Reflections #7

It is said that in order to lead a horse from a flaming barn, one must first cover it's head in order to lead it to safety. Often people obscure their own view in favor of observing or not observing something they would rather observe. A classic example is love that blinds a mother to her child's faults.

When one want to believe something, that want will often override warnings that are contradictory to what we wish something to be. For a long time, Julia and Winston had moved from hide out to hide out, knowing that danger would be following their footsteps every step of the way. However, having found the room above Mr.Charrington's shop, they let themselves be convinced that they were safe. Julia, said herself, she was good at staying alive, yet, for a want to be safe, she and Winston let themselves be lulled into the idea that they had more time before having to move to find a new hiding spot. Even O'Brien had just warned them again that it wasn't safe to have one hiding place for too long. Ironically, Winston, in accepting that he was basically a dead man, "We are the dead" (page 230) he actually predicted his own coming state of being. Another irony is that Winston and Julia set themselves up to be caught by dropping their guard, thus allowing all the information Mr.Charrington needed to incriminate them be revealed.

Even today, people are normally blinded by values, that motivate their decisions. It is a common mistake, made by others. Even now, psychologists have come up with the term, 'self-serving bias', where humans tend to remember themselves in a favourable light. As love blinds, Julia and Winston paid the consequences of the automatic blinders they put up,when they didn't want to consider being potentially caught in their forbidden room in a forbidden act of conspiracy.