1984. Orwell's style

The book that I read for the first-quarter independent reading was 1984 by George Orwell. 1984 is about a dystopian society where the poster of a man's face and the caption "Big Brother is watching you" is plaster everywhere in the city of London. The story is a bout a man named Winston, who is a Party member and works in the Ministry of Truth where he alters history to fit party ideals and keep the people ignorant, and his love with Julia, who is also a Party member. The two of them defy the Party through their love and are arrested and tortured until they love Big Brother. They are released but they don’t love each other anymore. The author’s style in this novel is very calm and methodical. Orwell does not use long, complicated and complex sentences. “Back in the flat he stepped quickly past the telescreen and sat down at the table again, still rubbing his neck. The music from the telescreen had stopped. Instead a clipped military voice was reading out, with a sort of brutal relish, a description of the armaments of the ne Floating Fortress which had just been anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands.” (24) The demeanor of the writing is calm and collected. I believe that the style of writing is linked to Winston’s character. The style of writing sort of mirrors Winston’s personality and disposition. Throughout the book, Winston is a very calm character. He seems to stand back and observe his surroundings and think about his surroundings. The narrator is conveying Winston’s thoughts most of the time; Winston’s personality is conveyed through the narrator’s voice. And the narrators voice is calm, which makes Winston’s demeanor calm as well.  Later in the book, when Winston becomes more frantic, so does the writing style. “He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from the rats… he had fallen through the floor, through the walls, through the oceans, through the atmosphere, into outer space.” (287) Here, Orwell uses more complex sentences that reflect Winston’s confusion at that point and uses more abstract descriptions, mirroring changes in thought of Winston. The calmness of the writing also adds a surreal effect to the story. It creates a sort of surrealism and dream-like state when the reader is observing and experiencing Orwell’s world of 1984, the reader observes disturbing concepts such as the children that live next door to Winston who are so entwined in and brainwashed by society that they accuse anyone and everyone, even their own parents, of being criminals. The calmness of the writing presents surrealism by creating a presence that kind of lays the reader back and lets him or her observe from outside. The writing is so calm that it presents things like the telescreen or the “Big Brother” posters in an objective light that actually makes the reader turn more against the oppressive society in the story.