3. Be able to explain the significance of the following themes:
• The meaning of freedom: Freedom is slavery. There are no laws, so technically everybody is free, but nobody is because they don’t know what is allowed and what is not. Big Brother controls everything, without acknowledging that they control anything really. The Proles are both freer and less free than the upper class. They are freer because they aren’t subjected to the same rules as the Party members. However, they are less free because they do not have the ability to think for themselves.
• The responsibility of the individual in society: They have the responsibility to uphold the properties of doublethink and newspeak. Their only responsibility is to do what they are told by the Party, and to be loyal. They are supposed to totally surrender their mind, individuality, and identity to the Party.
• Dehumanization as a method of control: Once you take away a person’s humanity, they are just animals. Animals can’t think for themselves, are easier to control, and easier to kill because they are viewed as inferior. They make everybody the same and give them a pack mentality, removing all connections between people. They take away emotions and the other things that make us inherently human.
• Isolation: The Party removes all connections between people, emotional anyway. They are expected to be connected to the Party and only to the Party. Sex is not against the law, just frowned upon, but is overlooked as long is there is no emotional connection.
• Social class disparity: The Proles have to work 14-hour days at manual labor. The Party members don’t, but they have to swear complete allegiance and are watched more fervently than the Proles. The Party members are the upper class. The Inner Party has even more privileges than the Outer Party. The Proles are not educated in order that they can’t organize an uprising. This disparity is used to keep the system in control and keep the people separate in order to exert more power over them.
• The abuse of power: People are always being watched, all the time, everywhere by the telescreens. The three major states are constantly at war with one another to keep a system of checks and balances and to control the general populace. If you break a rule, you are taken to the Ministry of Love and tortured until you admit to things you didn’t even do, and are killed once you are completely rehabilitated. They bomb their own countries in order to keep the people afraid. They focus their hatred on one enemy at a time to unify the people for the goals of the Party.
4. Define dystopia and apply it to the novel: A dystopia is a place where everything is inherently bad, and is typically totalitarian. The Party claim to have a utopia built on power, but it can’t be a utopia if it is built on social classes and controlling the masses. They are actually striving for a dystopia, because they will not repeat the “mistakes” of past governments. They want power purely for power, and they are not afraid to admit it. This book clearly portrays a dystopia because of the disparity between social classes, the isolation of people from one another, the complete and total control exerted by the government, and the conditions in which people are forced to live.
7. Examine the following symbols:
Big brother: Big Brother does not exist as a person, he is an ideal, representative of everything the Party stands for. He is the figurehead and face of the Party, so the people have something to direct their love, loyalty, and devotion toward.
The party slogans: Freedom is slavery, war is peace, and ignorance is strength. Freedom is slavery: the Party believes that to be an individual is to be a slave because the individual always dies, while the machine lives on. War is peace: they use war as a way to keep their country peaceful and under control because it focuses the hatred outside of themselves, on a common enemy. Ignorance is strength: If you don’t know much, then you don’t know just how much you don’t know. If you are ignorant, you won’t be aware of how helpless you are.
The four ministries: Ministries of peace, love, truth, and plenty. The names are all ironic, because they are the opposite of what they do. Ministry of peace is concerned with war. The ministry of love is concerned with law and order, and they torture people who break the laws. The ministry of truth deals with the media and propaganda, and changing the past. The ministry of plenty is concerned with rationing food which doesn’t need to be rationed. The backwards names are a symbol of the society itself being backwards, and represent doublethink.
The paperweight: It represented Winston and Julia’s relationship, and then it breaks. It is their own little world that they have created (outside the Party’s control), which is infiltrated when the paperweight is broken. It also represents the isolation of people, because Winston relates his world to a paperweight that is surrounded by glass and can’t be touched by the outside.
The golden country: It represents utopia, a place that is the opposite from the society that the Party has created. It is Winston’s escape from the world.
Emmanuel Goldstein: He, like Big Brother, does not exist. He is the common enemy created by the Party to embody everything that is “bad”. The masses are supposed to hate him, and most do, but he is still a beacon of hope to others.
James, Aaronson, Rutherford: They represent the abuse of power. They prove that the Party controls every aspect of life, even the lives of those who have really done nothing wrong. The Party can do anything they want to you because, when they accuse you of something, the masses will usually believe them. They will torture you until you believe them too. These men are an allusion to Communist leader (and accused traitor), Trotzsky.
Chestnut Tree Café: this café is a place where everybody who has been “rehabilitated” goes to drink away their thoughts and memories. They go there to live their non-lives as shells of people who are just ghosts of their former beings. They go there to await death. It also represents room 101 and the torture they endured there.
Doublethink: The ability to know that two opposite things are true, and believe only one of them. This also represents the abuse of power because the Party can change the past and the people no choice but to believe it.
Newspeak Dictionary: Newspeak represents the abuse of power and dehumanization and isolation because the Party takes away your ability to express your thoughts and ideas through taking away your vocabulary. If you cannot talk to another person, you cannot connect with them.
Winston’s diary: Winston writes in his diary because he needs an escape from the society in which he has been forced to live. He needs a way to express his feelings against Big Brother and the Party because nobody is allowed to express themselves in this world. This relates back to the themes of isolation and the meaning of freedom. He is not even supposed to be writing in a diary and, as a result, he feels guilty and has to be secretive about it, even though he is just writing down his personal thoughts.
Junkshop: This represents most of the themes. It represents the meaning of freedom because Julia and Winston feel as though they are free there, even though they really aren’t. It represents the responsibility of the individual in society because Mr. Charrington is actually thought police, even though Winston thinks that he is one person who Winston can trust. It represents isolation because Julia and Winston have to sequester themselves off in a random corner room just to be together. It represents social class disparity because of the interactions Winston has with the Prole woman while there. Also because Julia first applies makeup there, which is something that only Prole women do. She also buys food on the black market, food that only the inner party has. It represents abuse of power because Charrington is secretly thought police, and he abuses Winston’s trust.
Songs: This definitely represents social class disparity and isolation. It represents social class disparity because the Proles sing sad songs and songs with lyrics that they don’t really know what they are about. They apply their own meaning to them because they have had hard lives. It also represents isolation in that nobody actually creates music anymore. It is all created on a machine and done so in a way that does not sound like real music. Even then, the songs of the Prole woman and of the thrush bird show that there can still be emotion, beauty, and hope in the world. At the Chestnut Tree Café, the song that plays serves to remind people of what they endured in the Ministry of Love, and makes them realize that they are totally and completely alone.
Proles: These represent all of the themes. Meaning of freedom: the Proles could be considered freer than Party members because they are allowed to do basically whatever they want. They could also be considered less free because they don’t really have thoughts of their own, or the ability to think for themselves. Responsibility of the individual in society: the Prole’s responsibility in society is to work and produce more Prole babies. They are expected to be loyal to a fault and not question anything. Dehumanization as a method of control: the Proles are seen as less than people. They are pawns to be used for the Party’s gains, and nothing else. Isolation: the Proles are isolated from the rest of society and from the government. The only people that the Proles aren’t isolated from is each other. Social class disparity: The Proles are the under class, who don’t get an education, rarely have enough to eat, and live in poverty. Abuse of power: the Proles are kept unintelligent in order to be controlled more easily. They don’t even know that they could rebel if they wanted to.
10. Describe the setting. It is 1984, we think. The world is in a state of duress and it is a dystopian society. It is a world run by three major superstates, who rule with an iron fist and are interested in nothing but power. Everything is dirty and everything is rationed even though it doesn’t have to be. Winston’s story takes place in Oceania, which used to be England (and a larger chunk of Europe). There are telescreens and posters of Big Brother everywhere, always watching you. There is no privacy anywhere.
15. Discuss the meaning of Room 101. It represents isolation, because you must be separated from your peers in order to be interrogated. This emphasizes the psychological part of the torture and makes you feel as though you are completely alone in the world which, at that point, you are. It also represents the abuse of power. People are brutally tortured, even when they have maybe done nothing wrong. It also shows just how far the Party can get inside your head, because they know your thoughts and know what your deepest fear is, the thing you could not mentally escape even if you wanted to. It represents dehumanization as a method of control because the people who are taken there are not given baths or food, are beaten and broken until they don’t even resemble people. Supposedly everybody knows what is in Room 101, because it is the deepest fear within themselves, but that changes for every person. Room 101 is the place where they completely break you down and then build you up into the loyal party member that you were meant to be, before killing you.
18. Discuss the three movements in the book and summarize what happens in each.
• Part One: This is basically a description of the society. Since it is so different from our own (or anything we have ever known) Orwell had to take a while to set it up, otherwise we would not understand the rest of the book. We meet Winston, the protagonist. We learn the ideals of the Party, the principles of Ingsoc, the Party slogans, and all about Big Brother. The first part also introduces us to some important characters, and how Winston views them.
• Part Two: Winston and Julia meet and immediately begin a relationship. It starts with Julia passing Winston a note that says, “I love you,” though they have never spoken before. This is the inciting event of the book. They use their relationship as a form of rebellion against the Party. They continue meeting upstairs in Mr. Charrington’s shop, where they think they are alone. They discuss the Brotherhood, which Winston wants to join, while Julia just goes along with it. Finally, Winston gets a message from O’Brien. Julia and Winston go visit O’Brien, where O’Brien tells them about the Brotherhood and Goldstein’s book. Winston then receives the book and reads it, where he finds out that the book says nothing he didn’t know. Winston and Julia are captured in the upstairs room, where they find that a telescreen has been hiding behind a picture. They are taken away.
• Part Three: Winston is in the Ministry of Love, in a cell with many other people and no food. This cell is where he finds out that O’Brien is actually thought police. He is then taken away to be tortured. He is psychologically and physically tortured for a long time, though we don’t know specifics. O’Brien is the chief perpetrator of the torture, and asks Winston questions. He also tells Winston things about the society, and the purpose of the torture, which is to “rehabilitate” wayward individuals. Then Winston is brought to Room 101, where he is asked to face his biggest fear, rats, or completely surrender himself. He does, and betrays Julia as a result. He is then let go, where he lives for a little while, spending most of his time at the Chestnut Tree Café. He sees Julia, but there is no feeling anymore, and they both confess that they betrayed each other. At the end, Winston gives up all hope and realizes that he loves Big Brother.
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