Christ Figure
Imagery throughout the novel is used to situate Rubashov as a Christ-figure. Specifically, the imagery centers on Christ during his final days as a scapegoat and lamb being led to the slaughter in sacrifice for crimes he did not commit to satisfy the need for penance paid for sins others did commit. It is revealed that his bear is a goatee and the scene in which it is shaved by a barber connects it shearing lambs. Rubashov is also obsessed with a drawing of the pieta, a traditional Christian iconography showing the Virgin Mary embracing the dead Jesus following the crucifixion.
Mathematics
The narrative is also peppers with references to mathematics. Rubashov quotes an observation that “algebra was the science for lazy people.” A vision of Arlova walking down a corridor in her high heels is said to “upset the mathematical equilibrium.” Most telling, Satan is described as “cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical mercifulness.” These and other references to the detached logic of math in which humans merely intrude becomes imagery for the Party’s commitment to a logic of numbers and a rejection of any individualism. The ultimate expression of this imagery becomes the Party’s definition of an individual: “a multitude of one million divided by one million.”
Dreams
The story opens with a startling use of imagery: the protagonist dreams that he is being arrested only to wake up from the dream to find that he really is being arrested. This opening sets the stage for a recurring images of Rubashov’s consciousness trapped in a kind of fluid connection between reality, dreaming and daydreaming. This state of consciousness becomes a metaphor for the state of the union in which the revolutionary dreams of the old guard like Rubashov have shifted into the separate milieu of the daydream of what was to be and what might have been.
Rubashov’s Pince-Nez
Rubashov wears frameless eyeglasses known as pince-nez and his repetition of a particular habit of removing them to rub them clean against his sleeve is directly observed to be “a gesture familiar to all his followers.” The habitual need to clean the tool allowing him to see clearly is by itself a symbol, but the voluminous repetition of the act combined with the title of the novel and the description of his final act as a living entity—"wherever his eye looked, he saw nothing but desert and the darkness of night”—conspire to implicate the obsessive compulsion to clear his vision as an element of a larger tapestry of imagery vital to the narrative evolution of the main character.
