#6

            George Orwell's 1984 gives a new meaning to the idea of living and dying.  As Orwell develops Julia and Winston's relationship he creates the concept that both Julia and Winston are dead already: it is inevitable that they will be caught in their iniquitous thoughts and actions against the party.  This is seen clearly during one of Julia and Winston's intimate meetings: "We are dead," he said.  We're not dead yet", said Julia prosaically.  "Not physically.  Six months, a year-five years, conceivably.  I am afraid of death.  You are young, so presumably you're more afraid of death than I am.  Obviously we shall put it off as long as we can.  But it makes a very little difference.  So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing" (Orwell 136). In Oceania to live means to die, eventually the party will kill a person. Winston's statement begs the question: if human beings are as good as dead from the start why go on living?  Why invest in survival when in the end it will make no difference?  The answer is simple, within human beings in Oceania there is an inherent drive to survive.  There is a want for life and to live even though logically it seems that in the end life does not matter.  They are dead before they even begin.  It is this same reason that allows Winston and Julia to continue to meet and disobey Party rules.  They proceed with caution in order to put off death for as long as possible.  Winston and Julia want to live.  Yet there is an inherent knowledge that  already they are dead, they are caught, eventually their lives will have meant nothing because they will have been erased from existence.   In the end Winston and Julia's want for life will destroy them because as said by Winston, "death and life are the same thing".