The protagonist Winston does not want to give up his ability of serious thinking. Despite the fact that he is quite clear if he writes a. diary, he will. be considered to have commit "thought crime"; he chooses to do it, which means death sooner or later. Because he knows:
He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. He went back to the table, dipped his pen, and wrote:
To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free., when men are different from one another and do not live alone-to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone.
From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink-greetings! [7]
For Winston, the aim of writing a diary is not a revolt in the true sense. He just wants his diary to help him remain sane in a world where: everyone seems insane and out of control. And by staying sane he can carry on "the human heritage", which means men's pursuit of truth during the long human history. The age of Winston is an age of "uniformity" and "solitude", which means everyone should be orthodox under the control of the state and be alienated from each other. Many people have vaporized in Nineteen Eighty-Four, so Winston is alone in trying to be sane. But under the pressure of "thought police", they have no way to unite together. People with sanity will feel as lonely as though they were deserted on a forlorn island.
It is natural and humane that individuals maintain difference from one another and to be emotionally connected with family and friends is of human nature, too; but the totalitarian government has forced people to abandon these natural needs. Party members are treated as parts of a big machine. Deprived of the ability of thinking and judging, they have no dignity of being human. In some aspect, they cannot even enjoy the freedom of a wild animal, since they cannot do what they want and cannot go where they like. They live and breathe for he sake of the Party. To some extent, they are even inferior to domestic animals, for not only the freedom of their action is limited, but also the freedom of their thinking is controlled. What they have is pathetically the deepest part in their mind which can escape from the surveillance of "thought police". The freedom they have has been narrowed to the utmost. Orwell gave us a graphic depiction in the following:
He took a twenty-five cent piece out of his pocket. There, too, in tiny clear lettering, the same slogans were inscribed, and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother. Even from the coin the eyes pursued you. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrapping of a cigarette packet-everywhere always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed-no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.[8]
Here we can also see that Big brother is like a semi-god figure in Oceania. A great amount of propaganda is permeated into people's lives. Personality cult is used as a manipulative method do control people's minds. These were features of the Soviet Union at that time. Orwell saw Russia went further and further away from egalitarian and democratic Socialism as the dictatorship got tighter.
The essential freedom Winston believes in is the freedom of pursuing truth. He writes in his diary: "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows." [9]
The Party is a great liar in the sce
