76 terms

1984 (class notes)


Terms in this set (...)

How does Winston meet Julia?
-she trips and hurts her hand and his first instinct is to help her up and she slips him a piece of paper
-"as though he felt the pain in his own body"
-he has reservations because he thinks she's a member of the Thought Police
-note says "I love you"
-they finally get to talk but don't make eye contact and she tells him about this super secret meeting place
-they meet in Victory Square where people come to watch prisoners of war pass in trucks (hiding them) (Prisoners are animals!)
-Winston is nervous and suspicious
-he's skittish because he feels like it might be a trap
-he's so nervous he has to second-guess everything (even something so simple as a bird singing)
Julia takes off her clothes because she's so wild and free
-his initial reaction: not what we expect; admires her independence and courage; need for basic touch
Julia: the real story
-she doesn't want to be part of the Party; she uses it as a cover
-she's promiscuous for her own benefit
-had affairs with people of the Inner Party (act of defiance; visible proof of her pleasure)
-he is more altruistic, and she is more selfish; both hate the party but Julia is content to do so quietly but he's like let's tear the place down yo
"Folly, folly, his heart kept saying: conscious, gratuitous, suicidal folly!"
whimsical, silly, fun; understatement: their relationship is actually high stakes
Julia brings a bunch of good food and stuff
-chocolate is important because it brings back an important memory (everyday small pleasure that's relatable; BB controls even the littlest of pleasures)
-Winston finally puts the pieces of his childhood together
Rats in the room
-rats are Winston's irrational fear; Julia just throws a shoe at it
Winston examining paperweight (end of ch 4)
metaphor for his desire for freedom; "The paperweight was the room he was in"; hope against hope that he can just disappear int he paperweight and experience freedom
peopled need to feel needed and loved; ironic because even though he's better physically, he knows he's a dead man
Proles haven't lost humanity
women do laundry and sing; men chase women; they don't have motivation to do anything though because of the Party and BB's manipulation
Mr. Charrington (more insight)
"tradesman"=harmless old guy; unthreatening; remembers only bits and pieces of old rhymes; few memories of the past (Winston is unsatisfied); soothes Winston because he is proof of the past
Main difference between Julia and Winston
he wants freedom for the common good, she wants it for herself
-sardonic, satirical; people give the appearance of knowing about a subject without really knowing anything
-the party is most successful with people who don't understand what's happening to them
-idea of information being given to people without them really understanding it
O'Brien randomly becomes an actual character
he weasels his way in by saying he wants to correct something Winston supposedly used Oldspeak in; wants to lend WInston his copy (gets him to his apartment)
"moved from thoughts to words...the grave was there and waiting for him"
he knows a friendship with O'Brien is nothing but trouble
Dreams p2
his dad disappeared; bits of his childhood; scavenging for food with other boys; mom doesn't acknowledge father's disappearance; he wants more chocolate and snatches it form his sister and runs away because he knows it's wrong--allusion to Great Purge (Stalin): people just disappeared; better understanding of Winston and why chocolate ignited the dream
-looks at proles with a new appreciation; still knows they can't make a rebellion though
-as long as they have their minds they're chillin
O'Brien's apartment
very clean and posh; comfy; he has rags; he can turn off the telescreen; has a servant; serves real wine in glasses; so different from everyone else's lives
-reason he brought Winston there: to give him Goldstein's Manifesto (but really to plan on delivering it) about how the party came about and what happened in history to bring them there
Parody of HItler
beginning of ch 9
"gelatinous with fatigue"
limbs feel like gel-o; we can relate
-he's tired because they suddenly changed their enemy to Eastasia instead of Eurasia, so he had to go change all the documents to that effect
periodic sentence mimics what a huge effort Hate Week has been; things literally change overnight
Hitler reference
the square being packed with spies; short man has HItler's attributes (parody, he had toupees)
Goldstein's Manifesto mirrors Hitler's Communist Manigesto
how the Party came to power, what happened in human history to bring them there; continuous war
Imperialism throughout human history
want of nations to exert economic power over weaker nations; "all of the disputed territories...to turn out more armaments"; end of 18th century, Africa had been a protectorate of European nations and colonized most of it to procure natural resources (slave labor)
Key Points of Manifesto
-how prophetic Orwell was
-written before the Cold War but that is what Goldstein is talking about
-once everyone has atomic weapons, you need a detente with each other or else everyone will be destroyed
-hierarchy very important in all of the three countries; maintain power through indoctrination of children: can become a part of the Inner or Outer Party by taking a test at age 16
-proles remain no threat because their world is shaped by the Party
-"war is peace"--if you are always wary of mutual destruction you have to keep peace to make sure the world isn't destroyed
-Oceania links opposite with the concept of doublethink and keeps people controlled; undermines family and parental love, but promotes a loving relationship with Big Brother
-parallels Stalin's theories about how to control people with regimes
-purpose of the book: why and how a 1984 scenario could become a reality; cautionary tale
-what's the point of war? just an excuse to eat excess production, keeps up hierarchy, doesn't raise standard of living, parallels Hitler and Stalin
-PROVES TO WINSTON that he's not insane or alone in his thoughts (he thinks)
"He understood how...not why"
he still doesn't get why people want all this power but he understands how they get it now
Thoughts of prole woman
she is beautiful for what she has endured; makes the best of her situation; gives him hope
"Out of those mighty loins a race of conscious beings must one day come. You were the dead; theirs was the future. BUt you could share in that future if you kept alive the mind as they kept alive the body, and passed on the secret doctrine that two plus two make four."
"Unthinkable to disobey the iron voice from the wall."
emphasizes iron--speaks to whole world of impenetrable control
"There was another crash. Someone had picked up the glass paperweight from the table and smashed it to pieces on the hearthstone."
symbolism--metaphor for their relationship; not only is their safety in the room destroyed but also their relationship
Mr. C (further revealed)
He's part of the Thought Police in disguise; picture of St. Clements is hiding a telescreen; he is the voice that came through the telescreen
Parson children
-think seeing executions is normal
-really creepy; Parsons is stoked about how loyal his kids are to the party (they set fire to market lady and he's like yes good job kids)
"These amateur repair jobs were almost a daily irritation."
asyndeton; nothing seems to be working well
What motivates Winston to write?
-place he can't be seen by telescreen
-inspired by his past life (recollections of his mom and sister; he was 9 or 10 when they mysteriously disappeared in the Great Purge)
-motivated by snippets of memories
-2 Minutes Hate, first hate the rebellion, then his inner thoughts
-acknowledges that he's a dead man for this
What are Winston's dreams in chapter 2?
-he has a dream about his sister and mom; understands that his mom dies loving him, but can't remember anything else
-another dream that he attributes to O'Brien (we don't know how to feel about him yet)
-dark-haired girl throwing her clothes off (the freedom with which she does this); foreshadows his relationship with Julia
struck by the impossibility of emotional commitment; there is only fear, hatred, and pain
What does the dream sequence in chapter 3 reveal?
-he can't remember a time when there wasn't war; can't remember when Ingsoc came into being
-gives way to his reality: constant wars, Ingsoc, the Great Purge; while he is fearful, he won't let it hold him back from writing
"Controls the past, controls the future, controls the present, controls the past"
party slogan
"That's no way it used to be."
theme of having no evidence of the past
Winston's job
-performs it in a perfunctory manner; can't give away his emotional reactions
-he's always in peril because there's always a part of him that doesn't want to do it
-visceral reaction to changing the truth
-unlike Syme and Parsons, it's difficult to wrap his head around the Party message
-changes things to fit Party ideology
-destroying works of art
-later Syme references that it's only a matter of time before they start destroying great works of literature
Who is Tillitson?
worker across the hall; Winston is afraid he'll report him to the thought police; Winston is in competition with him changing that big story; element of competition in a society that doesn't want it
"There were armies of reference clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall."
irony; imagery of a bunch of robots doing the job
"And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the Party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers, containing almost nothing except sport, crime, and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as versificator. There was even a whole subsection--Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak--engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at."
-they provide the proles with a different kind of control: appeal to basic human nature and feed them nothing but trash; they don't have to worry about them developing intellect and rebellion
"In an intellectual way, Syme was venomously orthodox...'It was a good hanging,' said Syme reminiscently. 'I think it spoils it when they tie their feet together. I like to see them kicking. And above all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out, and blue--a quite bright blue. That's the detail that appeals to me.'"
orthodoxy is poison to Syme himself; Winston is very careful around him; he is very intelligent, so he'll be vaporized someday because he doesn't hide his intelligence
-the world is so desensitized to violence; this is normal lunch time conversation
Winston's wife
-polar opposite of Winston; orthodox; separated after they couldn't have children
-mechanical in sexual relationship
-he doesn't know what happened to her
Winston + Prostitute
closest he got to relationship with another human being; Winston epitomizes humanity that can't be eradicated by rules
"Hope lies in the proles."
-Winston writes this in his diary
-85% of the population but he realizes that even though hope lies with them they don't have what it takes to rebel; they're trapped in just trying to survive
-there's a moment he thinks they're rebelling bc there's a lot of noise, but it's just some women fighting over saucepans
Winston copies a passage from a history textbook he borrowed from Mrs. Parsons in his diary
-reflection on what the children are taught: before Big Brother, capitalists ruled the world and everyone was their slaves (proles are turned at a young age)
-Winston discovers that the confessions of the three old party leaders were made up
-receives documents he must change and accidentally sees a photo of the people that were supposedly betraying the country in Eurasia in New York (they had broken noses at the cafe when Winston saw them there)
Allusion to Trotsky
-arresting and then setting free; put tortured people back into society to freak people out; intimidation
allowed to exist because it's a way to trap intellectuals; he knows Syme will disappear because he likes to go there
** "I understand how but I do not understand why." **
-most important diary line
-why do people need to suppress others?
-you have to believe whatever the Party says (2+2=5)
diary entry
ratholes, swarmings
the proles live like rats and insects; they don't have enough
What happens in the prole district?
Winston says circumstances robbed them of their humanity; the proles are skeptical of him; a rocket bomb hits a house and the people take shelter but once it's over they just go back to their routines; sees a severed hand and kicks it to the gutter
What happens in the pub with the old man?
Winston asks about the past but the old man doesn't give anything concrete (fear, indoctrination, ignorance, forgetting)
Mr. Charrington
-possibly allusion to Frederick Charrington (born into a wealthy family; women and children begged at the pub but the husband came out and threw her in a ditch and Charrington tried to help but got thrown in too so he devoted his life to helping women and children through foundations; supporter of temperance)
Mr. Charrington's Shop
Winston likes it because it has relics of the past; buys a paperweight; he's psyched cause it's useless and you can't have anything useless now; proof that another different time existed
beauty of solitude; upstairs room in Mr. Charrington's shop; picture of church on wall reminds him of nursery rhyme
First reaction when running into Julia
I should smash her head in; humanity vs. inhumanity
"Why then did that horror, which altered nothing, have to lie embedded in future time?"
graphic detail of torture and confession before death instills fear in the reader; lets us know that Winston knows his behavior is risky
Woman in cell
Winston's mother?!?!??!?!?
he doesn't explore the possibility further because he is resigned to his death so there's no point; also he has no enduring feelings for her
What does O'Brien say about the Party
they got him a long time ago; indoctrinated him when he was young
left God in a poem and is now punished
still proud of his daughter for turning him in even though he's like about to die
"He was the tormenter, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was the friend."
he is O'Brien; total power over the situation
Punishment is like execution
kills your humanity and individuality; dead on the inside "no longer able to love, or laugh, or explore...fill you up with us"
-Rutherford, Aaronson, Jones--rehabilitated them and used them as examples but they were still killed
long list of all the methods makes it seem neverending; the people who are torturing can just choose whatever they want it's all arbitrary and adds an air of recklessness
Sign Winston is permanently weakened
betrays his love for Julia; accepts everything he's told; becomes submissive; only cares about himself; writes party slogans on the chalkboard
he's just accepting everything now
"He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled. Everything was so easy, except--! Anything could be true."
party changes laws of nature; 2+2=5
Room 101
where you face your greatest fear, unique to everyone; speaks to the irrational; technique used in imperial China
Motif of chess
sits in front of the board and plays with the pieces; appropriate because Winston is a pawn; he never had a chance at winning
cautionary tale! Orwell is saying like hey bad stuff actually does happen and not everything is rainbows and butterflies