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Death In Brave New World

Decent Essays

Death is an inescapable doom that marks the end of one’s life and can be used as a threat to scare others to manipulate them. Moreover, some deaths can be more significant than others. In literature, death will oftentimes mark a turning point or symbolify a key concept in the novel. Both the novels, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, and, 1894, by George Orwell, have notable deaths at the ends of their books. Brave New World has the death of John the savage, while 1984 has the death of Winston Smith. Both of these deaths symbolize the loss of humanity and privacy. Additionally, their deaths prove that no matter what, in the end, society always remains victorious.
John the savage’s death in Brave New World marks an extremely significant part …show more content…

This death is significant to the novel because, like Brave New World, it marks the end of Winston’s humanity. Throughout most of the book, Winston hated everything about the Party. For instance, Orwell states, “His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large neat capitals- DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER… over and over again, filling half the page” (Orwell 18). To further explain, Winston hated Big Brother and the Party so much that he illegally purchased a journal and writing illegal things in it, but by doing so, he has all his humanity and is completely himself. As the novel progresses, his behavior becomes more radical until he is finally caught by the Thought Police. Orwell writes, “There was another crash. Someone had picked up the glass paperweight from the table and smashed it to pieces on the hearthstone” (Orwell 223). To analyze, Orwell includes this detail about the glass paperweight to symbolize freedom and hope. Once the paperweight is smashed by the Thought Police, the reader knows that all Winston’s freedom is gone, and that there is no hope left. Moreover, it essentially states that Winston is doomed. From that point on, Winston is tortured until he has the Party’s ideals implemented into his brain; however, he proves to be a difficult case. At the end of the novel, Orwell writes “But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother” (Orwell 298). Orwell does not directly state that Winston is dead, but it is clearly obvious that he is because previously in the novel Orwell states, “It would not matter if they killed you at once. To be killed was what you expected. But before death (nobody spoke of such things, yet everybody knew of them) there was the routine of confession that had to be gone through” (Orwell 103). In other

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