Extract 2 1984 , G. Orwell, 1. What progression can you find from - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Extract 2

1984, G. Orwell,

• 1. What progression can you find from paragraph 1 to

paragraph 5?

– Paragraphs 1 & 2: we follow Winston’s ascent to his flat. – Paragraph 3: description of the flat, then of Winston – Paragraph 4: description of the landscape

• utside

– Paragraph 5: the telescreen and the methods of watching

• 2. The setting

List the elements which show that the setting is between the normal (and dismal) and the strange (and surreal).

Normal / dismal elements: a bright cold day / the vile wind / gritty dust / the smell of boiled cabbage / dust and torn paper / the electric current cut off during the day / no colour anywhere

Strange / surreal elements: the clocks were striking thirteen / the poster with an enormous face /the eyes following you / the voice coming from an oblong plaque in the wall / the word INGSOC, which we cannot understand. => Contrast between the dilapidated building and state of the art modernity.

• 3. Control

How are individuals controlled in this society? Underline all the words which refer to looking or watching.

People’s movements can be watched at any time. The poster ... gazed from the wall / the eyes follow you / BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU / the faced gazed down / the dark eyes looked deep into Winston’s own / the field of vision / every movement scrutinized. Winston looks out / the telescreen and the helicopter look in.

• 4. Contrast Winston Smith and Big Brother.

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955.

Joseph Stalin (birth surname: Jughashvili; 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was the leader

• f the Soviet Union from the mid-

1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state.

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (24 June 1850 – 5 June 1916) was an Irish- born senior British Army

• fficer and colonial

administrator who won fame for his imperial campaigns and later played a central role in the early part of the First World War, although he died halfway through it.

• 5. What comparisons are used in the text?

What is their effect?

like a dulled mirror / like a bluebottle They are unpleasant images, one echoing the theme of watching and looking, the other loathsome and frightening (the police).

• 6. Politics

Are any words reminiscent of politics in 1948, when the book was published? What political regimes does Orwell condemn?

The setting evokes bombed London in 1948, and the Christian name Winston, reminiscent of Churchill, confirms that. But what is condemned is totalitarianism, with an allusion to Stalin.

Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible.

Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through an all-encompassing propaganda campaign, which is disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that is often marked by political repression, personality cultism, control

• ver the economy, regulation and restriction of

speech, mass surveillance, and widespread use

• f terror.

The British author George Orwell made frequent use of word totalitarian and its cognates in multiple essays published in 1940, 1941 and 1942. The label "totalitarian" was twice affixed to the Hitler regime during Winston Churchill's speech of October 5, 1938 before the House of Commons in

• pposition to the Munich Agreement, by which

France and Great Britain consented to Nazi Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland.