Repression
1984 By George Orwell
Thematic Statement
In order for government to have complete power they must have complete repression over the citizens by taking away private loyalties.
Explanation
The expression to be repressed is to keep something or someone under control. In the book 1984 the government used repression to control the power over the citizens by taking away their private loyalties. Because sex and family create private loyalties and the party must somehow control their actions toward these social acts. The party therefore starts to brainwash children into believing that sex is despicable, and unpleasurable. Just so they could create new party members. "Sex is seen as a duty to the party and all potential private loyalties are thus eliminated".
Quotes from 1984
This just goes to show you that Winston wants to have sex with Julia all as an act to go against the Party's rule.
The girl with dark hair was coming towards them across the field. With that seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm. that too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time.
Winston's varicose ulcer coincides with his heightened feelings of sexual repression.
The Physical Jerks would begin in three minutes. The next moment he was doubled up by a violent coughing fit which nearly always attacked him soon after waking up. It emptied his lungs so completely that he could only begin breathing again by lying on his back and taking a series of deep gasps. His veins had swelled with the effort of the cough, and the varicose ulcer had started itching.(1.3.7)
The aim of the party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it. All marriages between Party members had to be approved by committee appointed for the purpose, and though the princple was never clearly stated- permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of marrige was to beget children for the service of the party. Sexual intercourse was to looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema. This again was never put into plain words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every pary member from childhood onwards. There were even organizations such as the Junior, Anti-sex League, which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were to be begotten by artificial insemination (artsem, it was called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions. This, Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow it fitted in with the general ideology of the Party. The Party was tryin to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not bo killed, then to distort it and dirty it. He did not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should be so. And as far as the women were concerned, the Party's efforts were largely successful.