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Notes On 1984 - Common Module Texts and Human Experiences
Notes On 1984 - Common Module Texts and Human Experiences
Universal themes
Fear, resistance,
TEXTUAL FORM
LANGUAGE
● Way to express and share ideas and emotions
● A tool of manipulation that can induce a state of unconsciousness and confusion
● A tool for control
● Orwell represents how crucial language is to the human experience
● Can be used to strip individual and collective identities
● Compare and evaluate
● Dialogue our present existence and experiences
● Can be distorted, shaped, reshaped, to satisfy our particular agenda
How did the party manipulate and erase the facts and language of cultural and historical
heritage?
- Through the manipulation of the Ministry of Truth BB was able to control the past,
present and future of human language, thoughts and history.
- The reduction of language through newspeak reduces the ideas that people are exposed
to and limit their expression of thoughts and emotions
- “In the end, the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six
words— in reality, only one word.” - Symm, p60
- BB using language as a form of emotional control
- People are unable to express hatred against the party
- Through the manipulation of language and expression people are unable to think of the
deceptions that big brother might be pulling
“He who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past”
Language prevents the individual from transcending the misery of their current condition
by entertaining hopes of a better world:
How does Orwell consider and explore the power of memory and the human experience?
How does Big Brother control collective and individual memory? Looking at Winston, his
dreams and the diary-Where can you find specific evidence of this?
1984 shows us how distorted language, as well as the overpowering authority the Party has,
can be used to strip individual and collective identities, reduce people’s capacity for critical and
creative thought and independent reasoning. Big Brother controls the collective and individual
memory through acts of brainwashing in telescreens that invade people’s personal lives, 2
Minutes Hate and preventing one from keeping written records of their lives. The Party aims to
eliminate freedom of expression, independent thoughts and one’s curiosity of the past.
By reconstructing the past, the party is able to control the present and future. People would
become more emotionless, have confined thinking and subjected to ideas the party induces on
them. They would be unable to experience happiness, unable to compare their memories with
something else.
- “Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory
that things had once been different.”-Winston Page 69
(lunch scene) Syme tells Winston, the ultimate goal of Newspeak is to manipulate the language
of the citizens to such an extent that they would change consciousness, to eliminate the
possibility of thoughtcrime.
- “It appeared that there had been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the
chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had
been announced that the ration was to be r educed to twenty grammes a week. Was it
possible that they could swallow it, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed
it…”
At the start of the novel, Winston challenges this by being curious and reflective of the
past-writing in his diary, searching for his past memories through dreaming as a way of rebelling
and questioning BB’s control. Winston’s writing in his diary allows him to record and reflect on
the past, as well as demonstrating Winston’s desire to break free from the Party’s control.
Writing in his diary also allows him to search for his own life history, to understand who he is.
Winston’s dreams of his mother, sister and Julia (searching for his memories of the past?)
Winston is conscious of the complete truthfulness, desires to question
“He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory…” -Winston struggles to think of his early
childhood. Page 5
To the future or to 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”
-Page 32-Winston writes in his diary to refer to a time when there was only the truth.
Evidence:
“It was curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the power of expressing himself, but
even to have forgotten what it was that he had originally intended to say.” -writing in his diary
Page 10
-Newspeak was made for the purpose of not letting individuals express themselves (reduction of
words)
What impact does this have on the historical record? What effect does the shaping and
re-shaping of the past affect the collective experience of the present and the future?
The constant shaping and re-shaping of history force the people who work in the ministry of
truth to question the world around them. Those of whom directly change history question Big
Brother, more than those who know nothing about what is going on with the party. The constant
shaping and re-shaping also means that no one is really sure about what has happened in the
past or what effects this would have on the future. “delicate pieces of forgery in which you had
nothing to guide you except your knowledge of the principles of Ingsoc and your estimate of
what the Party wanted you to say.” this quote shows audiences what they do to history and how
it is job to change history, perhaps leading to Winstons inability to trust the party.
Power of Control-Language
● Newspeak
○ Form of control
○ Reduces expression e.g. nobody can even think of resistance
○ Eliminates adjectives and synonyms
○ Removal of possible individual thought
○ Through the use of newspeak, they provide the party with constructive power
○ Linguistic decay
○ Language is a medium that allows oneself to evaluate themselves
○ Newspeak is a means to manipulate individuals and defies the truth
○ By controlling language and information, the party succeeds in mind control of
their subjects/population
Page 59: “We’re destroying words...We’re cutting the language down to the bone” -
imagery of deprivation
Purpose of 1984
● Orwell wants to show how authority figures can impact human life
● A cautionary tale against totalitarian and dictatorial governments
● Orwell was wary of Stalin’s totalitarian rule of communist USSR
“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can
make mistakes.”
Bastardisation refers to corruption in linguistics, the idea that language change constitutes a
degradation in the quality of writing and language.
Used to convince the people that the constant state of war that they live in is ‘normal’
Is memory malleable?
“If you want to keep a secret, Paradoxes, inconsistencies Shows how even thought are
you must also hide it from controlled by BB
yourself.”
Despotism: full control by a government of everything said or written or even thought by its
citizens that characterise totalitarianism
How does language in 1984 reflect the politics and culture of a society?
- ‘The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,’ he said. ‘We’re getting the language into
its final shape—the shape it’s going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When
we’ve finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare
say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying
words—scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down
to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won’t contain a single word that will become obsolete
before the year 2050.’
- “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” paradox
- By controlling language and information, the party succeeds in mind control of their
subjects/population
- “Big Brother is watching you” create fear in the population and encourages humanisation
- Reliance on big brother
- “It is impossible to found a civilisation on fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never
endure… It would have no vitality… It would commit suicide”
Appendix:
● Conformity
“Freedom is slavery”
“Two plus two makes five”
“God is power”
General tips:
- Use quotations even if the question doesn't ask for them
- Be succinct (answer the question explicitly)
- Practice papers are essential
- Look up previous markers’ reports
- Use the reading time to read all the texts and keep reading until the end before you start
answering Q1
- Be judicious in the selection of quotations to support
- Be sensible in the amount of time you spend on each question
- 3 marks: 2-3 techniques with strong analysis
- 4 marks: at least 3 techniques with strong analysis
- 7 marks: 5-7 techniques with strong analysis
1984:
- Rubric
Sample questions:
- Through the telling and receiving of stories, we become more aware of ourselves and
our shared human experiences
- It is a story’s ability to ignite new ideas about human behaviour that allows us as readers
to see the world differently
- Storytelling gives us insight into the paradoxes...
“It is a story’s ability to ignite new ideas about human behaviour that allows us as readers to see
the world differently”
To what extent have you found this to be true in you study of your core text?
Evidence from the text to develop this idea (including consideration of the narrative form and
Orwell’s purpose):
- Imagery
- Symbolism
- Structure
Link - the new insights that this idea offers and connection to our own world:
-
Context:
- English imperialism
- World war one
- Russian revolution
- The great depression
- Spanish civil war
- World war two
- Orwell:
- Democratic socialism
- Dystopian warning of the dangers of totalitarianism
- Recognised the complexities of politics on left and right
- Seeks to show the ways that many government structures are prone to
totalitarianism
Winston:
- “Was it not a sign that this was not the natural order of things…”
- “Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory
that things had once been different?”
- He appears to have a moral, emotional sensibil
- Ity that is at odds with the rest of his society
- He is our guide through this dystopian horror
- His questions help us to see the paradoxes
- Doesn’t even connect with himself at the end of the text: “a bowed, grey-coloured,
skeleton-like thing was coming towards him…”
Language:
- The medium through which we organise, comprehend and co-create reality
- The means by which we compare, evaluate and dialogue our present existence with
both our past histories and future potentialities
- In 1984 we see how the systemic manipulation and destruction of language can have
profound…