#7

      In today's society impulses and emotions have a considerable impact on humans and the way that they interact.  George Orwell characterizes the importance of human impulses and emotions through Winston's reflections on memories of his mother from childhood.  Winston's reflection comes from a place of serious regret.  In a dream Winston remembers how his selfishness aided the demise of his mother and sister.  Although Winston's selfishness hurts his mother and sister, his mother still chooses to love him and embrace her other starving child in love though it will not undo the damage of Winston's unkind deed.  Upon reflection Winston realizes, "The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing you of all power over the material world...once you were in the grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel , what you did or refrained from doing, made literally no difference" (Orwell 165).  Here Orwells depicts the major difference between  a world filled with humanity and the world of 1984.  The Party has taken emotions and actions and seemingly made them null and void.  Whereas in the world past where Winston's mother still existed her love and embraces showed strong feeling and had meaning, under the the regime of the Party such feelings and actions account for nothing.  The Party successfully eliminates these strong and influential human impulses by persuading its subjects that such enterprises have no real meaning.  There is a direct causation between feeling and action, feeling motivates people to act based upon a given emotion.  Destruction of emotion destroys action.  These pieces of human nature destroyed leave a powerless man with no way to touch the world.  In reality feelings and the actions for which they are responsible have the greatest impact upon humanity.  It is feeling and action that are the very essence of humanity.  These things create connections between people.  The impotence of connection is that it anchors one person to another and helps to give a reason for living and thus gives people power over the world.  With connections people realize that their action or inaction impacts the life of another person.  When sentiment and its resulting actions are eliminated humanity is eliminated, connection is eliminated.  People lack emotion and thus have no emotional impulses to translate into action.  In the end the Party's annihilation of humanity  creates a world in which human connection no longer exists and a generation of forlorn powerless people.