1984 Study Pack 4 20

17

English Literature

A-Level OCR

For this course you will need….

A copy of 1984 Internet access To complete all tasks both in lessons and in the study pack.

Exam overview.

A comparison between 1984 and another Dystopian text is is worth ½ the marks of the paper 2 component. This means that it is worth 20% of your whole A-level.

You will have to answer one essay question on comparing 1984 with another text. This is an essay question. This essay will take 1 hour and 15 mins of a 2 hour and 30 min examination.

You will not have the text with you in the exam which means you will have to memorise quotes.

Assessment Objectives for 1984 and What they mean

You can score a maximum of 30 marks for this question. This is how the marks are allocated:

AO3 (50%, 15 marks): Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts are written and received.

How was Orwell responding to the times in which he lived? How is the writing of this novel informed by the political climate in which the writer lived? How does an understanding of this deepen your understanding of the novels and why it has been so popular?AO4 (25%, 7.5 marks): Explore connections across literary texts.Can you write an expressive, detailed and well organised comparison? Can you use comparison to develop insight into the texts? Can you compare specific details to develop understanding of the genre?AO1 (12.5%, 3.75 marks): Articulate informed, personal and creative responses in literary texts,

using associated concepts and terminology and coherent, accurate written expression

Can you write an expressive, detailed and well organised essay? Have you got something interesting to say that you confidently understand the text? Can you use literary vocabulary confidently, appropriately and selectively? Is your writing always accurate and developed?AO5 (12.5%, 3.75 marks): Explore literary texts informed by different interpretations.Can you explore alternative interpretations of the character and theme? Do you understand a range of critical interpretations – sometimes a theory (e.g. feminism, Marxism), and sometimes a specific critic? Can you explore a range of interpretations across time?

Study Guide for 1984 TestQUESTIONS (AO1)Copyright 2006 Teacher's Pet Publications, Inc.

Section One: Chapters I, II, III

1. Who is the main character? Briefly describe the main character.

2. What is the setting of the novel? Give the country and the city.

3. What are the three slogans of the Party? Write them the way they are shown in the novel.

4. What does the caption on the posters say?

5. Name each of the Ministries and explain its function. Also include the Newspeak name for each ministry.

6. What date does the main character record?

7. Describe the two people the main character sees just before the Two Minutes Hate.

8. Explain the importance of Emmanuel Goldstein. Also describe the way his image looks.

9. Explain the importance of Big Brother. Also describe the way his image looks.

10. What crime does the main character commit? How does he do this? What is the punishment?

11. What is the telescreen and how is it used?

12. Describe thoughtcrime and give an example.

Section One: IV, V, VI

1. What happens to the rewritten news articles after Winston puts them into the pneumatic tube? Why is this significant?

2. Winston thinks that what he does is not forgery. What does he think it is?

3. What is Winston’s greatest pleasure in his life, and why is it so?

4. Describe the aim of Newspeak and how it works.

5. What is Syme’s observation about Winston’s appreciation of Newspeak?

6. Winston is at lunch when the message on the telescreen relates the good news about increases in production, including that the chocolate ration has been raised to twenty grams a week. What is Winston thinking as he hears this message?

7. What is facecrime? Give an example.

8. Who is looking at Winston during lunch? How does this affect him?

9. What is the aim of the Party with regard to male-female relationships and sex?

10. What is the Party’s policy on marriage, divorce, and children?

Section One: VII, VIII

1. Where does Winston think hope lies? Why?

2. What is the Party belief about the proles?

3. Describe the one time that Winston held real evidence of an act of falsification.

4. What bothers Winston the most, along with the sense of nightmare?

5. What bothers Winston more than the thought that he might be a lunatic?

6. What is the heresy of heresies? Why is that terrifying to Winston?

7. For whom does Winston realize he is writing his diary? Why?

8. What is the final, most essential command of the Party?

9. What does Winston write in his diary?

10. Describe what happens when Winston goes to the antique shop, and who he sees when he comes out.

Section Two: Chapters I, II, III, IV

1. Describe what happens when the girl with the dark hair falls on the floor.

2. What does the note say?

3. How does Winston feel about the message on the note?

4. Describe their next meeting.

5. Describe their meeting in Victory Square.

6. What emotions does Winston feel at first when the girl puts her arms around him? What emotion didn’t he feel?

7. What is the girl’s name?

8. Winston asks the girl what attracted her to him. What is her answer?

9. What does the girl tell Winston about her attitude toward the party?

10. Summarize Julia’s explanation of the meaning of the Party’s sexual puritanism.

11. According to Winston, how has the Party used the instinct of parenthood?

12. What does Winston do the next time he visits the little shop? Why?

13. What does Julia bring to their meeting?

14. How does Winston react when he sees the rat?

Section Two: V, VI, VII, VIII

1. Who has vanished?

2. How has Winston changed since he started coming to the little room with Julia?

3. What do Winston and Julia realize about their relationship?

4. What does Winston realize from talking to Julia about things he remembers?

5. Describe the meeting between Winston and O’Brien.

6. What does Winston think this meeting means?

7. What does Winston tell Julia the real betrayal will be when they are caught?

8. How does Winston say they can beat the Party?

9. Describe the meeting between O’Brien, Julia, and Winston at O’Brien’s apartment.

10. What does O’Brien know that surprises Winston?

Section Two: IX, X

1. Why is Winston working such long hours?

2. According to The Book, what is the aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink)?

3. According to The Book, what is really going on with the war, and why?

4. While Winston is reading Chapter 1 of The Book, he stops for a minute. Why does he stop reading?

5. How is the current government different than any previous governments? What invention enables it to be like this?

6. Explain the organization of the Party.

7. Explain the concept of doublethink.

8. What is the one thing that Winston and Julia know they will never do together?

9. While Winston and Julia are in the room, he says, “We are the dead,” and Julia repeats the phrase. What happens next?

10. What does Winston discover about Mr. Charrington?

Section Three: Chapters I, II

1. Where is Winston as this section of the novel opens?

2. What is Winston Smith’s number?

3. Who is brought into the cell with Winston and why does he think he is there?

4. Who is brought into the cell next and why? Who denounced him? How does he feel about the arrest?

5. What is the number of the room where the guards take some of the prisoners? How do many of them react to this?

6. Who comes into the room next? What does Winston discover about this person?

7. Describe what is happening to Winston in Section Three: Chapter II, and who is doing this.

8. What does O’Brien tell Winston about Big Brother, the Party, and the Brotherhood?

9. What is the last question that Winston asks O’Brien in Chapter II? What is O’Brien’s answer?

10. Does Winston betray Julia in either of these chapters?

Section Three: III, IV, V, VI

1. According to O’Brien, what are the three stages of Winston’s reintegration?

2. What does Winston find out about The Book?

3. Winston learns why the Party seeks power. What is the reason?

4. How has Winston changed physically during his imprisonment? What does he do after he sees himself in the mirror?

5. What is Winston’s answer when O’Brien asks, “Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?” How does O’Brien respond?

6. While Winston is exercising himself in Crimestop, he calls out, “Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!” What does this show about him? What happens to him as a result? Include his conversation in the room with O’Brien.

7. According to O’Brien, what is in Room 101 in general? What is this for Winston in particular?

8. Describe the scene with the cage. Tell what is in the cage. Tell the outcome of the scene.

9. Describe what happens when Winston and Julia meet after they have been released. Include the verse that Winston hears.

10. What is Winston thinking at the end of the novel?

Appendix, Afterword

1. What is Newspeak and what is its purpose?

2. Explain what is in the A vocabulary of Newspeak.

3. What two things about the grammar of Newspeak are peculiar?

4. Explain what is in the B vocabulary of Newspeak. Give examples.

5. What aspect of the B vocabulary outweighs almost all others?

6. Explain what is in the C vocabulary of Newspeak. Who uses this part of the language? For what is there no word? Why?

7. Describe duckspeak.

8. According to the Afterword, what are the mood and warning expressed in the novel 1984?

9. With what real concept from the era around 1961 does Orwell connect the dictatorial society in 1984?

10. In the Afterword, what point about doublethink is made?

11. According to the Afterword, what warning is Orwell giving anyone who reads 1984?

1984/George Orwell - Historical/Biographical Context (AO3)

Born Eric Blair in India in 1903, George Orwell was educated as a scholarship student at prestigious boarding schools in England. Because of his background—he famously described his family as “lower-upper-middle class”—he never quite fit in, and felt oppressed and outraged by the dictatorial control that the schools he attended exercised over their students' lives. After graduating from Eton, Orwell decided to forego college in order to work as a British Imperial Policeman in Burma. He hated his duties in Burma, where he was required to enforce the strict laws of a political regime he despised. His failing health, which troubled him throughout his life, caused him to return to England on convalescent leave. Once back in England, he quit the Imperial Police and dedicated himself to becoming a writer.

Inspired by Jack London's 1903 The People of the Abyss, which detailed London's experience in the slums of London, Orwell bought ragged clothes from a second-hand store and went to live among the very poor in London. After reemerging, he published a book about this experience, entitled Down and Out in Paris and London. He later lived among destitute coal miners in northern England, an experience that caused him to give up on capitalism in favor of democratic socialism. In 1936, he traveled to Spain to report on the Spanish Civil War, where he witnessed firsthand the nightmarish atrocities committed by fascist political regimes. The rise to power of dictators such as Adolf Hitler in Germany and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union inspired Orwell's mounting hatred of totalitarianism and political authority. Orwell devoted his energy to writing novels that were politically charged, first with Animal Farm in 1945, then with 1984 in 1949.

1984 is one of Orwell's best-crafted novels, and it remains one of the most powerful warnings ever issued against the dangers of a totalitarian society. In Spain, Germany, and the Soviet Union, Orwell had witnessed the danger of absolute political authority in an age of advanced technology. He illustrated that peril harshly in 1984. Like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), 1984 is one of the most famous novels of the negative utopian, or dystopian, genre. Unlike a utopian novel, in which the writer aims to portray the perfect human society, a novel of negative utopia does

the exact opposite: it shows the worst human society imaginable, in an effort to convince readers to avoid any path that might lead toward such societal degradation. In 1949, at the dawn of the nuclear age and before the television had become a fixture in the family home, Orwell's vision of a post-atomic dictatorship in which every individual would be monitored ceaselessly by means of the telescreen seemed terrifyingly possible. That Orwell postulated such a society a mere thirty-five years into the future compounded this fear.

Of course, the world that Orwell envisioned in 1984 did not materialize. Rather than being overwhelmed by totalitarianism, democracy ultimately won out in the Cold War, as seen in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Yet 1984 remains an important novel, in part for the alarm it sounds against the abusive nature of authoritarian governments, but even more so for its penetrating analysis of the psychology of power and the ways that manipulations of language and history can be used as mechanisms of control.

Totalitarianism

In 1948, when Orwell's 1984 was published, World War II had just ended. One of England's allies had been Russia, which was ruled by a despotic dictator named Joseph Stalin. Stalin ruled with an iron fist and was famous for his midnight purges; he would round up hundreds of citizens at a time and murder them in deserted areas, much as Oceania citizens in 1984 are "vaporized." Stalin's victims were his imagined enemies, such as political dissidents, artists, or Jews. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler in Germany had slaughtered his enemies as well, in the end killing six million Jews plus nine million Slavs, gypsies, political dissidents, homosexuals, and mentally challenged people. Mao Tse-tung in China was fighting for communism against Chinese nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-shek. Mao would finally defeat the nationalists in 1949 and begin a long, oppressive totalitarian regime.

Other dictators of the time included Francisco Franco in Spain and Benito Mussolini in Italy. These oppressive rulers controlled citizens through propaganda and violence. This state of affairs prompted Orwell to create the idea of Big Brother, the ultimate totalitarian leader who dominates all political, social, and economic activities.

Socialism and Communism

Orwell fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War in the mid-1930s, supporting the socialist left. He was not a communist, but a dedicated Democratic socialist who believed that the government, not private enterprise, should control the production and distribution of goods, and as such he was greatly concerned about the lives of the poor and working class.

All over the world, throughout the twentieth century, working class people had been fighting for better lives. In America, workers fought a long and hard battle for labor reforms that would eventually include such benefits as job security, safety regulation, overtime and hazardous duty pay, vacation and sick days, health insurance, pensions, disability, and child labor laws, which modern workers sometimes take for granted. Some U.S. and British workers turned to socialism and communism, thinking that perhaps these alternate forms of economic and social structure would solve their problems. In the late nineteenth century, Karl Marx of Germany proposed that to resolve the gross inequality between the workers and the bosses, the working class, or proletariat, would have to revolt and establish a new communist regime in which the people would control the political

and economic systems. He believed workers ought to own their farms and factories and distribute the profits evenly among workers.

Here in America, the capitalist factory and mine owners eventually conceded to labor's demands and the socialists and communists were marginalized. This act deferred American workers from revolting against their government. Communist revolutions did occur in Russia and in China, but eventually those countries modified their economic systems.

America's response to communism was extreme during the Cold War era of the 1950s; in fact, many people believed the U.S. government was acting just as oppressively as communist governments were. Under the leadership of Senator Joe McCarthy, the House (of Representatives) Committee on Un-American Activities aggressively attacked public figures who were suspected communists, demanding that they name other communists or be blackballed in their industries. Hollywood writers and filmmakers were especially hard hit by the mania and many careers were destroyed before President Truman and public opinion turned against McCarthy and the witch hunt ended. The paranoia that characterized the McCarthy era was similar to the paranoia in 1984, as people were pressured to betray their friends, co-workers, and even parents in order to save themselves. Today, communism still has some followers in the United States and England, as does Democratic socialism, which Orwell embraced wholeheartedly.

Television

Aside from being concerned about labor and government, Orwell was very aware of an important invention that was just becoming popular after World War II and would eventually be a dominant force in Western culture: the television. The first BBC broadcast in Britain occurred in 1937, and TV was first demonstrated to the American public in 1939 at the New York World's Fair. Television's popularity grew enormously throughout the 1950s, and today 98% of American households own at least one television. Orwell recognized the enormous potential of this communication tool, which would soon be in every home. He imagined that the television could one day not only broadcast propaganda nonstop but that it could transmit back images of action in front of the screen, allowing the broadcaster to spy on its viewers.

Task

In order to read and interpret the novel through the historical and biographical lenses (meaning, to understand the novel in the context of the historical background and personal background of the author), you first need to learn about the author and the time period in which he lived. After reading the background information, write down 5 specific facts in complete sentences in your own words. One example is provided.

Biographical Information on George Orwell

Example: Orwell’s father was a British civil servant who was in charge of running the opium trade in India (this information is from another source).

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Historical Context of 1984

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In your own words, restate the sentence in bold towards the bottom of the first page (the sentence that starts with “Yet 1984 remains an important novel…”): _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What is/where is Burma?

DEFINE the following words:

prestigious:

destitute:

peril:

degradation:

postulated:

purge:

concede:

marginalize:

defer:

blackballed:

socialism:

communism:

totalitarianism:

1984 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (A03)Orwell wrote 1984 just after World War II ended, wanting it to serve as a warning to his

readers. He wanted to be certain that the kind of future presented in the novel should never come to pass, even though the practices that contribute to the development of such a state were abundantly present in Orwell’s time.

Orwell lived during a time in which tyranny was a reality in Spain, Germany, the Soviet Union, and other countries, where government kept an iron fist (or curtain) around its citizens, where there was little, if any freedom, and where hunger, forced labor, and mass execution were common.

Orwell espoused democratic socialism. In his essay, “Why I Write,” published in 1947, two years before the publication of 1984, Orwell stated that he writes, among other reasons, from the “[d]esire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.” Orwell used his writing to express his powerful political feelings, and that fact is readily apparent in the society he creates in 1984.

The society in 1984, although fictional, mirrors the political weather of the societies that existed all around him. Orwell’s Oceania is a terrifying society reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union—complete repression of the human spirit, absolute governmental control of daily life, constant hunger, and the systematic “vaporization” of individuals who do not, or will not, comply with the government’s values.

Orwell despised the politics of the leaders he saw rise to power in the countries around him, and he despised what the politicians did to the people of those countries. Big Brother is certainly a fusing of both Stalin and Hitler, both real and terrifying leaders, though both on opposite sides of the

philosophical spectrum. By combining traits from both the Soviet Union’s and Germany’s totalitarian states, Orwell makes clear that he is staunchly against any form of governmental totalitarianism, either from the left or the right of the political spectrum.

By making Big Brother so easily recognizable (he is physically similar to both Hitler and Stalin, all three having heavy black mustaches and charismatic speaking styles), Orwell makes sure that the reader of 1984 does not mistake his intention—to show clearly how totalitarianism negatively affects the human spirit and how it is impossible to remain freethinking under such circumstances.

1984 STORY SETTING AND BACKGROUND (A03)

The setting of 1984 is Oceania, a giant country comprised of the Americas; the Atlantic Islands, including the British Isles; Australia; and the southern portion of Africa. Oceania’s mainland is called Air Strip One, formerly England. The story itself takes place in London in the year 1984, a terrifying place and time where the human spirit and freedom are all but crushed. In the novel, war is constant. The main character, Winston Smith, born before the World War II, grew up knowing only hunger and political instability, and many of the things that he experiences are hyperboles of real activities in wartime Germany and the Soviet Union.

It is important to remember that Orwell based 1984 on the facts as he knew them; hunger, shortages, and repression actually happened as a result of the extreme governmental policies of these countries. The war hysteria, the destruction of the family unit, the persecution of “free thinkers” or those who were “different” or not easily assimilated into the party doctrine, the changing of history to suit the party’s agenda, were all too real. Orwell’s speculation of the future is actually a creative extension of how the masses were treated under Franco, Hitler, and Stalin.

By setting 1984 in London, Orwell is able to invoke the atmosphere of a real war-torn community, where people live in “wooden dwellings like chicken houses” in bombed-out clearings. His intent clearly was to capitalize on a memory that every reader, especially a British reader, was likely to have. London in 1984, then, becomes not just a make-believe place where bad things happen to unknown people, but a very real geographical spot that still holds some connection for the modern reader.

In 1984, the world is sliced into three political realms—the super states of Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia. Orwell drew these lines fairly consistent with the political distribution of the Cold War era beginning after World War II. Each of these three states is run by a totalitarian government that is constantly warring on multiple fronts. By creating an entire world at war, Orwell not only creates a terrifying place, but he also eliminates the possibility of escape for Winston, who is forced to live within his present circumstances, horrible and unremitting as they are.

Oceania’s political structure is divided into three segments: the Inner Party, the ultimate ruling class, consisting of less than 2 percent of the population; the Outer Party, the educated

workers, numbering around 18 to 19 percent of the population; and the Proles, or the proletariat, the working class. Although the Party (Inner and Outer) does not see these divisions as true “classes,” it is clear that Orwell wants the reader to see the class distinctions. For a socialist such as Orwell, class distinctions mean the existence of conflict and class struggle. In Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, for example, the few people who comprised the ruling class had a much higher standard of living than the masses, but in these nations, as in 1984, revolt was all but impossible.

1984 in historical context: How current events shaped the novel (A03)Already the title of the book is the first reference to his actual situation at that time: Orwell wrote this satire in the year 1948 in a direct response to WOII and the upcoming cold war – he just turned the last two numbers around.

He situated the book in the future. On the one hand maybe Orwell wanted to avoid getting England into political problems with the Soviet Union, and on the other hand because only recently a couple of fascist regimes had been overcome. Maybe he fantasized about what would have happened if it all had gone differently.

In the novel 1984 Orwell roughly divides the world into three ruling nations. Oceania, where the story enacts, is a totalitarian state with a clear parallel to both fascism in Germany, Italy and even Spain in that time, as well as Stalinism. These were all dictatorships running under the name of National Socialism.

The different ministries in Oceania have striking names: The Ministry of Peace occupies itself with conduct of war, The Ministry of Truth falsifies history in the archives of the state to make sure that the Party, that is the leader himself, always predicts the right scenario. The Ministry of Plenty distributes food and controls a low standard of living and the Ministry of Love occupies itself with totalitarian control, penalties, and torture in order that all subjects become devout followers of Big Brother if they aren’t that already.

Big Brother could be Joseph Stalin. At a certain point the main character meets acquaintances in prison, of which some of them had been betrayed by their own children. This literally happened in the Soviet Union at that time, that child would be immediately decorated by the state.

The desolate and drab living conditions in the book 1984 are not only inspired by the Soviet Union, but also by the very austere post-war situation in England. Even in England food and clothing were put on rations until 1953.

Orwell himself was born in colonial Great Britain with a class society. His parents belonged to an impoverished elite. He was able to go to Eton College through family connections, but by the time he was supposed to go to university there was no money to finance that. In those times he started to develop his consciousness concerning injustice in society. Instead of going to University he joined the English-Indian police force in Burma, where he experienced abuse from close-up. Back in England and Europe he manifested interest in the working-class. Because of that I believe he created the presence of three classes in the book: The upper-class Inner Party, the élite ruling minority, the middle-class Outer Party, and the lower-class Proles, who make up 85% of the population and represent the uneducated working class.

In the many years Orwell worked as a correspondent in several wars, he noticed that the press often reported events as if they were true but in fact they were quite different. Also he often experienced that it wasn’t easy to publish his critical writings.

The year 1984 now lays behind us, then it was kind of science fiction, and how close to the truth many of his fantasies have become. We are dealing with similar situations in our times. Libya, Italy, North Korea, recently Iraq……

Here are some related videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbLKWgPBMH8 (trailer of a documentary on the power and manipulation of Italian television)North Korea, a totalitarian state: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=096hnKDw5tc

A Selection of Views on 1984 (AO5)

John Atkins: In his work, George Orwell, cited below in the Bibliography, Mr. Atkins correctly assesses all of Orwell's previous work as preparation for 1984, which book is considered to be Orwell's masterpiece. Mr. Atkins, like Sir Richard Rees and others, attributes the gloom of the ending of 1984 less to ideology than to the fact that Orwell's health had markedly deteriorated as he was writing 1984.

The point which Atkins makes is that the best analysis of the basis of society in Oceania and indeed the best critique of 1984 may be found in the work itself, in Goldstein's book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Atkins accepts the thesis of Goldstein's book as one held by Orwell himself: that the end of power is power, that revolutions corrupt those who lead them, that the perpetual state of war which is maintained by the Party is really Peace, as it leads to a sort of bizarre social stability. While much of what Atkins says about 1984 is really summary of the work's contents, the point that Orwell himself believed what he embodied in Goldstein's book as far as politics were concerned is a well-taken one, probably correct. Atkins sees the Party's great secret as its discovery that the sense of reality of most human beings could be dislocated by skillful propaganda, by the process which Orwell called Doublethink.

Atkins also gives examples both from Orwell's previous writing and from contemporary political and social history about the dislocation of reality and the deliberate falsification of the past. Atkins pays especial attention to the Party's debasing of human sexuality in 1984. Finally Atkins makes what seems to the author of the present study the perfectly valid point that Orwell wrote 1984 not as a prediction of things to come so much as a warning to his contemporaries and immediate successors in Western society that these things - the horrors he described in 1984 - were probabilities if men did not become aware and seek to reverse the trend toward totalitarianism.

Christopher Hollis, in A Study of George Orwell, includes a chapter on 1984 which, while it makes essentially the same point as does Atkins about the importance of Goldstein's Book in the understanding of the structure of the work, has a slightly different emphasis than does Atkins. He seems correct in his analysis of Julia's character: she has no metaphysical notion of freedom, and no center to her life other than the physical revolt which she engages in with Winston and others-so nothing else can be expected, given her character, than the quick betrayal of Winston which she

does under torture. Mr. Hollis also observes that 1984 is not meant as a definite prophecy; Orwell expected and hoped that the book would be a warning so that the society ruled by Big Brother could not come about. Hollis sees that the Party has destroyed virtue and a sense of honor in the men of the society of Oceania, and done its work so well that even if the Party collapsed the system would continue. If the materialism of the Party is true - and Hollis in his interpretation denies that it can be true, on theological and philosophical grounds - then O'Brien is right and Winston Smith is mad: "a flaw in the pattern." O'Brien's premises are thoroughly materialistic. Materialism is a philosophy with a history at least extending back to the pre-Christian, pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Democritus; thus it is nothing new, and it should be obvious that it can only be opposed on philosophical and religious grounds. This Orwell did, indirectly, in the view of Mr. Hollis; satire, of course, is indirect but nevertheless can be effective, as 1984 was enormously effective and influential, at least in alerting people to certain political dangers.

Hollis makes another important point; that 1984 has as one of its chief literary ancestors an anti-Utopia written by a Russian writer, Eugene Zamyatin. The name of Zamyatin's book is We, and it was published just after the Second World War. Zamyatin wrote his book in Paris after the Russian Revolution, being disgusted with what he saw as the excesses of the extremists among the Russian revolutionaries, the Bolshevists. We purports to be a picture of society as it exists in 2600 A.D. Not only are there parallels between We and 1984, but, as Mr. Hollis points out, Orwell wrote an essay in January, 1946 [See Tribune, January 4, 1946] in which Orwell praised Zamyatin and demonstrated his familiarity with We. This was relatively close to the time when he began to compose 1984. Hollis observes that Orwell was indeed familiar with Zamyatin, but that he adapted the philosophy and world-picture of We to the depiction of English society. Hollis ends with a point consistent with the outlook of his book; he, like Orwell, perceives the decay of religious belief and religious values in twentieth-century Western society, but he makes it clear that he does not accept the unreligious or anti-religious attitudes which Orwell in his view seems to have embraced.

Sir Richard Rees sees Animal Farm as more obviously a masterpiece than was 1984. His interpretation of 1984 does not differ in too many particulars from those of Atkins and Hollis, because, as previously observed, the book is so lucid in its satire that wide divergence in interpretation is difficult if not impossible. However, Sir Richard has a slightly different view of Julia's character; he does not see it as totally shallow, and he is probably correct in describing her as intelligent but not intellectual. But Julia does not seem a particularly sympathetic character as Orwell drew her; it would be more correct to say that Julia represents life lived only for itself on a physical level which, lacking a philosophy, must fall prey to those who at least hold to some consistent set of beliefs, good or bad.

Sir Richard stresses in his interpretation the ways in which the Party hierarchy is made adoptive and non-hereditary; he also indicates that it was difficult for Orwell to draw characters from the lower classes, in view of his own training and background so that the message of Goldstein's Book, and of Orwell himself: "If there is hope, it lies in the Proles," is not entirely convincing in terms of 1984. Implied in the interpretation of Rees is the thought that Winston Smith is George Orwell-also a fugitive, ridden by guilt. And this is a valid point. As pointed out in the present study, Winston's dreams are heavily tinged by feelings of guilt, and it may be that the psychological roots of his revolt involve his wishing to be caught, so that his feelings of guilt especially toward his mother may receive their proper punishment.

The idea of Orwell as a "fugitive from the camp of victory" - e.g. from the privileged classes in England, which is advanced by Sir Richard Rees, should be treated with caution; it is by no means the whole explanation of 1984, and ought not to be taken as such, though it does explain something about the source of many of Orwell's ideas and interests.

Lionel Trilling's well-known essay, "George Orwell and the Politics of Truth," is really part of an introduction to Homage to Catalonia, and thus deals with 1984 only indirectly. The suggestion of Professor Trilling is really that Orwell was a very unusual man in his political outlook and in his essential decency-in fact, that he was a sort of modern-day saint, who not only wrote of his vision, but lived it, like Mark Twain, Thoreau, Whitman, Henry Adams, and Henry James.

Orwell was not a genius, said Trilling, but what genius is - the sense in which he used the term, he does not say. He does credit Orwell not only with great imagination and decency, but with a sense of actual participation in the world of affairs so that, unlike many liberal intellectuals in Trilling's view, Orwell knew what he was doing when he wrote of government and administration, of Communism, Nazism, and other political forms. Trilling establishes Orwell's relation to Communism and his disillusion with it - this is also important as one considers what precisely Orwell was satirizing in 1984. In his final estimation of Orwell as a decent man, and an honest one, Trilling echoes the view held by most who have written about Orwell or known him-indeed, his essay helped to formulate this view.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols (AO1 AO3)

ThemesThemes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

THE DANGERS OF TOTALITARIANISM 1984 is a political novel written with the purpose of warning readers in the West of the dangers of totalitarian government. Having witnessed firsthand the horrific lengths to which totalitarian governments in Spain and Russia would go in order to sustain and increase their power, Orwell designed 1984 to sound the alarm in Western nations still unsure about how to approach the rise of communism. In 1949, the Cold War had not yet escalated, many American intellectuals supported communism, and the state of diplomacy between democratic and communist nations was highly ambiguous. In the American press, the Soviet Union was often portrayed as a great moral experiment. Orwell, however, was deeply disturbed by the widespread cruelties and oppressions he observed in communist countries, and seems to have been particularly concerned by the role of technology in enabling oppressive governments to monitor and control their citizens.

In 1984, Orwell portrays the perfect totalitarian society, the most extreme realization imaginable of a modern-day government with absolute power. The title of the novel was meant to indicate to its readers in 1949 that the story represented a real possibility for the near future: if totalitarianism were not opposed, the title suggested, some variation of the world described in the novel could become a reality in only thirty-five years. Orwell portrays a state in which government monitors and controls every aspect of human life to the extent that even having a disloyal thought is against the

law. As the novel progresses, the timidly rebellious Winston Smith sets out to challenge the limits of the Party’s power, only to discover that its ability to control and enslave its subjects dwarfs even his most paranoid conceptions of its reach. As the reader comes to understand through Winston’s eyes, The Party uses a number of techniques to control its citizens, each of which is an important theme of its own in the novel. These include:

PSYCHOLOGICAL MANIPULATION The Party barrages its subjects with psychological stimuli designed to overwhelm the mind’s capacity for independent thought. The giant telescreen in every citizen’s room blasts a constant stream of propaganda designed to make the failures and shortcomings of the Party appear to be triumphant successes. The telescreens also monitor behavior—everywhere they go, citizens are continuously reminded, especially by means of the omnipresent signs reading “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU,” that the authorities are scrutinizing them. The Party undermines family structure by inducting children into an organization called the Junior Spies, which brainwashes and encourages them to spy on their parents and report any instance of disloyalty to the Party. The Party also forces individuals to suppress their sexual desires, treating sex as merely a procreative duty whose end is the creation of new Party members. The Party then channels people’s pent-up frustration and emotion into intense, ferocious displays of hatred against the Party’s political enemies. Many of these enemies have been invented by the Party expressly for this purpose.

PHYSICAL CONTROL In addition to manipulating their minds, the Party also controls the bodies of its subjects. The Party constantly watches for any sign of disloyalty, to the point that, as Winston observes, even a tiny facial twitch could lead to an arrest. A person’s own nervous system becomes his greatest enemy. The Party forces its members to undergo mass morning exercises called the Physical Jerks, and then to work long, grueling days at government agencies, keeping people in a general state of exhaustion. Anyone who does manage to defy the Party is punished and “reeducated” through systematic and brutal torture. After being subjected to weeks of this intense treatment, Winston himself comes to the conclusion that nothing is more powerful than physical pain—no emotional loyalty or moral conviction can overcome it. By conditioning the minds of their victims with physical torture, the Party is able to control reality, convincing its subjects that 2 + 2 = 5.

CONTROL OF INFORMATION AND HISTORY The Party controls every source of information, managing and rewriting the content of all newspapers and histories for its own ends. The Party does not allow individuals to keep records of their past, such as photographs or documents. As a result, memories become fuzzy and unreliable, and citizens become perfectly willing to believe whatever the Party tells them. By controlling the present, the Party is able to manipulate the past. And in controlling the past, the Party can justify all of its actions in the present.

TECHNOLOGY By means of telescreens and hidden microphones across the city, the Party is able to monitor its members almost all of the time. Additionally, the Party employs complicated mechanisms (1984 was written in the era before computers) to exert large-scale control on economic production and sources of information, and fearsome machinery to inflict torture upon those it deems enemies. 1984reveals that technology, which is generally perceived as working toward moral good, can also facilitate the most diabolical evil.

LANGUAGE AS MIND CONTROL One of Orwell’s most important messages in 1984is that language is of central importance to human thought because it structures and limits the ideas that individuals are capable of formulating and expressing. If control of language were centralized in a political agency, Orwell proposes, such an agency could possibly alter the very structure of language to make it impossible to even conceive of disobedient or rebellious thoughts, because there would be no words with which to think them. This idea manifests itself in the language of Newspeak, which the Party has introduced to replace English. The Party is constantly refining and perfecting Newspeak, with the ultimate goal that no one will be capable of conceptualizing anything that might question the Party’s absolute power.

Interestingly, many of Orwell’s ideas about language as a controlling force have been modified by writers and critics seeking to deal with the legacy of colonialism. During colonial times, foreign powers took political and military control of distant regions and, as a part of their occupation, instituted their own language as the language of government and business. Postcolonial writers often analyze or redress the damage done to local populations by the loss of language and the attendant loss of culture and historical connection.

MotifsMotifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

DOUBLETHINK The idea of “doublethink” emerges as an important consequence of the Party’s massive campaign of large-scale psychological manipulation. Simply put, doublethink is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s mind at the same time. As the Party’s mind-control techniques break down an individual’s capacity for independent thought, it becomes possible for that individual to believe anything that the Party tells them, even while possessing information that runs counter to what they are being told. At the Hate Week rally, for instance, the Party shifts its diplomatic allegiance, so the nation it has been at war with suddenly becomes its ally, and its former ally becomes its new enemy. When the Party speaker suddenly changes the nation he refers to as an enemy in the middle of his speech, the crowd accepts his words immediately, and is ashamed to find that it has made the wrong signs for the event. In the same way, people are able to accept the Party ministries’ names, though they contradict their functions: the Ministry of Plenty oversees economic shortages, the Ministry of Peace wages war, the Ministry of Truth conducts propaganda and historical revisionism, and the Ministry of Love is the center of the Party’s operations of torture and punishment.

URBAN DECAY Urban decay proves a pervasive motif in 1984. The London that Winston Smith calls home is a dilapidated, rundown city in which buildings are crumbling, conveniences such as elevators never work, and necessities such as electricity and plumbing are extremely unreliable. Though Orwell never discusses the theme openly, it is clear that the shoddy disintegration of London, just like the widespread hunger and poverty of its inhabitants, is due to the Party’s mismanagement and incompetence. One of the themes of 1984, inspired by the history of twentieth-century communism, is that totalitarian regimes are viciously effective at enhancing their

own power and miserably incompetent at providing for their citizens. The grimy urban decay in London is an important visual reminder of this idea, and offers insight into the Party’s priorities through its contrast to the immense technology the Party develops to spy on its citizens.

SymbolsSymbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

BIG BROTHER Throughout London, Winston sees posters showing a man gazing down over the words “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” everywhere he goes. Big Brother is the face of the Party. The citizens are told that he is the leader of the nation and the head of the Party, but Winston can never determine whether or not he actually exists. In any case, the face of Big Brother symbolizes the Party in its public manifestation; he is a reassurance to most people (the warmth of his name suggests his ability to protect), but he is also an open threat (one cannot escape his gaze). Big Brother also symbolizes the vagueness with which the higher ranks of the Party present themselves—it is impossible to know who really rules Oceania, what life is like for the rulers, or why they act as they do. Winston thinks he remembers that Big Brother emerged around 1960, but the Party’s official records date Big Brother’s existence back to 1930, before Winston was even born.

THE GLASS PAPERWEIGHT AND ST. CLEMENT’S CHURCH By deliberately weakening people’s memories and flooding their minds with propaganda, the Party is able to replace individuals’ memories with its own version of the truth. It becomes nearly impossible for people to question the Party’s power in the present when they accept what the Party tells them about the past—that the Party arose to protect them from bloated, oppressive capitalists, and that the world was far uglier and harsher before the Party came to power. Winston vaguely understands this principle. He struggles to recover his own memories and formulate a larger picture of what has happened to the world. Winston buys a paperweight in an antique store in the prole district that comes to symbolize his attempt to reconnect with the past. Symbolically, when the Thought Police arrest Winston at last, the paperweight shatters on the floor.

The old picture of St. Clement’s Church in the room that Winston rents above Mr. Charrington’s shop is another representation of the lost past. Winston associates a song with the picture that ends with the words “Here comes the chopper to chop off your head!” This is an important foreshadow, as it is the telescreen hidden behind the picture that ultimately leads the Thought Police to Winston, symbolizing the Party’s corrupt control of the past.

THE PLACE WHERE THERE IS NO DARKNESS Throughout the novel Winston imagines meeting O’Brien in “the place where there is no darkness.” The words first come to him in a dream, and he ponders them for the rest of the novel. Eventually, Winston does meet O’Brien in the place where there is no darkness; instead of being the paradise Winston imagined, it is merely a prison cell in which the light is never turned off. The idea of “the place where there is no darkness” symbolizes Winston’s approach to the future: possibly because of his intense fatalism (he believes that he is doomed no matter what he does), he unwisely allows himself to trust O’Brien, even though inwardly he senses that O’Brien might be a Party operative.

THE TELESCREENS The omnipresent telescreens are the book’s most visible symbol of the Party’s constant monitoring of its subjects. In their dual capability to blare constant propaganda and observe citizens, the telescreens also symbolize how totalitarian government abuses technology for its own ends instead of exploiting its knowledge to improve civilization.

THE RED-ARMED PROLE WOMAN The red-armed prole woman whom Winston hears singing through the window represents Winston’s one legitimate hope for the long-term future: the possibility that the proles will eventually come to recognize their plight and rebel against the Party. Winston sees the prole woman as a prime example of reproductive virility; he often imagines her giving birth to the future generations that will finally challenge the Party’s authority.