Discussion Topic

Symbolism of the Coral Paperweight in 1984

Summary:

The coral paperweight in George Orwell's 1984 symbolizes Winston and Julia's longing for a private world outside the Party's control, representing a fragile utopia and a connection to a past before the totalitarian regime. This antique artifact embodies beauty and individuality, elements suppressed by the oppressive society. Its eventual destruction by the Thought Police signifies the shattering of Winston and Julia's dreams and the futility of their rebellion, highlighting the Party's dominance over personal freedom and historical truth.

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What is the symbolism of the coral paperweight?

The coral paperweight symbolizes the world apart from the Party that Winston and Julia hope to construct for themselves in the room above Mr. Charrington's shop. In this world, they can live normal lives as a man and woman together in love. As Winston thinks while looking at the paperweight,

It was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete. He had the feeling that he could get inside it, and that in fact he was inside it, along with the mahogany bed and the gateleg table, and the clock and the steel engraving and the paperweight itself. The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.

When Julia says if you follow the small rules,...

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you can break the big ones, she means that if you appear completely loyal to the state in small matters, nobody will question your loyalty. If nobody questions your loyalty, you can get away with bigger transgressions because nobody will even suspect you of them. Of course, Julia later finds out this theory is wrong.

Winston is old enough to remember a time before the Party took over Oceania. This makes him more questioning of the system than Julia. He is more quick to believe that the Party tells lies. For example, he remembers airplanes existing in an earlier time, yet the Party claims that it invented them:

Sometimes, indeed, you could put your finger on a definite lie. It was not true, for example, as was claimed in the Party history books, that the Party had invented aeroplanes. He remembered aeroplanes since his earliest childhood.

Julia, however, is young enough that all she has ever known is the Party. She is not interested in history or whether the Party tells the truth about it. She is practical and is focused on making a decent life for herself in the present.

When Winston says the proles are still human, he means that the proles can still live ordinary lives in which they care about other people, they remain loyal to one another, and they have not become hardened inside. As Winston realizes,

What mattered [in the past] were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself. The proles, it suddenly occurred to him, had remained in this condition. They were not loyal to a party or a country or an idea, they were loyal to one another.

In contrast, Party members have become dehumanized; they are filled with hate and fear and are disconnected from caring about other people. Winston remembers that just a few weeks before, prior to Julia reconnecting him with his own humanity, he had "seen a severed hand lying on the pavement and had kicked it into the gutter as though it had been a cabbage-stalk."

The Brotherhood is most likely not real. The Party is omipotent and uses the idea of the Brotherhood to trap enemies of the state. Even if the Brotherhood were real, O'Brien would not be part of it. He believes completely in the aims of the state. 

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What does the coral paperweight symbolize in 1984?

In Orwell's classic novel 1984, Winston Smith lives in the dystopian nation of Oceania, where life is completely controlled by Big Brother and individuality is virtually nonexistent. In this restrictive, totalitarian nation, Winston attempts to maintain his humanity and exercise his independence by carrying on an affair with Julia and renting an apartment above Mr. Charrington's antique shop. In Oceania, nearly everything from the past is viewed as contraband or no longer exists. In Book One, chapter eight, Winston purchases an antique paperweight from Mr. Charrington's shop. Orwell writes,

"What appealed to him about it was not so much its beauty as the air it seemed to possess of belonging to an age quite different from the present one. The soft, rainwatery glass was not like any glass that he had ever seen. The thing was doubly attractive because of its apparent uselessness, though he could guess that it must once have been intended as a paperweight" (121).

The glass paperweight is a remnant of the past and is a delicate, rare piece of art. Winston recognizes that possessing the object could get him arrested but is inspired to purchase the paperweight. Later on, Winston brings the paperweight to the apartment above the antique shop and tells Julia,

"I don’t think it’s anything—I mean, I don’t think it was ever put to any use. That’s what I like about it. It’s a little chunk of history that they’ve forgotten to alter. It’s a message from a hundred years ago, if one knew how to read it" (Orwell, 183).

Orwell's description and Winston's analysis of the glass paperweight contribute to its symbolic significance. One could argue that the glass paperweight symbolically represents the past before Big Brother and the fragment of coral inside represents Winston's love for Julia. In the dystopian nation of Oceania, the Party is determined to completely erase the past and make joyful human experiences obsolete. Similar to the past, which is constantly manipulated and destroyed by the Party, the glass paperweight is fragile and eventually broken by the Thought Police.

In addition to symbolically representing the past, the glass paperweight also represents Winston and Julia's isolated world inside Charrington's apartment, where they live a fairytale existence before they are arrested. Similar to the coral inside the paperweight, Winston and Julia's love is rare, exotic, and beautiful. Tragically, their relationship ends when they are arrested by the Thought Police and the glass paperweight is shattered into tiny pieces.

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The paperweight symbolizes something that has no value except for its beauty.  The search for or involvement with the beautiful but useless places emphasis on the individual and his/her appreciation of the beautiful.  Individuality in their world is the enemy, however. They call it ownlife, which is the tendency toward the solitary, the individual, or the subversive. The callousness with which it is destroyed indicates how successful the society has become in squashing individuality.

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In the stark, utilitarian world Orwell portrays, there is almost no beauty.  Winston and his girlfriend must go outside the boundaries of Big Brother’s world in order to find beauty to enjoy together, like the pastoral countryside landscape they sneak off to for trysts and the small room that they share in the back of the antiques store.  The coral paperweight that Winston buys from the store and puts in that room signifies for him the beauty of the world.  “It’s a beautiful thing,” says the store owner when Winston buys it, “there’s not many that’d say so nowadays.”  In the modern, totalitarian climate, people have lost the ability to appreciate beauty because they’re allowed so little of it.  Consequently, when the government agents break the paperweight as they seize Winston and his girlfriend, this signifies that Winston’s brief moment to appreciate the wonder of being in love and being (somewhat) free is now over. 

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The paperweight is something that he finds beautiful, but doesn't serve an essential purpose. In his society, anything pleasurable is forbiddden and considered dangerous. The paperweight represents his rebellion against this oppression and takes him back to his childhood before the Party took over, when you could have or do something just because it brings pleasure. It also is a symbol of his relationship with Julia, which exists simply to share pleasure and he finds her beautiful. She doesn't serve a 'useful' purpose like providing offspring or a lifetime mate.

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What does the coral symbolize to the Party in 1984?

In 1984, Winston finds a piece of coral encased in glass in an old junk shop. It's a paperweight, and to him, it represents the time before the Party came into power, a time Winston dimly remembers from his childhood. Winston treasures this tiny reminder of the old days, even though he recognizes that the old days were not so great.

To the Party, however, the coral represents everything it wants to stamp out. The Party wants people to believe that life was horrible before the Party took over. It wants to control the past. Thus, the fact that Winston owns this trinket is a thought crime. It means his every idea is not controlled by the Party. Even if he had done nothing else, buying this coral--even desiring this coral--shows to the Party that Winston is a criminal who deserves arrest. 

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