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How can the concept of power relate The Great Gatsby and 1984?
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I have chosen to compare these two novels. In both novels a man, who is in love with a girl, tries to reach her. But the difference is that in 1984 Julia does not return Winston's love, but Daisy does not return Gatsby's love.One type of power explored in both novels is the power of love. In 1984, Winston's love for Julia comes to nothing—in fact, he is forced to betray that love in the torture chamber that is Room 101. While he is in love with Julia, he imagines that the love will always endure, and that it will give him strength. However, he betrays that love when he screams, after prolonged physical torture, "Do it to Julia!"
In The Great Gatsby, the eponymous Gatsby's love for Daisy ultimately comes to nothing also. However, Gatsby never betrays his love for Daisy as Winston betrays his love for Julia. Gatsby's love does endure, even though Daisy does not reciprocate his feelings. Gatsby's love for Daisy also demonstrably gives Gatsby strength. Indeed, it is only because of his love of Daisy that he raises himself from a poor, unambitious young man...
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loafing along the beach to a wealthy, admired socialite. Thus, in both novels, love is powerful but ultimately not powerful enough.
Another theme explored in both novels is the powerlessness of the individual relative to the state, or wider society. In 1984, Winston, Julia, and almost everyone but the proles live lives that are almost completely controlled by Big Brother. Big Brother deliberately acts to destroy the idea of the individual. There is no privacy, and the language is systematically reduced, year after year, to limit the ability of the individual to think for him or herself. The individual in the dystopian world of 1984 is expected to sublimate him or herself completely to the state.
Comparatively, in The Great Gatsby, Gatsby's hopes of being with Daisy are ultimately foiled by his status as "new money" and her status as "old money." In other words, the rigid and elitist social hierarchy prevents him, as an individual, from being with someone from a higher social class. In both novels then, although to different extents, the individual is prevented from fulfilling his or her potential by an oppressive, powerful social system.
Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby and O'Brien in 1984 both represent almost unlimited power and both use the brutal, "boot in the face" approach to maintain their privilege.
Tom has inherited vast wealth and considers himself a "Nordic" who is superior to other people. He is a violent man, for example, bruising Daisy's finger and punching Myrtle. He plays with people like George Wilson, pretending to want to sell him a car to get access to Myrtle, just as O'Brien plays with Winston and Julia, pretending to be part of a conspiracy in order to entrap them. Both Tom and O'Brien ultimately hold other human beings not of their small caste in contempt, simply there as tools to be used and discarded.
Like Tom, O'Brien uses violence, especially torture, to achieve his ends, and he thinks nothing of it. Both men justify their brutality by saying the other person deserved it. Gatsby had it coming, Tom says, because he was a criminal, and according to O'Brien, Winston deserves torture as an enemy of the state.
Tom and O'Brien both use their power to manipulate reality. Tom is able to convince George that Gatsby ran over Myrtle, when it was, as Tom knows, really Daisy. By manipulating George into killing Gatsby, Tom is able to neatly rid himself of more than one problem. Truth doesn't matter to him: power does.
Likewise, O'Brien uses his power to break Winston and even manipulate him into thinking two plus two equals five. He is quite open in telling Winston that truth is whatever those in power decide it to be.
Both Tom and O'Brien get away with evil because they have the power to do so. Both novels critique this misuse of power and side strongly with the victim as an emblem of the dreamer trying to grasp a fuller humanity.
What a fascinating question! I had never thought of connecting these two texts, before, but now that you mention it I feel that there are definite grounds for a comparison here based on the thematic topic of power. You can think about the way that both the American Dream and Big Brother manage to exert incredible power and influence over people, even though they are concepts and ideas that don't actually exist necessarily.
In The Great Gatsby, for example, there is clear reference to this in the way that the American Dream is shown to exert its somewhat malign influence over characters such as Jay Gatsby. On the one hand it has transformed him into the opulent indivdual that we see presented to us in the text. On the other hand, as the text makes clear, it has sent him in pursuit of an unattainable goal and impossible aims. His death shows the ultimate futility of a life lived in search of the American Dream.
In the same way, in 1984, the ubiquitous figure of Big Brother literally stands over and watches every single character, and the way in which Winston, in spite of his intial rebellion, is cruelly broken and made to love Big Brother by the end of the novel is both cruel and sadistic. Power is something that is centred on this mysterious and threatening figure, and the entire society that we are presented with revolves round this intimidating figure.