1984 | mrbarnes

Nineteen Eighty-Four

by George Orwell

Class Notes

A digital copy of the novel can be found here: http://www.prirodniskola.cz/media/files/1984.pdf

Useful reources for this novel include:

Sparknotes offers chapter summaries and explanations here:

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/

YouTube has multiple audio versions of the entire novel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auwRj4Yru-E

*Generally the italicized passages are my analysis

*ALL of the questions highlighted in orange should be answered by each student using quotes and full sentences.

-The tone and mood of Oceania, where the novel takes place, also establishes the foundation of the novel as a whole. Life is dreary; the air smells of ‘boiled cabbage’ and old rags, and the only colour found anywhere is in the government propaganda posters.

-Propaganda= “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” It is not the truth, it is an effort to intentionally skew and manipulate people’s understanding of a given issue. It can also seek to trigger a sentiment in its intended audience; fear, aggression, hostility, happiness, etc. But there is always an agenda, a larger intention that guides its creation in the first place. It has no concern with balance or neutrality, quite the opposite.

Look at the gallery on the right if you'd care to see examples of American propaganda from World War 2 and mordern day examples from North Korea.

Chapter 1

-Slogans are a pillar of Oceania. Citizens are regularly bombarded by several notorious slogans. One by one interpret what each of the below slogans means, research other people’s interpretations, and offer an emotional response to them (how do they make you feel?).

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

-Thought Police are literally a police force that exists to ensure that people never have the ‘wrong thoughts’, and are punished if they do.

-People never know when they’re being watched so they assume they’re always being watched (p. 6)

-The constantly running ‘telescreens’ (TVs) cannot be turned off, only the volume can be slightly lowered. They can also be used to monitor any citizen in their home (a spy apparatus).

-The government is divided into 4 ministries (p.7);

The Ministry of Truth= responsible for News, Entertainment, Education, Fine Arts
The Ministry of Peace= responsible for War
The Ministry of Love= maintains Law & Order
The Ministry of Plenty= responsible for Economic matters

-Winston is keeping a diary, which is illegal, but has no clue why (p.10)

-Undertones of this society’s anti-Semitism can be found throughout; the first occurs in the film in which a group of Jewish refugees are blown up (p.10-11). The second occurs when Emmanuel Goldstein’s image is used daily during the daily ‘2 Minutes Hate’ to invoke the ire of every worker (p.13).

-Oceania is divided into the following population segments:

Proles= Proletariat, the working class who constitute a massive majority= 85%
Outer Party= Middle Class= 13%
Inner Party= Bourgeoisie/ Elite/ Wealthy/ the main power holders= 2%

-In this case Propaganda is used to unite people through Hate:

Hate of the other
Hate of diversity
Hate of someone foreign

-The Book is first mentioned. It is a secret document rumored to have been written by Goldstein himself. It circulates among an unknown few (p.15).

-What is the purpose of the ‘2 Minute Hate’? What is the intention behind bringing people together to hate their enemies as a group? (p.15)

-What/ who is Winston truly hating during the 2 minutes hate? (p.15)

-Based on what you’ve read up to and including page 18, how does Winston feel about his society in general and Big Brother in specific?

-Winston, to his utter shock, discovers that in a moment of thoughtlessness, he has been repeatedly writing “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER”. In this society, it must again be noted, such an act could result in his death and is one of the most major violations.

-What does writing “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” potentially reveal about Winston’s true feelings for Big Brother, and his general feelings regarding the society in which he lives? Why would he write such a dangerous phrase in your opinion?

-What is scary about the concept of ‘Thought Crime’? Explain why it should be viewed as such a horrific concept?

-Winston’s fear of the Thought Police swooping into his home in the middle of the night is directly inspired by Stalin’s Russia, where surprise late night slaughters were common (p. 24).

CHAPTER 2

-Children are the most vicious members of society—rather than rebelling against the strict rules and values, they embrace them. Parents end up fearing their children (p. 31).

-What might Winston’s dream have been foreshadowing? (p. 23)

-In your opinion (looking at this topic from any perspective you like) is Winston a ‘monster’ like he believes himself to be? (p. 25)

-What is meant by the phrase ‘the mutability of the past’ (p. 25)? What does it mean to mute the past?

-Orwell perhaps offers the most definitive insight into life in Oceania when he writes, “Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or the bed – no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull,” (p. 25). Orwell depicts an existence or what you might call a state of being that is subjected to constant scrutiny. According to this passage there is no such thing as privacy. And despite the fact that he suggests that a few precious centimetres in the skull belong to each individual, those too are heavily scrutinized by the Thought Police. The central government has elevated itself to the state of near godliness, or omniscience—which is to say, knowing everything about everyone all the time.

-“He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear,” (p. 26).

-“It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage,” (p. 26).

-Winston believes that by writing in his journal and capturing his ideas he is doing something of value for all of humanity. Here is a passage from his journal recorded at the end of Chapter 2 (p. 26):

To the future or the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone – to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink – greetings !

*This should serve as an explanation for why he is taking the monumental risk of keeping his secret journal.

-The simple seemingly innocuous act of writing the above passages will result in Winston’s death because, “Thoughtcrime does not entail death : thoughtcrime IS death,” (p. 26).

CHAPTER 3

-Winston has a vague recollection of his mother who at some point ‘disappeared’. Both his mother and father, he reflects, may have been slaughtered due to the ‘purges’ that took place in the past (p. 26). This is what is meant by the muting of the past/ of history; that significant events undoubtedly occurred, but the government has such authority that it simply negates that major events took place. This is why a recollection that should be clear and traumatic for Winston is hazy and imprecise—it has been muted in his memory. Later this notion is elaborated in the following passage, “When there no external records that you could refer to, even the outline of your own life lost its sharpness,” (p. 42).

-Winston has a dream and at one point envisions ‘the girl with the dark hair’ (Julia) removing her clothing and disdainfully flinging it all aside. He is not sexually aroused by the vision, but is instead excited by the “grace and carelessness” of the gesture because it “annihiliate[d] a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness,” (p. 40-41). This passage is packed with meaning. First, it foreshadows Winston’s ambitions to oppose and flout the values of his society. The dark haired woman embodies freedom, self-possession, and passion—only she is in charge of her body and her actions in this dream. Winston also seems to realize that Big Brother could be opposed through relatively bold but simple gestures. He is excited by the freedom the dark haired girl represents more than her sexuality. When this scene culminates with the word ‘Shakespeare’ on Winston’s lips that is symbolic of his longing for another time that he still vaguely remembers. The writings of Shakespeare are emblematic of a time in human existence when freedom of thought, movement and action still existed. -Since his early childhood, Oceania has been perpetually at war with an enemy that regularly changes (p. 44.).

-“The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible,” (p. 44).

-Winston finds it frightening that The Party can ‘thrust its hand into the past’ and alter historical information in any way at any time (p. 45). Why is that frightening?

-Another notorious Party slogan is (p. 45):

Who controls the past controls the future:

who controls the present controls the past

(AKA ‘Reality Control’)

Explain the meaning of the above slogan.

-The concept of doublethink is explained; “To know and to not know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions... knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them...” (p. 45). Offer an example of doublethink from your daily life. You can write about something that you’ve observed in either yourself or others.

-It becomes apparent that during this entire chapter Winston is exercising and the reader is reading his thoughts as he does aerobics. At one point the reader discovers that the instructor is able to see all of her students due to a camera on each of their telescreens (p. 48).

CHAPTER 4

-Winston’s job, it is revealed, is to alter articles/ reports that the Party deems inaccurate (p. 49-50). Truly, however, it is Winston’s job to alter and rewrite history. The Party constantly sends bits of information to people like Winston who must edit or fabricate the 'truth' in order for it to reflect the Party’s stance or agenda at any given moment. This is also done to maintain the unwavering reputation that the Party is never wrong and never makes mistakes.

-“[I]t was unusual for political offenders to be put on trial or even publicly denounced. The great purges involving thousands of people, with public trials of traitors and thought-criminals... were afterwards executed...” (p. 58).

-“More commonly, people who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply disappeared and were never heard of again...One never had the smallest clue as to what happened to them,” (p. 58).

-Not only is information subject to editing or omission—total removal, so too are people (p. 59-60). (re: Withers)

-In what ways does this novel resemble our present reality? Discuss at least 2 similarities and 2 differences between life in North America 2016 and life in Oceania 1984. Offer as much depth of insight and substance to your claims as possible. Research news stories, draw upon examples from history, etc.

CHAPTER 5

-Syme, an acquaintance of Winston’s, works in the research department. Despite working on the Newspeak Dictionary, his job is not to expand or refine language. Rather, Syme explains that his job has him, “destroying words...cutting the language down to the bone,” (p. 66). Syme continues, “Newspeak is the only language whose vocabulary gets smaller every year,” (p. 68). The important thing to note here is that the Party aims to control language because that enables thought control as well. The more the language is shrunken, the more one’s capacity to think is shrunken as well.

-The Party intends to make “thoughtcrime literally impossible,” by narrowing the range of thought (p. 68).

-Syme declares in a rather sinister tone that “proles are not human beings,” (p. 69). The working class, the vast majority of those in Oceania (85%), are viewed as subhuman or as animals.

-Winston begins to reflect on all of the people who will be ‘vaporized’ by the Party. What do they all have in common? Why would the Party want to kill all of these people (Winston included)?

CHAPTER 6

-“The most deadly danger of all was talking in your sleep,” (p. 83).

- Winston was once married and may still be married technically, but has no clue if his wife Katharine is alive or dead (p. 84). He detested her for the very reason that the Party would have loved her “[s]he had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan,” (p. 86). Winston could not live with a person who was unwilling or unable to think their own, personal thoughts. The breaking point that ultimately ended the marriage was that Katharine detested sex (p. 87). In other words, there was no intimacy, no interaction that was not first sanctioned by the Party. It was an inhuman, alienated relationship.

-Debauchery= Excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures.

-Winston writes in his journal about his repulsive encounter with an aged prostitute. It is the only form of sexuality that the Party will tolerate outside of procreation (p. 84).

-The Party unofficially encouraged prostitution to serve as an “outlet for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed” as long as the Party member indulging did so “joylessly” and involved only women of “a despised class,” (p. 84). Meaning, men should use inferior beings that do not matter in order to gratify sexual desires if they cannot resist the power of their sex drive.

-“The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct” and played an authoritative role in determining whether people were allowed to marry (p.85). The Party was mainly concerned with ensuring the people were never more loyal or devoted to anything above the Party.

-“The sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion. Desire was thoughtcrime...” (p. 88).

-After writing in his journal about all of the aforementioned, the chapter concludes by stating, “The therapy had not worked. The urge to shout filthy words at the top of his voice was as strong as ever,” (p. 89). Writing and thinking and speaking are not enough. Winston has an urge to act in some way, to do something concrete and real in order to cope with everything that upsets him.

CHAPTER 7

-“If there is hope,[...] it lies in the proles,” (p. 90). What do you think Winston means by this? Read the passage that immediately follows in order to explain.

-“Why is it that they [the proles] could never shout about anything that mattered?” (p. 92). In your opinion is this true in reality? Do real every day, average people ever get upset about things in the world that really matter? Explain.

-“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious,” (p. 92). This is what is called a Paradox. A seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement that may prove true.

-Winston has concluded that the proles are the key to a revolution in London, they are after all the 85% majority. Why don’t they rebel and claim the power for themselves?

-“Proles and animals are free,” (p. 94). Why would the Party allow the Proles to be free, but not the Party members?

-Winston describes 3 revolutionaries who were repeatedly arrested until their ultimate execution. After considering the facts of their confessions, Winston concludes that they were lies.

-Winston ‘knows’ that O’Brien is on his side and decides that he is writing his highly illegal journal for him (p. 104).

-The chapter ends with Winston writing in his journal that, “[f]reedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows,” (p. 105). Which is to say that freedom means being able to determine facts and perceive reality without that being regulated or imposed upon. 2+2=4 is not a fact because Big Brother says so, it is a verifiable fact that any logical person can observe if they choose to. It is a fact that can be scrutinized and verified as true.

CHAPTER 8

-The chapter begins with Winston taking a series of risks. First he is skipping a second meeting at the community center, second he is strolling about one of the London prole neighborhoods. Since he is always wearing the blue jumpsuit all Party members must wear, everyone knows who he is and that he is entirely out of line being there (p. 107-8).

-As he wanders, Winston is present for a bombing of the prole neighborhood, presumably perpetrated by the Party (p. 109).

-The lottery, with its massive financial reward for winners, is the only thing proles pay serious attention to (p. 111). With that said, do you think it will be possible for Winston to mobilize the proles to rebel against Big Brother?

-“The older generation had mostly been wiped out in the great purges [...] the few who survived had long ago been terrified into complete intellectual surrender,” (p. 112). Explain why the party would want to kill an entire generation of old people. What do old people symbolize that must be destroyed?

-In the prole neighborhood Winston wanders into a bar where he engages an older man in conversation. His hope is to learn something about history from a person who may have experienced it firsthand. To his disappointment he discovers that the older gentleman is unwilling or incapable of engaging in meaningful, substantial conversation (p. 116-117).

-Winston concludes, about the proles, that “all the relevant facts were outside their range of vision,” (p. 120). They were capable of remembering only basic events from their lives. However, they had no assessment or awareness of the larger meaning of those events. No notion of Social or Historical meaning or significance. They were not aware of anything in life beyond the most surface level, superficial understanding of it.

-Winston considers renting a room in the prole neighborhood and seems particularly tempted by the possibility of being “utterly alone, utterly secure, with nobody watching you, no voice pursuing you,” (p. 125). Why is this so appealing to him?

-After illicitly browsing in a prole shop Winston exits and sees Julia whom he concludes is spying on him (p. 129-130).

-Winston considers smashing Julia’s head in with a cobblestone in order to prevent her from reporting his crime to the Party (p. 131).

-“On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten [...] life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold [...]” (p. 132).

-Winston poses the question, “[w]hy then did that horror, which altered nothing, have to lie embedded in future time,” (p. 133). Winston is thinking about the fact that before thought criminals are executed they are first tortured. Why are thought criminals not just executed? Why go to the trouble of torturing them?

Part 2

CHAPTER 1

-Julia stumbles and slips Winston a note (p. 139) which says “I love you,” (p. 140).

-What is your reaction to Julia’s note?

-Winston immediately begins plotting to secretly meet Julia. This is a significant risk for both of them. Days go by and he is tortured by his yearning to meet up with her.

-After 7 days pass Winston and Julia finally arrange to meet at a remote location.

CHAPTER 2

-This chapter begins by informing the reader that it is now spring. In literature seasons tend to symbolize and embody a whole host of ideas. Spring in particular is representative of the following;

New beginnings
New life
Things coming back to life
Hope
Rejuvenation

In this case Winston’s particular circumstances align perfectly with the symbolism implied by the season:

Winston’s new beginning= he has begun rebelling against The Party, marking the beginning of a new phase in his life. Winston is also experiencing a new beginning through the newly blossomed romance between himself and Julia.

Winston’s new life= formerly a loyal member of The Party, Winston has become a revolutionary. He was formerly single, now he is in love.

Winston ‘coming back to life’ or his ‘hope’= these 2 concepts are interchangeable in this context. Winston has hope because he has begun to believe that drastic, positive change is possible. His falling in love is also hopeful, because a hopeless person would not believe that there was a possibility for change or love.

-Julia asks Winston “what did you think of me before the day I gave you the note?” Winston is unable to lie and replies with brutal honesty, “I hated the sight of you [...] I wanted to rape you and then murder you afterwards. Two weeks ago I thought seriously of smashing your head in with a cobblestone. [...] I imagined that you had something to do with the Thought Police,” (p. 156). Explain why this was Winston’s initial reaction to Julia. Why react in such a harsh, vile manner?

-Winston asks Julia why she would be interested in an older, unhealthy man like him. Her answer is revealing on multiple levels, “It was something in your face. [...] I’m good at spotting people who don’t belong. As soon as I saw you I knew you were against them,” (p. 158). It stands to reason that if Julia is able to detect Winston’s ‘not belonging’, then other people have noticed as well. Thus, perhaps Winston’s revolutionary, anti Big Brother sentiments are not secret, despite what he believes.

-Winston dreamt previously of Julia walking freely in the nude. This has now become a reality during their intimate, secret encounter (p. 161).

-Winston declares, “The more men you’ve had, the more I love you [...] I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones,” (p. 162). Explain what Winston means. When answering, do not forget that Winston is referring to ‘goodness’, ‘virtue’, ‘corruption’ and ‘purity’ according to The Party’s standards. Those definitions do not necessarily align with how the dictionary might define them in reality.

-Making love in nature, just one man and one woman, there is a Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve connotation. In addition to being the first man and woman according to the Christian faith, they were also the first rebels. Just as Adam and Eve defied God’s will, Winston and Julia are defying Big Brother’s. Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of knowledge and God punished them. Winston and Julia as well seek a knowledge in the physical and intellectual realms that Big Brother has forbade. Thus, it stands to reason that a major punishment is on the horizon for them.

-Adam and Eve story summarized in a few short paragraphs (from: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/oldtestament/section1.rhtml)

The Book of Genesis opens the Hebrew Bible with the story of creation. God, a spirit hovering over an empty, watery void, creates the world by speaking into the darkness and calling into being light, sky, land, vegetation, and living creatures over the course of six days. Each day, he pauses to pronounce his works “good” (1:4). On the sixth day, God declares his intention to make a being in his “own image,” and he creates humankind (1:26). He fashions a man out of dust and forms a woman out of the man’s rib. God places the two people, Adam and Eve, in the idyllic garden of Eden, encouraging them to procreate and to enjoy the created world fully, and forbidding them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In the garden, Eve encounters a crafty serpent who convinces her to eat the tree’s forbidden fruit, assuring her that she will not suffer if she does so. Eve shares the fruit with Adam, and the two are immediately filled with shame and remorse. While walking in the garden, God discovers their disobedience. After cursing the serpent, he turns and curses the couple. Eve, he says, will be cursed to suffer painful childbirth and must submit to her husband’s authority. Adam is cursed to toil and work the ground for food. The two are subsequently banished from Eden.

-“[Y]ou could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, their climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act,” (p. 163).

CHAPTER 3

-Julia is apparently quite experienced in organizing secret rendezvous with lovers. This is revealed when she informs Winston, without hesitation, of the precautions that must be taken in order to ensure not being caught. The precautions include taking a different route home, allowing sufficient time to pass before meeting again, and never meeting more than twice in the same place (p. 164).

-During one of their secret rendezvous a bomb is dropped nearby and Winston, momentarily panicked, thinks that Julia is dead. Both of them are covered in sediment and take on the pale appearance of corpses (p. 166). What literary device might Orwell be using in this scene? Explain.

-The following facts are revealed about Julia (p. 168);

She hates living among the “stink of women”
She works doing manual labour on the novel writing machines
She is not clever, but enjoys using her hands to labour
She has no memories that stem beyond the early 60’s (likely meaning before the ages of 2-4)
Her grandfather disappeared when she was 8 years old
She had been the captain of the hockey team and won the gymnastics trophy two years in a row
She was a troop-leader in the Spies and a branch secretary in the Youth League, and later joined the Junior Anti-Sex League
She worked for one year in Pornsec turning out pornography for distribution among the proles

-Regarding the last point, pornography was heavily circulated by all of the combatants during World War 2. It seems that the Party had an intention similar to that of the various militaristic entities; pornography was used to distract, to dehumanize, and it was also suggested that it would reduce aggression in soldiers. These reasons seem perfectly in line with the Party’s intentions for the proles.

-Julia “hated the party [...] but she made no general criticism of it,” (p. 170).

-Winston wonders if there are more people in the world who resemble Julia, “accepting the party as unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog,” (p. 170). Winston seems to understand that people do not rebel against the Party because they have decided that it will never change. Instead, they choose to live secret lives that evade Big Brother as much as possible. This is why there has been no revolution.

-Julia explains the Party’s anti-sex stance, “When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is sex gone sour. If you’re happy, why should you get excited about Big Brother...” (p. 172).

-Winston’s hope, as we learned previously, is for the awakening of the proles. On page 175 we learn that Julia’s hope is that it might be “somehow possible to construct a secret world in which you could live as you chose.” This encapsulates what we might see as a philosophical debate that Orwell is presenting to the reader via these two characters. Reduced to its simplest terms it can be expressed as the Collective versus the Individual. Winston wants to liberate everyone so that they can all be free together. Julia, on the other hand, wants the right to have a secret world to which she can retreat—privacy.

-Winston views Julia as childish and naive for believing in the aforementioned and rather cynically concludes that “[s]he did not understand that there was no such thing as happiness, that the only victory lay in the far future, long after you were dead, that from the moment of declaring war on the Party it was better to think of yourself as a corpse,” (p. 175).

CHAPTER 4

-This chapter is bookended by the recurring images of a paper weight. In literal terms a paper weight is merely a heavy item that one puts on top of paper in order to prevent it from blowing away.

However, in the novel the clear glass paper weight must be interpreted as a symbol. The transparency of the glass symbolizes clarity, the fragility of the item is symbolic of the fragility of the knowledge that Winston is trying to keep in place and preserve. Winston and Julia have a clarity with regard to their relationship and their goals, both of which they intend to keep firmly in place.

-Winston has started renting a room from Mr. Charrington in the prole section of town. He knows that doing this and secretly meeting Julia at this location is certain to end poorly (p. 178).

-A prole woman singing outside of Winston’s window seems to foreshadow Winston’s fate with lyrics that are thematically about ‘hopeless fancies’ (p. 179).

-During their secret meeting Julia applies cosmetics to her face, something that is strictly forbidden for Party members (p. 184). Julia and Winston continue to reclaim their freedom by exercising their free will over their bodies; altering them as they wish, making love, going where they choose, etc. These are all symbolic gestures.

- Winston’s greatest fear is rats (p. 186) and Julia protects him from them. They are described as lurking in the nearby darkness, which Winston refuses to confront. The author is again foreshadowing Winston’s impending fate.

-Yet another song with ominous lyrics is sung, this time by Winston and Julia together. Lyrics include the line, “Here comes the candle to light you to bed, here comes the chopper to chop off your head,” (p. 189). The lyrics in this chapter repeatedly revisit the theme of hopelessness and destruction, thus the foreshadowing of something ominous occurs yet again.

CHAPTER 5

-Syme has been vaporized. Despite being a loyal, enthusiastic member of the Party, three days after his disappearance he, “ceased to exist: he had never existed,” (p. 191).

-Posters of a Eurasian soldier pointing a gun directly at the viewer litter the city.

-Winston and Julia continue to regularly meet at their secret rented spot in Mr. Charrington’s shop. The relationship is apparently making Winston healthier (p. 194).

-“There were times when the fact of impending death seemed as palpable as the bed they lay on,” (p. 196).

-Julia speculates that the bombs regularly dropped on Oceania come not from Eurasia, but rather their own government “just to keep people frightened,” (p. 198).

-The Party re-writes history regularly. When they cease to be at war with a nation (Eastasia), every historical document is re-written to make it appear as though they have always been at war with their new enemy (Eurasia). (p. 199)

-“Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right,” (p. 200).

-Winston tells Julia “You’re only a rebel from the waist downwards,” (p. 201). In the context of the conversation in which he states that, what does he mean?

CHAPTER 6

-Walking in the corridor of the Ministry Winston receives the message that he has been waiting his entire life for. O’Brien is the messenger and delivers it in the same place Julia shared her love note (p. 203).

-O’Brien commits multiple crimes in plain sight of the telescreens; he refers indirectly to the vaporized Syme, he is in possession of a pencil and paper which he openly writes with, and Distributes the written content to Winston (p. 205). Why do you think that O’Brien is so comfortable to openly break so many laws?

-O’Brien has invited Winston to visit him in order to share a copy of the newest and unreleased tenth edition of the Newspeak Dictionary (p. 205).

-In keeping with an emerging trend, this chapter also ends ominously; Orwell is continuously layering the bleak foreshadowing of events that undoubtedly lie ahead for Winston. “[...] sooner or later he would obey O’Brien’s summons. [...] [I]t was like a foretaste of death, like being a little less alive. [...] [A] chilly shuddering feeling had taken possession of his body. He had the sensation of stepping into the dampness of a grave, and it was not much better because he had always known that the grave was there waiting for him,” (p. 206).

CHAPTER 7

-Winston awakes from a disturbing dream. He has yet again recalled the image of the Jewish mother shielding her son from gunfire with her body. From there he explains to Julia that until a moment prior he believed that he had murdered his mother (p. 207-208).

-Winston recalls living in squalor as a boy; roaming in gangs of boys and rummaging through the garbage for food scraps (p. 208).

-Recollections of his boyhood continue and we are offered further insight concerning why Winston felt responsible for his mother’s death. Winston was so overcome by hunger during his childhood that he would tantrum and literally take food from the mouths of his mother and dying baby sister (p. 210).

-“If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love,” (p. 213).

-“The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing you of all the power over the material world. [...] [W]hat you did [...] made literally no difference,” (p. 213).

-The proles “were not loyal to a party or a country or an idea, they were loyal to one another. [...] The proles had stayed human,” (p. 214).

-Winston and Julia have a candid exchange in which they acknowledge that they expect to be caught shortly. Winston suggests that when they are caught they should at least refrain from betraying one another (p. 214-215). Julia’s reply is pragmatic, “Everybody always confesses. You can’t help it. They torture you,” (p.215). Winston has a different notion of what constitutes a betrayal and explains, “If they make me stop loving you—that would be the real betrayal,” (ibid).

-Julia and Winston are convinced that no amount of torture can stop them from loving one another. Do you concur? Could torture make a person say, do or feel anything that a torturer desired? (Is the ‘mysterious inner heart impregnable’?)

What is Torture and why it is used?

This section will focus on the use of politically motivated torture aimed at extracting information or achieving a particular goal. This discussion, however, will not examine the use of torture as a sadistic practice solely motivated by cruelty.

"Torture (from the Latin tortus, "twisted") is the act of deliberately inflicting physical or psychological pain on an organism in order to fulfil some desire of the torturer or compel some action from the victim. Torture, by definition, is a knowing and intentional act; deeds which unknowingly or negligently inflict pain without a specific intent to do so are not typically considered torture,"

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture).

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines torture in similar terms, “Torture is: (a) the intentional infliction of extreme physical suffering on some non-consenting, defenceless person; (b) the intentional, substantial curtailment of the exercise of the person's autonomy (achieved by means of (a)); (c) in general, undertaken for the purpose of breaking the victim's will,” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/torture/).

There are differing notions concerning the efficacy of torture. Torture can often be used to effectively manipulate people’s thoughts and perceptions, and so forth. However, the efficacy of using torture to extract information from a person is inconclusive because at a point many will begin to say whatever they think will halt the torture, with no regard for the truth.

CHAPTER 8

-Julia and Winston have visited O’Brien at his home where he appears to benefit from luxuries that are exclusive to elite members of the Party. Among other things, he can turn off the telescreens (p. 219).

-Winston, taking a deadly risk, declares the true purpose of their visit, “We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy, some kind of secret organization working against the Party, and that you are involved in it. We want to join and work for it. We are the enemies of the Party. We disbelieve in the principles of Ingsoc. We are thought-criminals. We are also adulterers. I tell you this because we want to put ourselves at your mercy. If you want us to incriminate ourselves in any, we are ready,” (p. 220).

-All of them alongside Martin, an undercover Asian servant, sit to drink a glass of wine while O’Brien toasts to “our leader: Emmanuel Goldstein,” (p. 221).

-In order to determine if Winston and Julia can be part of the Brotherhood, O’Brien asks them a series of often unsettling affirmations that include (p. 223-224);

You are prepared to give your lives?
You are prepared to commit murder?
To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the deaths of hundreds of innocent people?
To betray your country to foreign powers?
You are prepared to cheat, forge, steal, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases—to do anything which is likely to cause demoralization and weaken the power of the Party?
To throw sulphuric acid in a child’s face?
You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we order you to do so?
You are prepared to, the two of you, to separate and never see one another again? This is the only question to which Julia and Winston answer ‘no’.

-“[Y]ou will be fighting in the dark. You will always be in the dark,” (p. 225).

-“We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future,” (p. 228).

-‘We shall meet again in the place where there is no darkness’. Pieced together, these are among the final words exchanged between Winston and O’Brien (p. 230).

-Winston will soon receive a copy of Goldstein's secret banned text. It will teach him about the Brotherhood and will outline how they intend to achieve their various goals

-This chapter marks the beginning of Winston and Julia officially joining the revolutionary resistance movement known simply as the Brotherhood. Part of joining necessitates that both must express a willingness to commit deeds that in several instances qualify as acts of terror. Deceit, treachery and attacking civilians appear to be essential to this movement. Is Winston’s unhesitant willingness to potentially commit atrocious acts in the name of a ‘good cause’ a reflection of his dedication and loyalty, or is it a sign of sickness and hypocrisy?

CHAPTER 9

-Eastasia is now suddenly and totally the enemy of Oceania and it’s as though Eurasia has always been an ally (p. 233).

-Winston receives the secret delivery of Goldstein’s book during a hate week event (p. 235).

-The next several points will focus exclusively on Emmanuel Goldstein’s The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Key passages will be quoted and analysis will be provided.

-First, what is ‘Oligarchical Collectivism’? According to a well written article on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Oligarchical_Collectivism), “The term "oligarchical collectivism" refers not only to the Party's ideology of Ingsoc (English Socialism) but also to the ideologies of the other two states (Neo-Bolshevism in Eurasia; in Eastasia, "Death Worship" or "Obliteration of the Self"). Winston reads two long excerpts establishing how the three totalitarian super-states – Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia – emerged from a global war, thus connecting the past and the present, and explains the basic political philosophy of the totalitarianism that derived from the authoritarian political tendencies manifested in the twentieth century. That the three "opposing" ideologies are functionally identical is central to the revelations of The Book.”

-Wikipedia goes on to explain that “The term "oligarchical collectivism" is similar to the theory of bureaucratic collectivism put forth by some Trotskyists in the late 1930s. Leon Trotsky is the likely model for Orwell's Emmanuel Goldstein: a former member of the Party inner circle who had been purged and declared an enemy by the Soviet state he had helped to found, and subsequently a critic of its social system in exile, as Goldstein critiques the system of Oceania. However, the bureaucratic collectivist theory was formulated not by Trotsky, but by some of his followers mainly in the United States who dissented from his view of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers' state. These theorists, such as Max Schachtman, saw the Soviet Union, along with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, as representing a new type of society, neither capitalist nor socialist, characterized by direct, integrated political and economic rule by a new ruling class of totalitarian state bureaucrats. In the era of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the lead-up to World War II, this theory claimed that the apparently opposed Fascist and Stalinist social systems were in effect identical in essence, reminiscent of Goldstein's claims that Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia are actually identical and only differ in the justifying ideology. For these reasons, some scholars such as James M. Decker have identified Goldstein's book as a parody of Trotsky's real-life book The Revolution Betrayed, while others such as Carl Freedman have instead compared to works such as ex-Trotskyist James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution.”

-The main thrust of the first excerpt of Chapter 1 Ignorance is Strength is that people have divided into various classes for ages. The divisions that are more or less an iteration of the low class, middle class, and high class are recurring and appear to be unavoidable. However, the goals that people have within each of these groups will never be compatible outside of the group to which they belong. Thus, the rich will always clash with the poor and each group will always be fighting to keep what it has or to get more (p. 238-239).

-Chapter 3 War is Peace

The major superpowers of the world are permanently at war (p. 240).

“War is no longer a desperate, annihilating struggle,” it is waged “between combatants who are unable to destroy one another,” and they have “no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any ideological difference,” (p. 240).

“[W]ar is continuous and universal in all countries,” and when the side with which you are aligned commits an atrocity it is deemed reasonable and necessary, while those very acts when committed by your enemy are deemed evil (p. 240-241).

“In the centres of civilization war means no more than a continuous shortage of consumption goods,” and occasionally the violent deaths of people (p. 241).

The reasons that war is waged have changed; it is now waged solely to ensure a perpetual conflict that will never result in a decisive outcome (p. 241).

“The primary aim of modern warfare [...] is to use the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living,” (p. 144). The ‘machine’ refers to all technological innovation in general. In other words, war is used as a tool to preserve the social order. The factories are owned by the wealthy who become more wealthy by creating the weapons used in war. The poor and working class never share in any of the profits because the goods that they would ordinarily consume have been re-directed to the production of war machines. Further, because their country is constantly at war with one enemy or another, there is never any additional funds available for salary increases, and thus standards of living remain stagnant.

The main problem encountered by governments in the nineteenth century was figuring out what to do with the surplus goods commonly produced in industrial society (p. 144). ‘Too much stuff’ is a problem because the Party does not want to expand the privileged classes. Thus they face a dilemma; how can we produce and sell lots of consumable goods without improving conditions for workers? The answer they arrived at was war. War requires lots of consumable goods to be produced and immediately destroyed, it’s the perfect literal embodiment of doublethink. Why doublethink? Because ordinarily when goods are produced they sustain or improve lives to some degree. However, war necessitates that goods are produced to ruin and end lives.

“From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were deliberately used for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations,” (p. 245). Of course the machine is not used for such purposes in this novel.

The Party does not aim to make prosperity a global condition for all of the classes because it would create social instability. Why? Because “if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who were normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves,” (p. 246). A society based on a class system/ hierarchy could only exist if poverty and ignorance prevailed (p. ibid).

Continuous warfare is the Party’s strategy to produce goods without improving conditions for workers/ the wealth of the world (p. 247).

“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour,” (p. 247). War is used to ensure that the masses never become too comfortable or intelligent.

The Inner Party/ privileged groups are “kept near the brink of hardship” so that even the most insignificant perks appear to have greater value. They are provided with just enough luxury to elevate them above the Outer Party (p. 248).

The ideal Party member is intelligent and fanatical (p. 249).

In present day Oceania science no longer exists, there is not even such a word in Newspeak because everything that science stands for is in direct opposition to Ingsoc (p. 251). Science stands in opposition to Ingsoc/ Big Brother because, among other things, it is about the ceaseless pursuit of truth. Science is concerned with verifiable facts that can withstand being challenged. Whereas Big Brother is a concept that is beyond dispute and must be worshiped and deferred to based solely on principles of faith. Science is the enemy of Big Brother because a scientific response to such an entity might entail posing such questions as; can you prove that Big Brother exists? What proof do you have that Big Brother and Ingsoc are the ultimate? What if the claims about Big Brother are flawed or false? As you see, science in many ways is freedom of thought and innovation. Science can demolish concepts and ideas with startling ease. The Party understands that it simply could not withstand such scrutiny.

The Party faces 2 great problems; 1. How to know what a person is thinking regardless of whether they wish to reveal their thoughts. 2. How to kill several hundred million people without warning (p. 251)

Citizens of Oceania are forbidden from learning other languages and never meet their enemies face to face, because otherwise they “would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies.” All animosity toward the enemy would evaporate almost immediately if ever they met (p. 255).

Because the 3 major states of the world, despite the propaganda, are nearly identical, they have no interest in actually conquering one another (p. 256). There is greater value to be gained from perpetual war. It preserves the ideal social order, it unifies, etc.

Due to the fact that war has become a continuous and constant reality, in essence it ceases to exist (p. 259).

A truly permanent state of peace is the same as a permanent state of war; this is what is meant by the Party slogan War is Peace (p. 260). War and peace are the same in the sense that if they become a norm in people’s lives, they cease to have an impact. You would no longer call something a ‘war’ if war was constant, you would simply see it as the typical/ normal way things are.

-Chapter 1 Ignorance is Strength (flipping through the book Winston returns to this chapter and continues reading)

The 3 main groups in society have more or less lived in accordance to the following principle for much of human history; the High class aim to preserve their privilege and power. The Middle class aspire to become the High class, and the Low class have no aspirations outside of survival. When the Low class rarely have an aspiration it is “to abolish all distinctions and to create a society in which all men shall be equal,” (p. 262-263).

According to Goldstein Big Brother is not living person, he is a symbol for the Party itself. “His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt towards an individual than towards an organization,” (p. 272). In other words, a political party is abstract, it is nothing more than a concept, a bureaucratic organization, a theory, a thing. Big Brother, on the other hand, is depicted as a man with a familial relationship with each citizen of Oceania. Big Brother as a concept intentionally blurs the boundaries with the goal of causing citizens to perceive the Party as a singular human entity.

The masses “can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect.” Party members, on the other hand, may not demonstrate even “the smallest deviation on the most unimportant subject,” (p. 275).

“Crimestop (...) means protective stupidity,” (p. 277).

-It must be noted that after Winston's initial perousal of Goldstein's book in his secret rented space, Julia arrives. He reminds her that in order to be a member of the Brotherhood each perspective member must read the entire book. Julia is evidently uninterested and has Winston read it aloud to her as she quickly falls asleep. Julia clearly has no interest in the Brotherhood or its ideas.

-Goldstein’s book for the most part does not reveal anything that Winston had yet to learn. However, it did articulate a great deal of unspoken understandings and theories that Winston has spent his life living in accordance with. This book is such a threat because it defies one of the defining principles of Oceania; doublethink. By articulating the Party’s ideas in the written form the Brotherhood is attempting to inspire a critical engagement. The guiding premise being that once people think about Ingsoc in a serious, clear and unfettered manner, they will be triggered to work towards its demise. Consider this in relation to an old proverb that more or less states ‘once you learn what sausage is made of you’ll never eat it again’. In this case, if the citizens seriously consider and acknowledge the putrid inner workings of Oceania, they will be so repulsed that they’ll act decisively to end the Party.

CHAPTER 10

-The prole woman in the prole neighborhood is singing yet again outside of Winston and Julia’s window (p. 287). This time we learn yet another verse which yet again is packed with meaning;

They sye that time ‘eals all things

They sye you can always forget;

But the smiles an’ the tears acrorss the years

They twist my ‘eart-strings yet!

The song more or less conveys that people never forget the past nor do they heal from the suffering they once endured. This is thematically linked to Winston’s preoccupation with the knowledge of the past and remembering.

-As Winston gazes upon the ‘beautiful’ prole woman it occurs to him that everyone everywhere in the world is essentially the same. He is yet again convinced that despite not yet finishing Goldstein’s book, the message was undoubtedly, “If there was hope, it lay in the proles!” (p. 289). Winston thinks that when the proles finally take over and rebuild the world it will “be a world of sanity. Where there is equality [...] where strength would change into consciousness. [...] In the end their awakening would come,” (ibid). Do you think Winston is accurate in his forecast? Would a world created and run by the proles be any different than that which was created by Big Brother? Explain.

-Winston reflects that, “You were the dead, theirs was the future,” (p. 290). This thought is in reference to the idea that the world of Big Brother is a dead world, but the world of the proles is alive, vital and is the future.

-A moment later Julia and Winston both state “We are the dead” only to have a variation of that thought echoed back to them from a telescreen hidden behind a painting (p. 290). This statement as it is repeated takes on a different meaning every time it is uttered; as a thought it signifies that the Party is a dead. When Julia and Winston say it aloud it is the acknowledgement that they will die at some point for all of their transgressions. When the telescreen declares ‘you are the dead’ it signifies that the prophecy has arrived and that they are caught and are thus dead due to their transgressions. The repetition signifies this idea coming full circle; the notion that they are dead with each repetition shifts from symbolic to literal by the last utterance.

-Winston and Julia have been caught by the Thought Police.

-The glass paper weight, a recurring symbol in book 2, is smashed by an officer (p. 292). Winston, on multiple occasions, gazed upon it and viewed it as symbolizing hope, clarity, the perfect new world of the future for which he aspired. The literal destruction of the paper weight signifies the destruction of his hope and dreams.

-The officers begin to attack both Julia and Winston—though the attack on Julia is far more vicious (p. 292-293).

-Mr. Charrington, the man who rented the secret room to Winston and Julia, is not a prole but is rather an undercover officer in the Thought Police (p. 294).

Part 3

CHAPTER 1

-Winston believes that he may have been taken to the Ministry of Love (p. 297).

-Winston notices a distinct difference between the inmates who are from the Party and the ordinary criminals. The Party members are meek and obedient, while the ordinary people are defiant, aggressive, and they smuggle goods in, etc (p. 299).

-Winston meets a drunken lady while incarcerated who could potentially be his mother, they share a last name (p. 300).

-The prisoners with whom Winston shares a cell constantly come and go. Winston is particularly disturbed to realize that the ghastly appearance of one of his cell mates (the “skull-faced man”) can likely be attributed to starvation (p. 308-309).

-The skull-faced man is summoned to the ominous and seemingly horrific Room 101. This causes him to have a pleading outburst that offers some indication of the horrors that must await. He begs to be killed or sentenced, he declares, “I’ll tell you anything you want. […] I’ve got a wife and three children. […] You can take the whole lot of them and cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I’ll stand by and watch. But not Room 101,” (p. 311).

-Whether or not Orwell intended to make a political statement about torture, there is a clear message all the same. If a person, any person, is sufficiently brutalized, they will ultimately say or do anything to end their suffering.

-Throughout the chapter Winston fantasizes about O’Brien somehow coming to his rescue. The chapter closes with O’Brien entering Winston’s cell and informing him that he has always known. Of course O’Brien is suggesting that Winston always knew that he was not a member of the Brotherhood.

-“In the face of pain there are no heroes,” (p. 314).

CHAPTER 2

-Winston has now lost track of time. It is clear, however, that he has been tortured repeatedly (p. 316).

-Once the beatings relented, the next phase was interrogation. The beatings seem to have been aimed at destroying Winston’s sense of power, independence and strength. They aimed literally and metaphorically to break him (p. 317-318).

-The torture had such an impact on him that, “[h]e became simply a mouth that uttered, a hand that signed, whatever was demanded of him. His sole concern was to find out what they wanted him to confess, and then confess it quickly,” (p. 318).

-Winston begins to confess to a wide range of misdeeds and crimes that he knows to be false because it “was easier to confess to everything and implicate everybody,” (p. 319). Winston has reached a point where he simply aims to please his torturers in order to end the torture. The truth and facts are irrelevant, his sole motivation revolves around ending the suffering.

-“[I]n the Party there was no distinction between the thought and the deed,” (p. 319).

-O’Brien is in such a position of ultimate godly authority as Winston’s captor. “He was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was a friend,” (p. 320).

-Speaking to Winston, O’Brien claims, “you are in my keeping. For seven years I have watched over you. Now the turning point has come. I shall save you, I shall make you perfect,” (p. 320). This quote more strongly speaks to the godly and religious undertones of O’Brien. He has watched over Winston, he has the power to mold and shape him in the image of his choosing.

-O’Brien is interrogating Winston and shocking him with varying intensities of electricity (p. 322).

-Prevaricate= to speak falsely or misleadingly; deliberately misstate or create an incorrect impression; lie.

-Brainwashing= a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas.

-O’Brien is now focused on brainwashing Winston. In this case the brainwashing does not merely consist of making Winston change a single idea. O’Brien is attempting to reconfigure Winston’s perception of himself and the world as a whole. Look at this as being akin to entirely reprogramming a computer. “You know perfectly well what is the matter with you. [...] You are mentally deranged. You suffer from a defective memory. [...] [Y]ou are clinging to your disease under the impression that it is a virtue,” (p. 323). The ‘disease’ in this case refers to Winston’s critical, analytical nature and his inability to thoughtlessly embrace whatever the Party’s agenda.

-O’Brien challenges Winston by suggesting that he has never considered the meaning of the word ‘exist’. In the most literal sense exist “comes from the Latin word exsistere meaning "to appear", "to arise", "to become", or "to be", but literally, it means "to stand out" (ex- being the Latin prefix for "out" added to the causative of the verb stare, meaning "to stand"),” (Wikipedia.com). However, philosophically the term is the focus of more profound considerations. For example, what does it mean to exist? Can existence be proven? Does ‘existence’ exist? And so forth. O’Brien engages Winston on a philosophical level when he asks, “Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other—a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?” (p. 325-326) His point is that if the past does not exist in a concrete, verifiable way, then there are no rules to govern its recollection or documentation. Thus, it is impossible to claim with any accuracy that something once happened, or in this case, once existed.

-O’Brien explains to Winston that he has been incarcerated and is being tortured because he has “failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity.” He continues, “[y]ou believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident.” However, “reality is not external. Reality exists in the human, 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,” (p. 326-327). Stated more bluntly, only the Party has the authority to determine and dictate what constitutes reality.

-O’Brien holds up four fingers and demands that Winston see five. Repeatedly Winston refuses to claim that he sees five fingers when he knows there to be four extended. Every time he refuses to see five fingers O’Brien intensifies the level at which he is shocking Winston. It is only after repeated demands that Winston answers, “Four, five, six—in all honesty I don’t know,” (p. 329-330). This pleases O’Brien because it is the beginning of Winston’s surrender; this answer signifies that Winston is surrendering his will and perception to the Party’s authority. It must also be noted that by the end of the chapter Winston, in the final moments of consciousness, believes that he sees five rather than four fingers. Thus the brainwashing is beginning to prove effective.

-Heretic: anyone who does not conform to an established attitude, doctrine, or principle.

-“When you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. [...] We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. [...] [W]e make the brain perfect before we blow it out,” (p. 334). The Party aims to convert every heretic/ rebel because it refuses to accept that a single mind cannot be controlled and manipulated. Otherwise the person they kill will become a martyr/ hero, and that could ultimately spark a revolution.

-“We shall squeeze you empty, and then we will fill you with ourselves,” (p. 336).

-The chapter ends with O’Brien allowing Winston to ask a few questions of his own. We learn that Julia betrayed Winston and was converted almost instantly. We learn that Big Brother is likely a symbol rather than an actual being. When he persists in asking about Big Brother O’Brien explains that Winston does not exist (p. 339-340). On the surface this seems absurd. However, if a person’s entire existence could be erased from every memory and in every sense, is it not reasonable to argue that they never existed? And if this is true about any single individual, then it must hold true for everyone, thus nobody exists in Oceania.

CHAPTER 3

-According to O’Brien there are 3 stages in his ‘reintegration’:

1. Learning

2. Understanding

3. Acceptance

Winston is apparently at stage 2, understanding (p. 341).

-O’Brien claims to have co-authored the so-called Goldstein book (p. 342).

-According to O’Brien, “[t]here is no way in which the Party can be overthrown. The rule of the Party is for ever,” (p. 342).

- O’Brien asks Winston why the Party would want power, and Winston’s thoughts can be summarized in the following bullet points:

The Party sought power for the benefit of the majority
Because the average person is weak and cowardly, and cannot endure liberty or face the truth
People must be ruled over and deceived by people who are stronger than them
Mankind faces the choice of freedom versus happiness and humanity always chooses happiness
The Party is the guardian of the weak that commits evil deeds in order to make good things happen, sacrificing its happiness for that of others

Winston’s thoughts relay the things that he thinks he has ‘learned’ from his sessions with O’Brien (p. 343).

- When Winston finally answers aloud, he states simply that the Party rules over people for their own good. O’Brien instantly punishes Winston with a jolt of electricity and explains that the Party “seeks power only for its own sake,” (p. 344). The remainder of his explanation can be summarized as follows:

The Party only wants power, not wealth or longevity or happiness
The Party understands that every other effort in history to seize power failed because those attempting to seize it were misguided. The Party is unique in history because it views power not as a means, but as an end.
The Party had a revolution to permanently establish a dictatorship
The ultimate form of power is power over people’s minds (p. 346)

- O’Brien continues offering a series of explanations about the Party’s various ideas:

Power is inflicting pain and humiliation (p. 348)
Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together in a manner of your choosing (ibid)
The Party has founded a world based on hatred where the only emotions will be fear, rage, triumph, self abasement (p. 349)
All links between all people have been destroyed (ibid)
Physical procreation will cease (ibid)
No love except for that of Big Brother (ibid)
No laughter, no literature, no science, no distinction between beauty and ugliness (ibid)
Etc

- O’Brien’s lecture concludes with his assurance that Winston “will accept it, welcome it, become part of it,” (p. 351).

-Winston declares to O’Brien that everything he has just finished explaining is impossible because such a world would have no vitality (p. 351).

-Winston tells O’Brien that he views himself as morally superior to the Party because his values are supposedly better in some way. Immediately O’Brien plays back the audio of Winston agreeing to harm children, spread disease, (etc) in the name of his principles exposing his hypocrisy (p. 353).

-On pages 354-356 O’Brien forces Winston to look at himself in the mirror for the first time since his incarceration. O’Brien explains to Winston that his physical and mental states are evidence of the victory that the Party has won over him.

-Winston tells O’Brien at the close of the chapter that the one person he never betrayed is Julia (p. 357).

CHAPTER 4

-Winston, still incarcerated, is now being fed properly, he’s putting on weight, his captors are allowing him to bathe, etc (p. 359).

-Winston concludes that he has fully capitulated/ surrendered to the Party (p. 362). He now believes that all of the improper thoughts and the contrary beliefs that he once had were “false memories, products of self-deception,” (p. 363).

-Winston begins once more to think in philosophical terms. Despite his better judgment, he begins to commit thoughtcrime by realizing the fallacy of O’Brien’s claims. “What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens,” (p. 364). Is there such a thing as objective truth? If lots of people believe something to be true does that make it so?

-At the end of the chapter O’Brien enters Winston’s room knowing that Winston has had thoughts of deceiving him. He then poses the question, “what are your true thoughts about Big Brother?” to which Winston replies, “I hate him,” (p. 369). Winston is then sent to Room 101. This is where, according to O’Brien, Winston will learn his last lesson and not just obey Big Brother, but love him.

-At this juncture it is important to reflect on the definition of love. Despite the countless often abstract definitions, love, most would concur, consists of having a strong affection for another that is either of a friendly or a romantic nature. The essential, yet rarely discussed aspect of love, is that it must arise freely and naturally. In other words, love cannot be forced or mandated as a regulation. Thus the reader must question how it will be possible for Winston to ‘learn to love’ Big Brother.

CHAPTER 5

-In Room 101 O’Brien has a torture method in mind that cuts to the core of Winston’s most paralyzing fear; rats. He has a mask rigged up to a cage of ravenously hungry rats that can be released at any time to devour his face.

-Immediately Winston starts to scream, “Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!” (p. 375)

-Winston has now officially betrayed Julia and thus his promise to himself. Julia was emblematic of a part of Winston that he pledged he would never allow Big Brother to take from him. The moment Winston begs for Julia to be punished instead of him exposes an ugly truth; no person is selfless, no person at the depths of their despair can avoid being selfish. Philosophically it begs the question, are humans capable of doing anything for purely selfless reasons? In this scene it seems, at least according to O’Brien, that everything people do is motivated by selfishness. This is why when Winston is put to the test and his personal well being is at risk he reflexively and hastily attempts to sacrifice Julia in place of himself.

CHAPTER 6

-Winston has been released from captivity. His initial thoughts seem to reveal that he was effectively brainwashed. Rather than thinking skeptically about the war Oceania is embroiled in, we are offered the following, “Oceania was at war with Eurasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia,” (p. 377). There is no interpretation, no critical thought, just a reiteration of the facts emitted by the telescreens.

-“In these days he could never fix his mind on any one subject for more than a few moments at a time,” (p. 377). This passage offers yet more of an indication that the once thoughtful Winston was effectively brainwashed and altered by O’Brien.

-Winston is sitting in a cafe of which he is a regular patron. He is so well known to the staff that he need not even place orders; they know to continually fill his glass with gin and bring him a chess board (377-378). This heavy, non-stop consumption of alcohol would suggest that Winston is trying to use alcohol as an escape or as a therapeutic device.

-Winston looks at the chess board and because of his brainwashing, believes that white always beats black and views this as a grand metaphor for Big Brother’s eternal superiority (p. 378-379). (www.cliffsnotes.com)

-Winston has seen Julia since his incarceration ended. He is convinced that the Party would not care in the least if he saw her again. According to his observations, Julia “had changed in some ill-defined way,” (p. 380).

-Winston upon seeing Julia “put his arm around her waist,” (p. 381). Her response to his touch can best be described as indifferent. At this proximity Winston is able to observe “a long, partly hidden scar by the hair, across her forehead and temple,” though this is not the most notable change he perceives in Julia (ibid).

-The scar on Julia’s cranium seems to suggest that perhaps she was lobotomized. What is a lobotomy? To begin, there are two types of lobotomy; prefrontal lobotomy and a transorbital lobotomy. “The two procedures differ in how the doctor gets access to the brain. In a prefrontal lobotomy, the doctor drills holes in the side or on top of the patient's skull to get to the frontal lobes. In the transorbital lobotomy, the brain is accessed through the eye sockets.” Dr Walter Freeman, a doctor who performed many lobotomies, “believed that cutting certain nerves in the brain could eliminate excess emotion and stabilize a personality. Indeed, many people who received the transorbital lobotomy seemed to lose their ability to feel intense emotions, appearing childlike and less prone to worry.” However, some patients were also reduced to a vegetative state and some even died, thus rendering this a highly controversial procedure (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5014565). If you consider Julia’s now docile behaviour, how she is unemotional, lacking in the passion that once so defined her, it seems at least possible that she underwent such a procedure.

-According to Winston’s observations, Julia is essentially corpse like (p. 381).

-Julia and Winston begin to converse for the first time since their release. They admit to betraying one another. She explains the nature of the betrayal by telling Winston that when she was faced with her darkest fear being realized via torture in Room 101 she truly wanted him to suffer instead of her. Because “all you care about is yourself,” in that moment (p. 382). Once you have committed such a betrayal “you don’t feel the same towards that person any longer,” (ibid). Their conversation ends shortly after.

-The novel draws to a close with Winston happily weeping over yet another victory for the Party against its enemy. Totalitarianism has defeated humanity/ humanism (p. 389).

-It seems that the murder of Winston was a metaphorical one. O’Brien and the Party successfully snuffed out Winston’s previous self and replaced it with their ideal. His skepticism, his love for Julia, etc have all been extinguished with only small remnants remaining.

-The closing lines of the novel read, “O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother,” (p. 389). In simpler terms, Winston realizes that he caused his own suffering through doubt and rebellion. Ultimately, however, he is pleased to have won the internal struggle to overcome his cynical, flawed nature.

* * *

-At this point you might feel terrifically depressed by the outcome of the novel. After all, love, rebellion, individuality, critical thought, and so forth have been extinguished within the two principal characters. Further, the masses, by and large, are depicted as sheep that can be lied to with startling ease by power holders who do nothing but lie. Power is depicted as the ultimate goal and outcome that every government strives for, and humanity as a whole is more or less viewed as means rather than ends by the powerful. In simpler terms; humans are seen as objects (by the power holders/ elite) that can be exploited for gain or they are viewed as obstacles to attaining the goal of power and domination.

However, the hope to be gained from 1984 relates to the implausibility of a government ever achieving such a goal. It would be one thing if the world had one or two rebels, but that simply is not the case. It would be utterly impossible for any government to create enough Ministry of Love buildings to torture and alter all of the world’s rebels. Beyond logistics, Winston and Julia are to be celebrated because they undertook a monumental, scary, doomed endeavour simply because of their profound faith in their own humanity and in that of their fellow citizens. They refused to allow an outside entity to control them physically or mentally and pursued their relationship knowing the horrors that would surely lie ahead. Perhaps then the message of the novel is that the world would benefit, if not thrive, from more Winstons and Julias going out and reclaiming their humanity, critically engaging, etc. The world will absorb one or two random rebels, but it would be forced to engage with a substantial number of them.