Didn't See That Coming...

I have been slacking on my reading due to a lack of sleep. I did manage to get a few chapters read last night however, and what I read shocked me!

WINSTON SMITH IS MARRIED!

Take a few minutes to let that sink in, I know I had to.

Are you back? Okay, good. So yeah, that creepy woman-hater somehow managed to find someone. I'm still single by the way. I think that makes me resent the character even more so.

Please don't assume that my distaste for the protagonist transfers into a distaste for the book. I have no problem reading a story about someone I don't connect with. It is a lesson I learned from watching movies. It's not the characters that matter, it's their stories.

So with all that said, I continue my journey through 1894.

P.S. Hope you're still with me!

Winston Smith is a Sociopath

A few point that I have learned in the first forty pages of 1984:

• George Orwell was viewing his dystopian world through an Instagram filter. Think about it, everything is dull except the bright red poster of Big Brother. 
• Big Brother's red posters of a black haired mustachioed man makes me think of a portrait of Stalin but if it was painted in a bright red Andy Warhol-istic way.
• Winston Smith is a sociopath. His mother and sister were killed when he was young, and has lead to a misogynistic mindset. I have watched nearly every episode of Criminal Minds, I think that qualifies me to make such a diagnosis. If you don't believe me, let me offer you this quote: 

"Winston succeeded in transferring his hatred from the face on the screen to the dark-haired girl behind him. Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind. He would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon. He would tie her naked to a stake and shoot her full of arrows like Saint Sebastian. He would ravish her and cut her throat at the moment of climax..."

See! This kid is messed up! Dare I say he is even a tad sadistic. It's still early in the book, but so far I'm not a fan of this Winston character. I have decided to remove Christian Bale from this role in my mind. Now I'll imagine Winston as Jackson Rathbone. Before any Twihard freaks out at me, Rathbone... aka Jasper ... might have been cute in the movie, but let's face it he still lit a kid on fire. Ergo, in my mind he fits the part.

A few lines from the book, so far, that have stuck in my mind. Here they are:

"It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage".

"The consequences of every act are included in the act itself". 

I'll let those two lines stew in your heads as well, while I go read more.

Let's Start In 1984

Sadly, I was not born in 1984; I was born three years later in 1987. But that's not why we are going to start there. We're starting there because Indigo had a sale on classic books for $4.99. I decided to buy George Orwell's book 1984. I have the basic idea that the book is supposed to be about some dude living in a totalitarian world. I am assuming he awakes from it, or revolts or something...what else would it be about? How great it is not to think? I think not. So with that said, I am hoping to find a "Equilibrium" type of story. Also, I will be imagining the main character as Christian Bale. 

As I read, I'll allow myself to unscramble my thoughts here. So stay tuned!