Question

What is the role of relationships and intimacy in 1984? What specific function does the Party's directive on sexual interaction serve?

Accepted Answer

Relationships and intimacy are not allowed, and the Party's directives on sexual interaction serves to advance the influence of the Party.The Party does everything it can to destroy feelings of empathy and loyalty between individuals because all such attention should be focused on the Party itself.  Recognizing the potential of the sex instinct to "create a world of its own which (is) outside the Party's control, the Party controls relationships with more than Puritanical zeal.  Sexual urges open the door to love and caring about others, which is counterproductive and even dangerous to the Party's goals.  Youth is conditioned to actively campaign for chastity, and promiscuity is anathema; marriages must be approved by the Party on an individual basis, and exist solely for the purpose of procreation, thus ensuring more future members for the Party.  The children produced in the context of marriage are brainwashed at an early age to spy on their parents and report any deviance in their behavior, thus perpetuating and strengthening a system in which intimacy is impossible, no one trusts anyone else, and every action or thought is observed and controlled - all for the advancement of the Party (Section 2, Chapter 3).

Answer

The Party encourages, or rather simply allows, intimacy for the purpose of procreation. At one point, we are told it's also allowed for the pleasure of (only) men, but this just appears a temporary expedient, because O'Brien boasts that the Party currently has its neurologists working on how to "abolish the orgasm."
In other words, the Party is puritanical about sex in a way that makes traditional religions seem almost liberal. Why is this? It's the opposite of the dystopia of Huxley's Brave New World, in which complete sexual freedom is the norm and people are encouraged to operate according to the pleasure principle. Among early reviewers of 1984, C. S. Lewis considered this aspect unrealistic; in his view, an atheistic society would not be anti-sex as the Party is.
The explanation in Orwell's narrative is that the Party considers intimacy between men and women as a counterforce to its power and therefore seeks to suppress it. If men and women feel strongly attached to each other, then that attachment or relationship is where their loyalty chiefly lies, rather than being directed solely toward the regime, as the Party intends. The intention is always to keep people unsatisfied and crushed into the earth so that their frustrations and anger can be channeled against the Party's enemies. Julia understands this better than Winston and explains to him that when people are making love, their energies are directed positively, and they feel good about themselves. This is the opposite of what the Party aims for in the totalitarian world it has created.
Readers, critics, and general commentators have argued for decades over which of the two most famous dystopias, Huxley's or Orwell's, is more realistic and more likely to be the correct prophecy, assuming either one, or something resembling it, will take shape in the future. It is a fascinating point for debate, but most readers, I think, would probably feel that the 1984 vision regarding intimacy is anomalous in some sense, disconnected from the other aspects of the society depicted in the novel. One would think it's just common sense that people who are sexually frustrated, or are made to think sex shameful or disreputable, would be angrier and more likely to rebel against such a regime. Yet the paradox of a reactionary attitude about sexuality in an atheistic world adds to the fascination readers have had with 1984 and is one of the more striking aspects of its dystopia.

Answer

Relationships and sexual intimacy are anathema to the Party. The Party wants to keep Party members sexually frustrated, isolated, and entirely devoted to the state. It wants its people to experience only the emotions of hate, anger, fear, and triumph. As we learn from Winston's ruminations, the Party also wants to characterize sexual intimacy solely as "duty" for the Party; in other words, sex is simply a way to have children and is entirely devoid of any other nurturing function.
Winston's relationship with Julia is therefore key to the novel, for it is through this relationship that he becomes fully human. Before he falls in love with Julia, he sees her from afar—and is sexually attracted to her—but he sees her wearing the red chastity sash and has emotions of anger towards her. He imagines hurting and killing her. The Party has successfully filled him with violent hate. After he enters into a caring relationship with her, however, he changes and becomes loving and more humane. Their relationship is the ultimate transgression: they care about each other more than the state, and for a brief time develop a life outside of the Party's political conventions. This is why it becomes so important to O'Brien that they betray each other: they cannot be fully reclaimed by the state while they still love one another.

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I was wondering the same thing. Also, can anyone suggest some good discussion questions? Thanks! (:

Answer

Close relationships, particularly sexual ones, are forbidden by the Party because they create divided loyalties. In the Party's world, the citizen must have absolute and undivided faith and trust in Big Brother and the Party alone. As O'Brien explains to Winston (Part III, ch. 3),We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends .... Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. With all competing loyalties abolished, the citizen will be able to become exactly what the Party wishes him to be at any moment.Forbidding sexual relationships and any real intimacy also has the effect of frustrating Party members due to the blocking of a natural drive, and building up a store of violent emotion that can be directed by the Party into other channels. As Julia's intuition tells her, "sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and hero-worship" (Part II, ch. 3) Thus, sexual intimacy is seen by the Party as robbing it of energy that it should by rights be able to utilize, a type of political rebellion.

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What is the role of relationships and intimacy in 1984? What specific function does the Party's directive on sexual interaction serve?

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