Title: What is the significance of the “Golden Country,” and why is it important to Winston? - eNotes.com
Headings: What is the significance of the “Golden Country,” and why is it important to Winston?
1984
What is the significance of the “Golden Country,” and why is it important to Winston?
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Content: It is, however, a sign of his continuing admiration for O'Brien, which verges on hero-worship, that Winston also imagines him in the Golden Country, alongside Julia and his mother. Last Updated by eNotes Editorial on March 16, 2020
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In Chapter Three of 1984, George Orwell ’s depiction of a then-futuristic dystopian totalitarian society where the government, Big Brother, monitors your every action, the Golden Country is a presented as Winston’s dream-like fantasy world, where he can stand among nature’s beauty and appreciate the nonchalance of the naked dark-haired girl’s gesture as she flings her clothes away. Orwell describes this dream world as follows: “The landscape that he was looking at recurred so often in his dreams that he was never fully certain whether or not he had seen it in the real world. In his waking thoughts he called it the Golden Country. It was an old, rabbit-bitten pasture, with a foot-track wandering across it and a molehill here and there. In the ragged hedge on the opposite side of the field the boughs of the elm trees were swaying very faintly in the breeze, their leaves just stirring in dense masses like women’s hair. Somewhere near at hand, though out of sight, there was a clear, slow-moving stream where dace were swimming in the pools under the willow trees.” Later, in Part II, Chapter Two, Winston and Julia are seeking refuge in the vast open spaces of the outdoors, away from the otherwise omniscient presence of Big Brother and the Thought Police. “‘Isn’t there a stream somewhere near here?’