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George Orwell’s 1984

4/1 4/2 4/3 4/4 4/5GrammarIntroductory Anticipation QuestionsHW: Journal ?s

GrammarDebate!HW: Context (annotate)

Read PimlottRead-Aloud from 1984HW: Finish reading pp. 1-29

GrammarDiscussHW: pp. 29-63

Grammar QuizDiscussHW: pp. 63-81

4/8 4/9 4/10 4/11 4/12GrammarDiscussHW: pp. 81-104

DiscussPart One Quiz

Part One Team ActivityHW: pp. 105-136




DiscussPart Two Quiz

Part Two Team ActivityHW: pp. 225-260

Vocabulary QuizHW: pp. 261-287

No School


DiscussPart Three Quiz

Part Three Team Activity

W. H. Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen”

Present Book Choices for the Next Unit

Timed AP Open Essay (use 1984)

HW: Obtain a Copy of the Book You Chose


Anticipatory Questions

A / ? / D1. War is one way to achieve peace.

2. An idea cannot exist in one’s mind if one does not have the words to express it.

3. Those who would exchange freedom for security deserve neither.

4. If I know something is true, like that a^2 + b^2 = c ^2, then no one could ever make me believe otherwise.

5. Countries that have security cameras that cover all or almost all public places are more safe than those that do not.

6. Everyone deserves to have freedom of speech, thought, and religion, no matter who he or she is or what he or she believes.

7. The government has the right to train and educate young people to be productive, loyal, and useful adult citizens.

8. To assure our country’s freedom and future, the government must be able to spy on its citizens in some cases.

9. If something reporters are going to publish could endanger or threaten our country, they should run it past government officials first.

10. Anonymous “tip lines” allowing citizens to report suspicious behavior to the government would do more good than harm.

11. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

12. Censorship is not always bad; for example, governments should be able to restrict access to certain types of online materials.

13. So long as you aren’t doing anything wrong, you have no reason to worry about the government spying on you.

14. The government needs to be able to detain those who threaten our nation, even if it cannot charge them with a specific crime right away.

15. The right to privacy is more important than national security.

DIRECTIONS

Mark “A” or “D” (Agree/Disagree). If you’re not sure, you can write “?” We will choose one of these topics to DEBATE!


Introductory JournalingAuthoritarian

(adj)o Favoring absolute obedience to authority or the principle of authority, as

opposed to individual freedomo Expecting unquestioning obedience (dictatorial, imperious, overbearing)o Characteristic of governments or rulers with absolute

control/rule/sovereignty (n)

o One who commands absolute obedience to his or her authorityo A person who behaves like a tyrant

Journal Questions

Write your responses on lined paper. Use pen.

1. Describe the rules and atmosphere of the most authoritarian classroom or team/activity you’ve ever been a member of. How did you feel in that space? How did you react to the leader(s)?

2. Describe the rules and atmosphere of the least authoritarian classroom or team/activity you’ve ever been a member of. How did you feel in that space? How did you react to the leader(s)?

3. What reasons might leaders have for denying freedoms? Are these reasons ever legitimate? Why or why not?

4. How has the average person’s privacy level changed over the last 20 years? What are some of the causes of this change?

5. If a person wanted complete privacy and did not want anyone to know anything about him or her, what lengths would a person have to go to become that private? Is it even possible in today’s America?

Key Motifs in 1984Technology

Privacy

Authoritarianism

Dehumanization

Isolation

Repression

Loneliness

Class Disparities

Abuse of Power

Individualism

Truth

Reality

Control

Information Control

Propaganda

Urban Decay

Love

Loyalty

Fear

Torture

Freedom


1984: Basic ContextBorn 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. Also, he 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 enforcing the strict laws of a political regime he despised. Soon, however, 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 writing.

Inspired by Jack London’s 1903 book The People of the Abyss, which detailed London’s experience in the slums of London, Orwell’s next move was to buy ragged clothes from a second-hand store; he then went to live among the very poor in London. After reemerging, he published a book about this experience, called Down and Out in Paris and London. Later, he lived among destitute coal miners in northern England, an experience that caused him to give up on capitalism in favor of democratic socialism.

Eventually, 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 authoritarianism.

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. 1984 is his harsh illustration of that peril.

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 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.

Further Historical Background for 1984Orwell wrote 1984 just after World War II ended, intending for it to serve as a warning to his readers. He wanted to be certain 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 an era 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.

In his essay “Why I Write,” published in 1947, two years before the publication of 1984, Orwell states that he writes, among other reasons, from the “Desire 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 world of 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 dictates.

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. Big Brother is certainly a fusing of both Stalin and Hitler, both real and terrifying leaders, though both on opposite sides of the philosophical right-left spectrum. By combining traits from both the Soviet Union’s and Germany’s totalitarian states, Orwell makes clear he is staunchly against any form of governmental totalitarianism, either from the left or the right.

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 authoritarianism negatively affects the human spirit and how it is impossible to remain freethinking under such circumstances.


1984: The StoryThe setting of 1984 is Oceania, a giant country comprised of the Americas; the Atlantic Islands, including the British Isles; Australia; and southern 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 during or just before World War II, grew up knowing only hunger and political instability. Many of the things 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, all were all-too real. Orwell’s speculative account of the future is simply a creative extension of how the masses were treated under Franco (the authoritarian leader of Spain), Hitler, and Stalin.

By setting 1984 in London, Orwell invokes the atmosphere of a war-torn community where people live in “wooden dwellings like chicken houses” in bombed-out clearings. His intent is clearly to lean upon a memory that many readers, especially British readers, were likely to have. London in the 1984 of the novel, then, is not a make-believe place where bad things happen to unknown people, but a very real geographical spot that still holds some connection for Orwell’s contemporary readers.

In 1984, the world is sliced into three political realms—the super states of Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia. Orwell drew these lines fairly consistently with the political distribution of the Cold War era (beginning after World War II). A totalitarian government, constantly warring on multiple fronts, runs each of these three states. By creating an entire world at war, Orwell not only creates a terrifying place, but also eliminates the possibility of escape for Winston Smith, a man 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% of the population; the Outer Party, the educated workers; and the Proles, the proletariat or working class, comprising 80-85% of the populace. Although the Party (Inner and Outer) does not see these divisions as true “classes,” as people test into them as teenagers, it is clear 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; however, in these nations, as in 1984, revolt was all but impossible.


1984 Team Activities

Part I, II, & III Team Activity With a team of 2-3 people, choose a focus (Winston’s character, a certain conflict, individualism, doublethink,

human nature, a certain theme, any stylistic element characteristic of the novel, etc.) Comb each chapter for the most interesting or significant quote you can find regarding your chosen subject. It is

okay to use anywhere from one sentence to an entire paragraph. After finding strong quotes from many chapters, pick two that you’d like to write about. Write (or type) two separate (and well-developed) paragraphs in which you make some interesting observation

(claim), include the quote (evidence), and provide an explanation of the evidence’s significance (analysis). Use MLA 8 citation.

SAMPLE ASSIGNMENT

Subject: Humility

Chapter 1

Early in Winston’s time at the Ministry of Love, a gut-wrenching incident occurs in which an empathetic and selfless action is looked upon with disgust. First, a man called the “chinless man” is seemingly unable not to help a starving prisoner: “The eyes of the chinless man kept flitting toward the skull-faced man, then turning guiltily away, then being dragged back by an irresistible attraction. Presently he began to fidget on his seat. At last he stood up, waddled clumsily across the cell, dug down into the pocket of his overalls, and, with an abashed air, held out a grimy piece of bread to the skull-faced man” (235). After this human gesture, the chinless man is beaten, and then, “His gray eyes still flitted from face to face, more guiltily than ever, as though he were trying to discover how much the others despised him for his humiliation” (236). Somehow, the man’s kindness is looked upon with disgust; he has been “humiliated”—humbled. What does Orwell mean by this? Is this the method by which The Party turns human beings into automatons? Soon, this man will be like the skull-faced man, he will also become a betrayer, one who cannot care for anyone.

Chapter 2

Again, the subject of humility appears when, during his sessions with Winston, O’Brien says,

“You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. […] When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.” (248-9)

In order to have its way (maintain power), The Party must ensure that each man subjugates himself, surrenders completely, to its will. The Party must break man’s will, remove his individualism; in this way, they also deny him his humanity. This seems to further explain the incident that occurred previously, with the chinless man; it offers up The Party’s reason for viewing and treating his action as it did.


1984 Study Guide

Part One1. What does the opening sentence suggest about the book? (“...the clocks were

striking thirteen…”

2. The name “Winston” means “from a friendly country.” “Smith” is a common last name. From these names, can you suggest a possible irony? Also, consider the association of Winston Smith with Winston Churchill. How is Winston like this leader? What else do we know about Winston concerning his age, abilities, and occupation?

3. What are the Party mottos? What is unusual about them?

4. What is Newspeak? What is its purpose? (A look at the Appendix might be helpful here.) Why is it essential for the Party to rid the language of synonyms and antonyms?

5. Who is Big Brother and what connotations go along with this name?

6. What is facecrime? Why is it so easy to commit?

7. How does the Party control history? Why?

8. Who is Emmanuel Goldstein? How is he presented to the people of Oceania? What is the probable significance of using the obviously Jewish name?


Part TwoChapter 1

1. How does Winston react to the note from Julia before he reads it?

2. How does he react to the note after he has read it?

3. Why does Winston trust her? (How does he justify this trust?)

4. Describe the “parade” in Victory Square. What happens here?

Chapter 2

5. Why is Winston ill at ease once he is alone with Julia?

6. What does Winston mean when he says that he loves Julia even more because she has had scores of sexual encounters?

Chapter 3

7. What is Julia’s job, and what is her attitude toward the Inner Party?

8. Describe Winston’s marriage.

9. About what do Winston and Julia disagree?

Chapter 4

10. What is Winston’s reaction to rats?

11. What is Julia’s reaction to rats?


12. Why is the rhyme about church bells so significant to Winston?

13. Winston sees the coral paperweight as a symbol of what?

Chapter 5-6

14. What finally convinces Winston that O’Brien is a member of the Brotherhood?

Chapter 9 (the Book)

15. What is the purpose of war in the world of 1984?

16. What are the two aims of the Party?

17. What are the two problems with which the party is concerned?

18. What are the four ways an elite group falls from power?

19. How is a person’s class determined in this society?

20. What is doublethink?

21. What is the purpose of doublethink?

Chapter 10

22. What understanding does Winston gain about the common people?

23. What is the significance of the glass paperweight in chapter ten?


Part Three

1. How does Parsons feel about being imprisoned as a result of his own daughter reporting him for thoughtcrime?

2. Before Winston is interrogated, he sees many prisoners escorted off to Room 101. From their reactions, he gathers the room is extremely unpleasant. What is in Room 101?

3. When and in what way does Winston betray Julia?

4. Why does O’Brien say prisoners are brought to the Ministry of Love?

5. Review O’Brien’s argument about the past. Does the past exist if no one remembers it? How can it be proven?

6. O’Brien says the proles will never revolt, yet Winston came to the conclusion (earlier) that the future’s only hope lay with the proles. Why did each man think what he thought about the proles? Is either man clearly right about his conclusion?

7. Who wrote Goldstein’s book? If it was the Party, then why?

8. When Winston sees Julia in the Park, what does he find out about what happened to her in the Ministry of Love?

9. How does Winston ultimately feel about Big Brother?

10. Discuss the significance and the irony of the Chestnut Tree Café. How can one interpret the final lines of the song about the Chestnut Tree. What, for example, is the meaning of the word “lies?”


W. H. Auden "The Unknown Citizen" (To JS/07/M/378)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to beOne against whom there was no official complaint,And all the reports on his conduct agreeThat, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saintFor in everything he did he served the Greater Community. (5)Except for the War till the day he retiredHe worked in a factory and never got fired,But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,For his Union reports that he paid his dues, (10)(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)And our Social Psychology workers foundThat he was Popular with his mates and liked to drink.The Press are convinced that he bought a Paper every dayAnd that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way. (15)Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insuredAnd his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured, Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declareHe was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment PlanAnd had everything necessary to the Modern Man, (20)A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.Our researchers into Public Opinion are contentThat he held the proper opinions for the time of year;When there was peace he was for peace when there was war he went.He was married and added five children to the population, (25) Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation, And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he Happy? The question is absurd:Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

Reading Questions

1. What do you think of the man described?2. Was this man free? Happy?3. Are people losing their individual identities in the face of modernity? Are we

simply faceless numbers in modern society?4. Why is conformity so important in modern society?5. Who is the speaker in this poem?


6. What comparisons can you make between the concerns of this poem and the concerns of 1984?

Think / Write / Discuss

First, finish the sentence starters on your own.

↓

Use this space to jot down new ideas gleaned from discussion

↓

Something that stood out to me in last night’s reading was…

I liked…

I wonder…

This book has made me feel…

This book reminds me of…

Winston is…

________________________(fill in another character) is…

I wish…


Think / Write / Discuss

First, finish the sentence starters on your own.

↓

Use this space to jot down new ideas gleaned from discussion

↓

Something that stood out to me in last night’s reading was…

I liked…

I wonder…

This book has made me feel…

This book reminds me of…

Winston is…

________________________(fill in another character) is…

I wish…

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