but we've got to ask—what the heck did she do to her face to make her unrecognizable? This may be the future, but we're pretty sure Youtube beauty tutorials still don't exist.