Sandra Newman’s book 1984 Julia brought a new plot to George Orwell’s 1984. Newman’s novel especially gave away a new plot because the point of view was different. Julia, the character that Newman’s book follows, goes on the journey of Julia finding about how in the end Big Brother is bad and she hates him, but she not only dislikes Big Brother, she is also skeptical about the brotherhood and realizes that she will not gain any freedom from either side. On her journey to save herself and be free, Julia encounters O’Brien, the man from the Ministry of Love, who tortures Winston in Orwell’s book. In Newman’s book, O’Brien does the same thing, but before he tortures Julia, he offers her a deal. The deal is her becoming part of the inner party.
No. You are Immune. That is why you are so valuable to us. You are proof against lunacy. You can safely commit the crimes of pleasure- in you, they are even healthy. That is the mark of Homo oceanicus. In time, alll people will be so. Already, all those of the Inner Party can boast of this immunity. But of course you too will be of the Inner Party in time (Newman 147).
The passage above is the lie that O’Brien tells Julia. He trickes her and calls her valuable to the party when in the end she will actually be punished for these crimes. Julia’s immunity will actually be her downfall, and once she is done spying on Winston and the other men in Records, she will soon see this downfall. Even at some point when she was doing her spying, she gave one of the men a solution to not getting caught by Love. Julia gives Ampleworth pills that he can overdose on because in the world of Big Brother, it seems kiling youself is better than getting caught by Love. The plot of being a spy has led Julia to this moment before when she talks to others who have said it is better, and even at some point she also considers taking the pills. But to no avail spying didn’t get her the freedom she wanted, Julia even gets abother slab in the face by an inner party member who talks about how O’Brien tricks people. The inner party memeber said, “…Don’t tell me- he said he’d been watching over you for seven years? You’re the healhtiest mind he has ever encountered?” (Newman, 282). This party memeber has seen the tricks O’Brien plays on people even O’Brien’s speech. Her saying it word for word makes it all the move evident that the plot of being a spy has failed and the main plot is the lose of freedom.
Julia loses her freedom because she must change her mind and be filled with inner party thoughts. She must be filled with them and not herself. You get the feeling she isn’t free at all, even after being a spy and then running away to the Brotherhood because she sees the same things happening over there. The prisoners of war are treated much like the prisoners of war in Oceania and Julia notices that she can’t tell the Brotherhood memeber her full story. Julia must again lie about what she has done. She must lie that she was a spy for Love; she must lie that her child isn’t Big Brother’s; and she must lie about how much knowledge she know about Big Brother’s party and the four ministries. So in the end the plot is not about being a spy but about the lose of freedom that happens when totalitarian government’s face each other. The plot is about what the citizens lose instead of gain.