The Beast Within, Part...4?

“As thought to harmonize with the general mood, the rocket bombs had been killing larger numbers of people than usual. One fell on a crowded film theater in Stepney, burying several hundred victims among the ruins…Another bomb fell on a piece of waste ground which was used as a playground, and several dozen children were blown to pieces. There were further angry demonstrations, Goldstein was burned in effigy…and a number of shops were looted in the turmoil; then a rumor flew round that spies were directing the rocket bombs by means of wireless waves, and an old couple who were suspected of being of foreign extraction had their house set on fire and perished of suffocation.”

--p 149

As I read this passage, my immediate suspicion was that it may actually be Big Brother who coordinated these bombings on Oceania. After all, these seem like rather civilian-oriented bomb drops; if Eurasia really was bombing Oceania, one would assume that they would attempt to bomb the separate ministries, yet instead they bomb the locations which would incite civilian rage against them. This uncannily unlucky placement makes me think that Oceania may in fact be bombing their own citizens in order to maintain fear and incite rage and support for the war effort against Eurasia. Regardless of whether this is true or not, however, the theme in this passage—one discussing the extremely violent and savage measures that fear can drive people to take—remains. In this passage, people have become so fearful of bombings that they are driven to take the law into their own hands. What is so frightening about this situation is that it is an old couple—a common symbol of innocence—that is killed by arson. Fear causes men to lose most common sense; they become fueled solely by the animalistic instinct to survive at all costs.

This animalistic instinct, as well as the lengths the people took to ease their fears, reminded me of the actions of the Jack’s group of boys in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Jack whips the boys into such a frenzied fear of the Beast that they savagely murder Simon due to blind suspicion that he was the beast. They then kill Piggy simply because he opposed them. In a way, this savagery has already occurred in Oceania. People kill those whom they fear to be traitors, yet the Thought Police already are immediately killing anyone who even thinks of opposition to Big Brother. Despite the Party’s supposed sophistication, the Party in reality consists of nothing but animals.

UPDATE: On page 153, Julia expresses her own belief that Big Brother is actually responsible for the air raids. Looks like I’m not so crazy after all!

Shadows of the Night

“Squinting down at Jorgenson’s position, I felt a swell of immense power…It was cruel, I knew that, but right and wrong were somewhere else. I heard myself chuckle. And then presently I came unattached from the natural world. I felt the hinges go…I was the beast on their lips—I was Nam—the horror, the war.”

-The Things They Carried, p 198-199

This passage honestly sounds as though it could have come straight out of Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Up until now, O’Brien has recounted instances where other men had cracked under the reality of war; now he, too, succumbs to the madness. It seems that the night brings out our darkest selves, no? We may live our lives innocently and righteously during the day, but at night, a separate personality often emerges. It is no coincidence that the majority of crimes take place during the night, and the reason is not simply because fewer people are out. In the shadows of the night, we seem to be freer to indulge in our animalistic instincts, especially those of questionable morality.

In O’Brien’s case, the night unleashes all of the revenge and hatred that had brewed within him. In the blackness of the night, he becomes an embodiment of his revenge and lust for violence. Yet as he learns, revenge and violence does not make us feel better. It simply reveals how twisted and savage we truly are.

Succumbing to the Beast

“I feel close to myself. When I’m out there at night, I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and my fingernails, everything, it’s like I’m full of electricity and I’m glowing in the dark—I’m on fire almost—I’m burning away into nothing—but it doesn’t matter because I know exactly who I am. You can’t feel like that anywhere else.”

-The Things They Carried, p 106

Thanks to Mrs. Miles, I read this passage and could think of nothing but the boys in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. In Lord of the Flies, the band of schoolboys suffers a descent into animalistic savagery that is uncannily similar to the on Mary Anne experiences. These boys are so affected and terrified of an imagined Beast in the wild that they essentially become the Beast themselves. By succumbing and indulging in the exotic and wild, the boys become part of that same wild.

The same goes for Mary Anne. She becomes so immersed in the jungle of Vietnam that in the end, she becomes part of Vietnam. It is a bit frightening, really, to think that man (and woman) can be so altered by an encounter with a lack of civilization. It begs the question: are we the same way? If faced with a similar situation, would we become intoxicated by the wild? Would we become our own Beast? After reading about Mary Anne, it would be difficult to definitively say no.