#5- 1984

"He turned toward  the light and lay gazing into the glass paperweight. The inexhaustibly interesting thing was not the fragment of coral but the interior of the glass itself. There was such a depth of it, and yet it was almost as transparent as air. It was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete. He had the feeling that he could get inside it, and that in fact he was inside it, along with the mahogany bed and the gateleg table and the clock and the steel engraving and the paperweight itself. The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal" (122).

Orwell's use of this metaphor gives the image of repeating layers, of worlds within worlds, in which Oceania is endlessly trapped or as Winston says, "fixed in a sort of eternity." Even the paperweight itself is inside Winston's envisioned world that is encompassed by the paperweight. Even though Oceania is not actually part of such a world, this metaphor strengthens the Party's power. As long as citizens perceive themselves as being small and trapped, caught in endless worlds, they will be less likely to rebel and will therefore adhere to the Party's desires. This metaphor also continues the theme of reality. Because of doublethink, it is almost impossible to determine what really occurs in Oceania. In this similar fashion it is impossible to distinguish whether one is merely living in a world inside a paperweight or if one is in the actual world.

Work Cited:
Photo Credit:
Hance, Jeremy. "Extinctions on the rise in the Galapagos: fishing and global warming devastating islands' species." Mongabay.com. 3 Dec. 2009. 26 Aug. 2010 <http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1203-hance_galapagos.html>.